Babies!

Art's dream of having his own cattle herd is a little closer to fruition. Yesterday he picked up the newest additions in our cattle hauler (a.k.a Art's Jeep. Why buy an expensive trailer when you can load two at a time in the back of a Jeep? Sure they pee and poop all over the place, but you just have to leave the doors open over night and the next morning it'll smell like roses!). They are, so far, without names- it's hard to think of three clever and appropriate names for cows that have no discernable characteristic. The other cows we've had had definite defects (with the exception of Ferdinand, he's just sweet) and that made it easier. Since we are going to raise them to sell, perhaps I should just call them 'T-bone', 'Tenderloin', and 'Filet'. Of course, the person that buys them may want to use them for breeding, in which case I would have to think of something else.

They are heifers (girl cows) and they are an Angus-Holstein cross. They aren't as friendly as Ferdi, but that just makes it easier to say good-bye when the day comes that we ship them off to the stockyards. They're about a month old and super cute, especially this one:

The two smaller ones still need to be bottle-fed and the larger one (because she's a few weeks older) still drinks milk but from a bucket instead of a bottle. Normally we would wean them in a few more weeks, but because milk replacer is expensive, we'll just wean them when the bag is empty. Since we're feeding three calves twice a day, hopefully it won't be too long.