The new year is here and now is the time to take stock of the old and reflect on what may or may not need changing.
First the unavoidable, the schoolwork. We managed to finish up all our themes from last year and so will be starting a new theme when we start up again later [...]
With all the rain we got over Winter it was painfully obvious that we needed a floor on the milking bay. This would solve at least two problems – the cows would no longer be knee deep in mud while we (ie. Sharon) were trying to milk, and they would (hopefully) be less hesitant to [...]
It was a long wait and with much excitment that we awaited the arrival of Daisys’ first calf.
She was due on the 20th of August and we were told that she would go up to 10 days early. Well the powers to be were wrong and she kept us waitingfor the full term and over.
On [...]
Bevan has been on holiday for two weeks,and in that time he finally built the milking bay that I have been asking for for months. I need it to train Daisy to hand milking when she has her first calf at the end of July. He says he is going to write something about that [...]
With Daisy pregnant and due to give birth in a few months time, it was well overdue for me to build a milking bay - first time mother and all that sort of thing.
I started off by planning out the location of the posts, then the neighbour kindly used his post hole borer to drill the [...]
Today was Sweetie Pyes day, she was due to come into heat tomorrow and the plan was that she would go over the fence today and be there for a couple of days visiting some very handsome boys and then come home again, hopefully in calf.
Last night when I went to shut Liquorice up for [...]
As a new year is about to come upon us, it is time to take stock and see how close to our goals we have reached.
The garden is starting to crank up for the summer harvest, and we even got our first crop of beans for the year. We eat alot of beans, so this [...]
It has been waited for with alot of anticipation and worry. The birth of our first calf. Sweetie Pye was lent to us so that we could learn to milk and have our own dairy products. She arrived two months ago and it was believed that she was carring a half hereford calf.
Where she came [...]
We have been talking on ond off about getting just one or two calves to feed. I think Bevan rather likes having the babies around so the whole idea appealed to him, but he was not pushing it since he is not the one that does all the work.
Then the chance came to get six [...]
Daisy our future house cow is slowly getting quieter in preparation for the day when we will get some lovely creamy milk off her.
Last week she had her first ever visit from the AI man, and she was not at all impressed, but she was well behaved. If she holds then we can expect her [...]