Search This Blog

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

More cows!!

Since my last post, we've added to our herd.  We've bought some lovely ladies and their babies.   (They don't understand when I ask them to all pose together! )  We've bought 4 black cows with their calves and 4 charlois mix with their calves and one red cow who is still to calve.

 One of the gals haven't calved yet, so we're anxiously waiting on the Belties and one other. 

We also added a hereford bull to the group.


He was already with some of the cows we bought and he seemed really gentle and a good

price.  We just couldn't resist!

  We chose to purchase from individuals rather than chance purchasing from the sale barn. 

We could see them in the pasture and observe that they were not really wild or mean.  We

certainly don't want that!  Everyone seems as happy as can be just grazing away!   We've

moved them once since they have all been here and they moved very easily from one

pasture to the other.  We didn't really know where we would need gates in this electric

fence, but it's easy to add one when you need one.  It just requires adding  brace posts to

your two gate posts and a handle for your gate wire.  It won't be long before the herd

needs to be moved again to let the pasture grow and eat the previous one down again. 

We've got so much grass this year that we're keeping them off of 3 of the paddocks which

will be cut for hay soon.  We worked out a deal with a local man to cut and bale for us on a

60/40 share.  The cattle are to be rotated around the paddocks when they have eaten the

grass down to a certain height, but it's a little difficult to tell as they don't eat the grass that

is tall and putting on a seed head. 

Hopefull I'll be able to post pictures of a new calf soon and the first one born on the farm!