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Lest we forget…
…another pure English heifer…half sister to the two below…Ashott-Barton Tulip is the mother…and a line that stretches back as far as there have been Devon record books. The origination was in the famed Champson herd. The sire is Cutcombe Jaunty. Our current plan for Tulip is to let her calve at 3 and then decide whether to flush her. David
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Bribery update…
A few years ago, on an introductory trip to meet our partners in England, Church was given a wonderful gift by his grandmother: the right to select any heifer he wanted from the Ashott-Barton herd. The young cow he selected—-without any prompting from me—was from the Bribery line which I had long coveted. Because of import restrictions against live animals, we bred the heifer in England and shipped the frozen embryos to Thistle Hill. Five months later, here’s the result:
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So Jim Gerrish knows….
…we practice what he preaches. The experts say the cows get about two-thirds of the best hay. The rest is not wasted but trampled in creating organic matter and feeding the microbes. Add in the fertilizing the cows do as they roam around and our fertilizer bill is precisely “zero”. We do need a minimum application of lime though…if the fields ever dry out. David
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Surprise…
The oldest cow in our herd at 16, M180, greeted us with a bull calf. Baby is an 82 pound bull calf by an English bull, TDA Highwayman. M180 was purchased from Lakota ranch years ago and has produced a string of nice calves. She preg checked open and gave no sign she was expecting. In fact, she had been at the top of the list in our discussion of potential culls. Back to the drawing board. And did you notice the new green grass now that the snow has melted? David