When you send a man to do a woman's job....

Last Friday I sent my wonderful husband to go pick up the two-year-old heifer I had reserved for us at a local farm. The heifer was a nice Jersey dairy cow that the farmer couldn't get bred this year and wanted to sell it to someone for beef. We had gotten last year's cow, Chihuahua, from this same farm. I sent Tom and didn't go myself because I wanted to stay home and get the fence fixed up for the cow and get the house cleaned without someone complaining about the noise that vaccuum makes.

The morning Tom went to get the cow, he had to first stop at his friend's house to pick up a trailer to haul the cow in. Pat (the friend) is quite a talker and never gets anywhere too fast. I was not surprised when Tom left the house at 8am and didn't return until 3pm. I waited an waited for Tom to get home. He might need my help unloading, so I wanted to not be busy when he came. I waited and waited...

Tom and the trailer finally pulled up. He got out and had a funny look on his face. I knew he had done something he didn't want to tell me about. I came up to the trailer and could see the big heifer through the slats. Tom slowly opened the trailer door and explained that the farmer had lots of extra calfs this year and he didn't know what to do with them all. I looked into the dark trailer and saw between the legs of the heifer a small black calf! I called Tom a "big sucker" as he unloaded the heifer and the calf. He said the farmer really didn't want to send the calf to the auction because it will probably die anyways.

Now we are the proud owners of Herman, the Angus/Holstein mix. He is a little bull that is two weeks old. I put the heifer in the cow pasture and put Herman in a pen in the goat barn. Gloria the goat was a little bent out of shape that a cow was in her pen, but she would rather move in with another goat than to move in with a cow. Herman drinks goat milk and loves it!

Both cows are doing great and certainly add some variety to the goat barn.

Pictures of the goats!

Here are some babies from this year. Luke is the one jumping up. He is Mrs. Brown's boy. The two long-eared goats are Pepper's twins.



The white one looking into the camera is Xena. She is Gloria's daughter. The gray one is Mad Max. I got him from a big farm in Peru, NY.





Here's all the older girls. This is a picture from last year. Some of them have been sold.