New Additions

Our mother/daughter Black Angus Cows arrived Sunday evening. A friend had this pair that he needed to sell because of the hay shortage here in our area. I honestly don't know beans about cows, but our neighbor kept going on and on about how good of cows these looked to be. I wanted to ask what made a cow a good looking one and what made it an ugly one, but I just couldn't open my mouth one more time that day. I had already opened it twice and both times I showed my cow ignorance. The first time the farmer who brought the cow said something about the jersey heifer. I said that I wasn't talking about the heifer, but the baby cow. A sly grin came across his face and he said the baby cow WAS the heifer. (Mental note: a heifer apparently is a cow that is 2 years or younger and has NEVER had a calf. A heifer is NOT the Momma cow!!! Who came up with these rules and definitions anyway???)! The next time I opened my mouth was when I announced that I would like to eat the young cow. You know, raise it up for meat. I got both farmers and my husband looking at me as if I had 2 heads and a tail. I was then informed by one of the farmers that people do not eat their heifers...they eat steers. My thoughts are we have no steers on this farm, but we do have 5 huge eaters called children so we might as well eat the baby calf that we do have. My husband also informed me that we would NOT be eating any of our cows that we currently own because they are all females. So after all of that I just couldn't ask them what made a cow a good cow and what made a cow a bad cow. Now I am on the hunt for a cow that we CAN eat!!!

You will notice the ear tags in our cows ears. Michael and I learned from our last cow experience that you always need a way to identify your OWN cows just in case the dog scares the cow into your neighbor's herd. Yes, this happened to us and we lost our cow. Our neighbor did buy her from us, but I was more interested in raising her than selling her. But since my conversation on Sunday with the farmers, I guess we were never going to eat her either!!!

The last picture I posted was of our little jersey calf/heifer that was born on our farm this summer. She has grown a lot since then, and I think she has the most beautiful face. We did not have to tag our jersey cows because we are the only people out here that have jersey cows.

grace and peace,
julie