Cow Heaven

[wagra dexters]

Cow Heaven isn't only when they die. We delivered a cow and unrelated heifer weanling to their new owners yesterday. We had to force the heifer, golden dun curly-coated Flossie, out of the truck after a four hour trip, but the red cow Cinnamon by Llanfairs Finnigan followed with no fuss at all, ... into Paradise.
The whole picture-postcard 60 acres, the house and gardens, the kitchen garden and orchard, the sheltered paddocks with wonderful shelter belts and shade trees. A pair of gorgeous fine quality high-stepping horses in the paddock next to the Dexters danced and pranced a greeting to their new neighbours. Lucky, lucky girls, but no better than all our Dexters deserve.
The new owners even have a baby grand and other keyboards in the living room. I can imagine Cinnie & Flossie will just love being serenaded to sleep of an evening.
Margaret

[Saffy]

Sounds wonderful - maybe they do B+B!?

[wagra dexters]

Hmmm, they are very sociable but probably prefer four-legged people Stephanie.
How is spring going along over there? Our days are rapidly shortening. We have sorted our stock into four groups for safety at the bale feeders: horned, dehorned, heifers, & boys. Only six older horned cows left now.
You must be about to begin spring joining over their I imagine.
Margaret

[Saffy]

Well Margaret the bull has just gone in with our herd, something he is very happy about.

It is very dry here, there has been a little more rain in the area surrounding us but not much more and we are desperate for at least a weeks good rain, otherwise we won't get a hay crop.

Also I have just had a look at your website and wonder what is a bobby calf?

Stephanie

[wagra dexters]

Stephanie, the boot is on the other proverbial foot, you needing rain and us having had a wet year, although our autumn did dry up a bit here.

Bobby calves are the babies that are taken from the dairy herds in their first week of life. They are not grown out but go straight to slaughter after travelling many hundreds of miles, packed like sardines into stock transports. Bobby calves a by-product, worth millions to the international dairy industry each year, and will remain a blight with-in the industry until a more humane program is devised for them, like dedicated farms to grow them all out for 6 to 12 months or so.

Our website is a whole different world about which I know nothing. My sister Gayle handles all that business and is remunerated admirably with sides of Dexter meat for her efforts. I couldn't find a reference to bobby calves in our website but Gayle will have included one somewhere. She is very clever with her key words and links, causing our site pop up in all the most unlikely places.
Margaret

[davidw]

Just a little off topic but here goes. At last years dairy event, one of the equipment suppliers was exhibiting a cow scratching post - For only a couple of hundred pounds!!! I gathered together some bits and pieces and at long last have made one myself at a total cost of around ten pounds. Its basically a wooden pole - donated by BT, a car suspension spring - acquired from a rubbish skip, a piece of steel shelving - from IKEA no less, and a few stiff broom heads. My girls think its so wonderful that they queue up to use it and so after less than a week, I've made another for the young stock. Even the smallest calf uses it. Every Dexter home should have one.

[wagra dexters]

Ahh, Bliss!! A eucalypt forest works ok for scratching also, but not so great when they have bulling beacons on their backs.