Greetings all you farm followers! I am happy to report that our standard A2/A2 standard Jersey-Summer gave us a beautiful new heifer calf on Wednesday May 1st!! YAY!!!!!! Summer has what I would call “silent heats”. We have our Middy Jersey Bull here in a separate pasture. Apparently he visited Summer in early August on one of his break outs and failed to notify Farmer Craig or I. So needless to say Summer did not come up for milking and she did not appear very pregnant to me but lo and behold she gave me the new title “The Dumbest Farmer in S.C.” Now sadly I do not consider myself a novice and I have been working on trying to decipher her signals so we could get her bred. But she apparently never sent me the memo of “no thanks, we got this”. Nevertheless we have a beautiful little heifer calf. We are going to send tail hairs off to UC Davis to make sure she is genetically what we say she is. Summer is now giving milk again which I will be sending a sample off to be tested just to make sure she is healthy and so is her milk. So that is my good news for the beginning of this month. Hopefully we will get back providing fresh wholesome grass fed milk to the folks who desperately need it.
The Gulf Coast lambs born this year are all growing like weeds! We for the first time in our sheparding have three bottle babies. Through no fault of their own their mothers developed health issues making it impossible for them to rear these little lambs. They are all healthy and beautiful and hopefully will have wonderful fiber filled lives ahead of them. We will seek out special homes for these little rams simply because we want to make sure they will be fine and so will their future owners. Bottle babies are very friendly which can make the rams a bit more dangerous. A good healthy fear of humans keeps them safe and us as well. Now we do handle our animals but the males of any species are treated with caution simply because many of them can be very unpredictable. Any animal weighing more than me is dangerous so when animals get up near 180-200 lbs I am very cautious. Our bull weighs probably 800-900 lbs and he is a mid/mini. Jersey. Caution is always a thought when I enter any area with livestock. Be careful folks but enjoy your farms, take no risks that would endanger your life but appreciate every day. It is a gift from God!