March 19, 2010

This is our Ayrshire bull calf, Porter House. He'll be nine months old next week. We just took him completely off milk two weeks ago. It's hard to judge his size by a photo but 1.5 gallons of milk a day up to 8+ months of age really packs on the muscle.

In late June or early July we'll put him in with Sugar for breeding and in October or November we'll put him in our freezer. Because Porter was kept by himself since our other calf went home in November, he's quite rambunctious and has pretty poor manners. I always take a riding crop when I go in the stall or pasture with him so I can slap his nose when he tries to force me around with his head. In the future I hope to always have a group of at least two calves so they can be companions and teach good manners to one another.

If breeding this way with a yearling works well, we'll probably do it every year so we don't have to rely on artificial insemination. We're fortunate to have an organic dairy with Dutch Belted and Ayrshire calves for sale in the spring and summer. My biggest fear about reintroducing Sugar and Porter is that he will try to go back to nursing. He's been separated from her since mid-October but old habits seem to die hard with these dairy calves.

All of our snow is completely gone here and the grass is greening up nicely. I have enough hay on hand to last until mid-April so I may have to buy a bit more.

Lambs could start coming on April 1st. We sheared the ewes last weekend and there are only two that I'm certain are bred with a third being probable. I think our one year-old, Annie, is open and the two (almost) yearlings are also. Thank God for that. I didn't want to deal with yearling mothers.