Calves 2014

It's that time of year.

We've got some babies arriving.

I went for a drive to take photos of an old truck and got a surprise at the calves being on the ground, we thought they might have been ready next month.

This girl looks like a balloon about to pop!

I spotted these 2 in the distance.

Their mummas weren't far away.

I think they were happy to keep their babies a bit hidden.

Others are getting huge big bags of milk.

With some blowing teats (look closely at the bag below)

They're constant feeders.

I've counted 6 now.

There may be more hidden in the long grass by their mummas.

They're pretty darn cute!

ps. I am now the parent of a p plater! eek!

Calfies at feeding time!

The best thing we've ever done around here was to put the fence up around the garden. 

I had to really push for it after one of my german shepherds was run over on the road.

We used to have electronic collars on all the dogs, but for some reason they didn't work all that well on the shepherds.

Now we can have some calves (and with a bit more fencing) hopefully some lambs in the paddock.

We used to have horses with a bit of electric tape around the garden.

Each morning and night we go through the following routine with the motley crew!

In order to get them to come when called, we had to talk to them and say 'come on, come on' while they were being bottle fed in a confined space.

I also insisted that we rubbed them all over and talk to them the whole time so they aren't afraid of us.

There is a bit of pushing and shoving by the older 2 who have been eating calf pellets and steam flaked barley for a few weeks now. Once they are on pellets they don't need any milk.

If we want to do something like put tags in their ears, we give them a bottle or a drink in the over the fence feeders.

This big guy hasn't ever been on milk.

He went straight onto grass  but loves the pellets and barley as well.

Look at my Grass! 

Watering that grass has had me walking about 3 km every day just moving sprinklers and turning the  hoses on and off. I am clocking up well over the 10 000 steps recommended most days.

I started with long lengths of hoses coming out over the fence from the garden lawn. I love wobblers and had 4 lots of 3 all attached in a row. Wobblers are so gentle, but once the grass got up a bit they were too short, so I moved to wider spreading percussion sprinklers.

It's the million dollar grass.

Thank got for the 56 solar panels on the new shed and great bore water.

Calves, calves, calves!!!

I love this time of year.

All the calves are being born.

We have all sorts of pretty ones.

Commercial cattle can be any shade! 

These girl swere walking up to the dam on sunset.

There seems to be a whole heap of twin mumma cows!

You will often find a whole heap of little calves plonked under a tree with one cow looking after them all, almost like a nanny.

All around will be the cows grazing away happily.

It is hard to know who is the mumma.

And the cows check them ever so carefully to make sure they don't share milk with anyone but their baby.

As we drove past the dam there were a couple of calves on the bank that just stood and stared at we aliens.

These little guys had absolutely no idea that they had to get off the road so that we could get past.

Then the lighter one just stood there and bellowed at me!

Cheeky thing!