This cow business has been very frustrating. Gwen has represented a huge learning curve and I tend to get very frustrated when I do not completely understand something. The bull calf we got yesterday is still a long way off from being old enough to breed. Leaving Spot with Gwen is a pain in the ass because he gets out of her paddock, he messes things up when we are trying to move Gwen back and forth from milking and I do not know for sure that he isn’t sneaking swigs of milk when he can. So Spot went back down in the back pasture with the other calves.
We had considered borrowing an adult Angus bull to breed her to, but we are afraid of something happening to it while it is here. We can’t afford to replace an Angus bull.
So screw it. I’ll milk Gwen as long as I can and when it gets to the point where it isn’t worth milking her, I’ll put her down back with the calves and when the bull (his name is Bullet) is big enough to breed her, then it will get done. That will mean carrying a dry cow for quite a while, but we’ll simply have to chock this up to a learning experience and go from there.
I’m not going to stress over it any more.
The goats are going to be quite spread out in their kidding/freshening so I might be able to keep the goats milking for longer than I did last year. We are on kid-watch right now with several of the goats. Luckily it’s going to be relatively warm for the next week so maybe they’ll kid during the warmer weather.
Until later …