The beginning

As most things do, cows start out as calves, and that's where our tour will begin.

Did You Know... technically a 'cow' is only a female bovine that has had a baby, or calf.  Before she has a calf, she's called a heifer. 

A cow is pregnant about 9 months, the same as humans.  Before a calf is born, we don't know if it will be a boy or girl.  Over the long-term our calves are about 50% male & 50% female.  The technology is out there to use sexed-semen, which would give us a higher probability of female, and we're considering that in the future, especially since out of our last bunch of calves, only 2 were girls!

The boy calves are sold to a neighbor, who feeds them, and then sells them for beef.  And the baby girls head to "the huts", where they'll live until they're about 2 months old.

The babies receive milk from a bottle for a few days and then drink their milk from a bucket, until they're 6 weeks old.  They also receive water and slowly increasing amounts of grain & hay.

They're kept in separate huts to lessen the potential for spread of sickness, if it were to occur.

June is a busy month for calving... we're planning to have about 20 new babies born!

Here's a video I took last month while Dan & I were watching the farm of the hut babies & surrounding fields and pastures.