Mandy Has Calved

Yesterday during morning milking, Mandy decided it was time to have her baby. Right on time I might add. First time EVER in 5 calvings that she has not been at least a week overdue. But anyhow...
By the time I got done milking my last cow, Mandy had little white hooves sticking out of her butt. This for me is a happy thing. I have been up all night with her for over a week keeping watch. She is one of my most beloved cows, and was bred to Roylane Jordan. I already have one Roy calf on the ground, out of Mandy's 3 year old Blitz daughter, and I was hoping for another.


Within a half hour of finishing chores Mandy had her little one out to the ears, and my sister and I helped her finish getting it out. It was unfortunately a bull. However, Mandy was happy with him. I was happy with him because while I was lifting him up in front of her he tried to stand up. Any calf that can be trying to get up within a minute of birth is A okay with me.

And my major benefit from him being a bull...I get to KEEP HIM! I am thrilled to say the least. Mandy is a darned good cow in her own right. Champion both years as a calf and yearling at the Altamont show. She throws big stylish calves that go on and do spectacularly. As a 2 year old Blitz out did every cow in the herd by more than 8 thousand pounds. Plus Mandy is a real, for today's standards at least, not necessarily our own, long lived cow; she will be 7 in less than 3 weeks. Not to mention, little man's sire is Roylane Jordan. Roy is the sire of Harvue Roy Frosty, who was the World Dairy Expo's 2009 Supreme Champion cow.

So he gets to stay.If all goes well he will be a future herd sire so to speak. We'll raise him, and send him out to Dependabull to be collected. Then I will start looking for a big sale to put him in. Or perhaps sell him privately. I'm not sure which. Hopefully I can take him to the OHM show next year. 2 years ago they reopened the under 1 year bull classes at the request of several of their prominent exhibitors. Mandy's son will be in the fall bull calf class if I can/do show him.

Oh and his name? Maqua-Kil Tumbleweed Town. Tumble for short...He does take some serious tumbles....

Do you remember the "Bobwehadababyitsaboy" Commercial?

Well today it was Blitzwehadababyitsagirl! A beautiful inky black Roylane Jordan heifer. With a big wide chest floor. And you know what? Roy's 6 CE worked well! The calf prolly weighs maybe 90 lbs or so. Compared to the normal 100+ from this family I am thrilled. Blitz had her totally on her own. Something else to be grateful for because I checked her at 10:30 am, and she was doing nothing. When I went back out at 11:15 she had already delivered and started cleaning off the calf. Anyways here are some pictures of the new one!Three generations of the girls. Mandy, her new grand daughter, and the new momma (l-r)

The new baby

Please Welcome

Maqua-Kil Mecca Shameless

And...

Maqua-Kil Mecca Shamrock

This is the last of my Jersey calf crop for the year. We went 4 for 5 with just Henchman Bill for a bull calf (we're keeping him at least for now as a possible bull to use on the Holstein heifers). Pretty darned nice if I do say so myself. Started it off in January with Snickers, then Scotty (the 1/2 Jersey, 1/4 Holstein 1/4 Shorthorn), then Hench, and finally this month the last two, Shamrock born to my matriarch Heather, and on Mothers Day Shameless born to Heathers oldest daughter Hattie. I am really pleased with all 5 calves. They are growth good tempered babies. I'll put a video of Shamrock up later. She's a funny little girl!

Still Unnamed

Some photos by me, some by mom over at Northview. Little still unnamed Jersey calf is hyper and CUTE! We're gonna take the camera over tonight, and take a video of her drinking her bottle. She wags her tail SO hard and fast that it makes a thwack thwack noise on the calf coat she has on against the brutally cold for this time of year weather.

Come Monday

More of the Calf that I guess is going to be Maqua-Kil C Come Monday

Still More

More Photos of the New Girl!!!

No time...

No time to do a real full post for this blog, but I did manage to get a new one up on Maqua-Kil Farms. Check it out if you are in the mood for a read...

Wow

Man am I beat. Four animals at the fair and I am as tired as if I had a dozen or more (been there, done that got the tshirt, so I know). It has been such a long week. But I have been tied with some great people. One of which keeps going every morning and bringing me back coffee. I am too exhausted, and desperately need to head to bed so I can head back over to the fair early again tomorrow for the last day, or I would put up my own post.

Instead, why don't yah all head over to Northview Diary, and check out all Mom's posts on the cows and show time. She's got some lovely photos of Mandy.

Over Head...

Dad, Alan, Becky and I went over today to get my straw and hay into the fair, set up the stall signs, and do up the beds for the cows. It only took about an hour to get everything in and set up. We made up some good long beds, so that the cows will have plenty of room this year. And if I do say so myself the over heads for the cows look pretty nice. If I had known I would have so much space this year I would have made up a second set of lattice for over top, but not knowing there was no way I could. Oh well. Next year.

The whole stall top.

Me, trying to figure out which signs still need to be straightened.

The farm sign Mom painted many years ago. Sorry, it was kind of glary in the barn, so it didn't come out so good.

An example of my animal's individual signs.

Stuff that makes for a really long day...

I finally decided today was the day...

...To start getting this spring and summer's calves registered...

...And to get the fair entries done...



...And finish my scholarship application for Pennfield Feeds (which really wasn't too bad, I just had to proof it a bit)...



All of which lead to mammoth headaches.

The whole bunch of work.

See, for starters, Holstein Association USA's registration forms are not known for their ease. They are down right complicated. They have this EZ program for the computer, but that is actually even worse than the paper blanks. So I tend to shy away from the computer program, unless I am in a real hurry. One big problem with the EZ program is that we have young daughters on both really really old bulls from AI studs, like pre 1980, and from our own bulls that Dad has bought and raised. If the sire of a calf isn't from the studs over the last say fifteen years, the program is determined the bull is not a legitimate sire, and causes all kinds of grief until the user manages to over ride what ever the problem is. Which tends to put me in the one headache too many category to use it. Plus I am really not all that fond of computers. They are great...when they are actually working, but I tend to manage to make them not work.

A finished registration paper. What the end product looks like.

Then there are the Altamont Fair entries to do. They really aren't much easier. Mostly because this season they decided to put everything on the web. From entry blanks, to rules and regs, all the necessary information is on the net..in pdf form...which our computer hates. So it took me more than three days just to get stuff to load between error messages, and having to get into contact with the actual fair office to get all the pages I needed to do my cows entries. Then I had to transfer them from this computer to the one in the main office with a printer. The other one has internet capabilities, but is slower than molasses in January. And naturally the printer didn't want to cooperate. Guess who I went to with that issue...My wonderful Mommy. Who fixed the problem. I printed out two sets of the blanks, even though I needed five or so, and then just used the copier to get everything I needed.

Heifer list so I know which calf goes with which cow.

At which time the even bigger headache causing activities started...



Acutally doing the entries themselves. Which required finally picking which animals were gonna get entered. And this year I was smart. I put at least one animal in all my immediate family's names (nyvolfan, darling big brother, we would like to include you in this list, no you don't actually have to show, I do know better than to try that one any more (yeah right, and if you believe that I got a bridge to sell yah), but we need your signature on the blanks) so I could get everybody passes. And so Frieland Ex Spec Camry (Dad), Frieland Ex Spec Junie (Mom), Frieland Ex Spec Lemonade (Becky), and Frieland C Alpha Zulu (Alan) were entered for everybody. I have the blunt of the string, as this is my project...aka my vacation. I entered Frieland Z Mandolin Rain, the new mommy, her yearling daughter Maqua Kil Blitz Mendocino, Frieland Zander Foolish, Maqua Kil Zander Spruce, and Frieland Chilt Blink for myself. Then I put up the fees for Best Three Females, and Daughter-Dam. I don't plan to actually take the majority of the ten animals, should I enter one for big brother too. I kind of just want a small string this year, so I am not so totally stressed when school starts up. Plus with just four or five, I can relax a bit more, hang out with my friends and enjoy my 'vacation' as much as possible.

Hope to see everybody there. This promises to be yet another crazy and fun filled fair. As of yet none of the actual events are up for the fair week itself. But I can say that right now it looks like the dairy classes will again be held Thursday morning and night (with just Holsteins we're only showing in the evening), and beef will be late Friday. Be sure to stop by and sit a spell with us if you swing through the grounds. We're happy to sit and chat awhile. And Mandy is almost always looking for a few more pets.

And of course my ever present cup of coffee. It is about the only thing that will give me enough energy to keep going.

She's Such a Cutie...

Here's a few pictures of my new girl with her momma, Mandy. I'm gonna have to come up with a name. I may stick with Margaritaville, though it isn't quite 'her' if you know what I mean.

Another New Baby

Ahh, the last two days have been horrible.

Mandolin Rain has been, as we say, 'hanging fire', and not calving, but really acting like she wanted to. So as a result I have had a grand total of about 7 hours of sleep in the last two days, and less than two of those hours were last night. See, around 2 yesterday afternoon, she started really acting like she was ready. Up and down constantly. She was restless, straining hard, and dropping thick heavy strands of mucous. So I went back and forth between the barn all day checking on her. I panic when it comes to this cow. She is my darling baby. I pamper and spoil her constantly. She is easily the biggest cow we have, but she is something of a weanie. Not that I mind most of the year, but when calving time comes, it is not good. Every time she calves she has big problems.

No different this year. She kept straining, dropping mucus, obviously feeling miserable, and not doing anything. Her ears were a bit cold come milking time last night, so Dad and I were going to give her a bottle of Cal-Nate, a calcium supplement to ward off the milk fever she was slightly suffering from. Or at least we were until we discovered there was only one bottle left, and the other five bottles of drench were Dextrose, which wont do diddly for milk fever. So we decided to hold off in case she got worse.

I stayed up til just shy of midnight, and since she hadn't made much progress, and I couldn't yet feel a calf, I decided to try and sleep for a little bit. I managed to zonk out until just shy of 2. When I woke up with this feeling of 'get to the barn quick girl'. Sure enough, Mandy's water had broken, and when she lay down bigger than my fist white hooves were sticking out of her backside. I checked to make sure everything was lined up good, went back to the house to grab a chair and a cup of coffee and headed back out to the barn. By the time I got back it was obvious the calf was going to be a monster. Within another five minutes or so it was also apparent that Mandy and the calf were really really distressed. The calf had a sickly yellow tint to it, which spells trouble, and poor Mando was having real trouble, pushing harder and harder without getting anything out.

So lucky me got to pull the calf. Fortunately after the difficulty I had with her having the Blitz, this calf's full sister, last year, I had strings and such on hand for just such an emergency. It took more than a half hour of hard pulling to get the baby, but it sure seemed longer. I got to admit, I was so worried for the cow I was somewhat out of it. But aside from the calf's extreme size it wasn't a real bad pull in terms of calf position, just a 'baby too big for hole' problem.

I figured just based on size, and being a day late the baby would be a bull. But really I didn't care. I just wanted momma and baby to both be okay. It wasn't breathing when I finally managed to get it out, so I beat on its chest until it coughed up the gunk that had gotten into its lungs. Then I decided to check and see if it was really a bull. Much to my delighted surprise it was a girl. A big, lovely, inky black girl. I tried to get some pictures of her, but she wouldn't cooperate. And my dear dad kept sticking his hand in front of the camera everytime I lined up a decent shot. Poor Mandy has still got a touch of milk fever. Dad and I gave her that last bottle at four this morning. So now he and mom and Becky are off at Tractor Supply Co. in Amsterdam picking up some more.

What a long long day. I will try again later to get some pics of the new girl, cause she is just a little cutie. I was going to name her Margaritaville for the old Jimmy Buffett song, but somehow it just doesn't seem to fit her. Any ideas?

Oh, and Mom did a real sweet post today. Check it out. http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/

WOW! WHAT ARE THE ODDS!!

How often do you see this happen? Every year I pick two or three young sires off of Select Sire Power's Super Sampler lists to use on the majority of my cows. You never know, you might get lucky. And over the last few years I have. Ocean-View Zenith graduated into AI stud. Canyon-Breeze Storm Atom graduated. And there have been a few others that I didn't get heifers out of, but that made it into stud. Select samples hundreds of Holstein bulls. And less than 10% graduate every year. Just to have two bulls that you used and got daughters off of make it into stud is amazing. I figured all my luck had probably been used up completely. I mean, I use so many young sires that I probably shouldn't be able to pick any that will not only make nice daughters, but will graduate into the 'Proven' group.

But I just checked out the new sire summaries for May. They come out every three months, February, May, August, and November. They are one of the few things I really look forward to. I have been watching for Ocean-View Derry Zander to have a proof. I'd been keeping an eye on his prelims and he was shaping up pretty decent. Not too stellar in the milk department, but with a whole pile of type points, and a pretty decent TPI. I did a post on him a while back, but darned if I can find it (AH HAH. Found it, here it is). Another bull I've been waiting to see if anything was going to happen with him is Vital-I Durham Lewis. Mom and I both loved this bull as a young sire. Me in particular. Another Regancrest Elton Durham son, he is out of a 96 point Hanoverhill Lincoln daughter. and though I was either very young or not born yet when Lincoln would have been a 'big name' bull, I really love his daughters. They are big, long, dairy, and in this case inky black. I have two Lewis daughters, one, Sedona, is currently milking.

Guess what.

Both bulls graduated. And I mostly like the looks of their proofs. Surprisingly Lewis has the better milk proof , but both bulls are very close on type.

I'll write more later. But I have to go rescue poor Hooter, my very very pregnant Jersey from the rest of the cows. Who are for some reason trying to beat her to death. Gotta love cows!

Hmmm...Babies sure do get big in a HURRY!

We had an interesting morning. For the most part it was relatively routine. Get up, milk cows, feed calves and such. We were down to the last bit of milking, and Mom and I were sitting on the concrete bench like thing that runs along the one back wall, talking about making up some stalls for the babies in the main barn. This will require moving some older heifers out into pens, and then moving the little calves into their stalls.

The talk moved to which animals would be put in pens and where. One former 'Name the Calf' contest heifer, Takala, will just be run in with some other yearlings, as she is no where near ready to breed, along with Magma, our first and currently only red Holstein. Then there are two others, the Blitz and Medina, a big March yearling by Kenyon (who is also Takala's sire). We breed most of our replacement animals either Jersey or Shorthorn, based on calving ease as a result of the calves being so much smaller than the average full blooded Holstein.

But these are two of my best babies. Medina has a lot of potential, and I am really fond of her sire. The Blitz is just a wonderful animal. Big and sleek, she is really fairly correct and I am anticipating a decent show season with her if I can keep her growing the way she is. I really really want to breed them both to an old Holstein bull, Cal-Clark Board Chairman. Pretty much anyone familiar with the Holstein breed knows him. He was the sire of To-Mar Blackstar. Who was one of the most influential bulls the Holstein breed has ever seen. I've got one other Board Chairman daughter left. A coming five year old out of my old Straight Pine Elevation Pete daughter.

Mom told me I'd better weigh them both, as she was uncertain as to whether they would both be big enough to breed to a Holstein and be able to safely have the calf. Blitz we figured HAD to be big enough. She stands next to her mammoth dam, and looks good there. Medina we weren't to sure on. She looks big, but looks can be deceiving. We figured if she was over 675 or 700 lbs we could be pretty safe.

So after milking I dug out my weight tape so that I could get a relatively accurate assessment of their actual size. I figured first I better do Medina. She can be a bit screwy at times, though all in all she is nice to work with. I slid the tape around her barrel, made sure it was good and tight, and checked the reading...

And darn near fell on my head. She weighed in over 900 lbs, just barely, but over none the less. I thought maybe she would be over 800, maybe up to 850, but not THAT heavy. I told Mom who was coming to see what I had gotten for a weight, and she didn't believe me.

So I weighed the Blitz to see where she fit in. Because if Medina, who is the smaller of the two, weighed that much, Blitz was gonna be big. The Blitz's weight equaled 968 lbs, with me rounding down.

And then our next question became, if they are THAT heavy, what is Mandy, the tallest cow we have, weighing in at. Well we got our answer of 1468. She is a big girl. Alan wanted to weigh Bayberry, his show cow, who came in just a bit lighter than that, around 1430. We have some heavy cows. And yet they are still extremely dairy. My goal is to one day have a ton plus cow. It will be a long ways off, but I'd say we have made a good start.

And both my babies are DEFINITELY getting bred to Board Chairman. Now if they'll just settle and give me some heifers...

We Have a Name

It has been an interesting (and just plain crazy) day here at Northview Dairy. Check out Maqua-Kil Farms Blog to find out more!

Bulls For the Next Generation

I have started picking the bulls that I am going to be using for my next generation of cows. Most are not new or young animals. To start off with, I have decided to try and get 5 straws of the Canadian bred and Semex controlled bull Silky Cousteau. Cousteau is a Juniper Rotate Jed son, out of a very good 87 point Cletius followed by a EX-90 point Valiant, and another 87 point scored Elevation. If all goes as I hope, I want to use him on Mandy after she calves in June, Becky's two year old Extra Special daughter Lemonade, my 5 year old Cal-Clark Board Chairman daughter, and hopefuly Junie after she calves in September. Then I should hopefully have one unit left to use on some other cow. This should also spread the calves out so that should I get enough heifers, I could in a year or two have a junior or senior get of sire. Which I have been lacking the last few years.

The next bull I am looking at is a Select Sire Power animal named Creek BWMARSHALL Dakota, a BW Marshall out of a Rudolph. He's been gender selected, and I think I might try using him on Mandy's Blitz daughter from last year, Dixie's Andre granddaughter Dixon, and my Kenyon yearling Medina. Hopefully I can get just three or four units, as I don't have a use for more.

After that I intend to work on using up the rest of the semen I have sitting in the tank. I've got semen on bulls like Zenith, Zander, Kenyon, Rain, Kingdom, and so many more, including some of those bulls breeders like to call the "Golden Oldies'. If anybody has some more suggestions on bulls they think I should look at, please feel free to let me know. I am always open to suggestions, though I admit I don't always pay a lot of attention.

New Blog

I am going to start up a new blog (Maqua-Kil Farms), just for pics and such of the cows and everything. I've been trying not to clutter BuckinJunction up with too many photos of just the home cows and stuff, but with more and more new babies hitting the ground, I really want to have a place to show them off a bit. I think I may also use it to share stories of past show seasons, and cows that have come and since gone over the years. Let me know what yah all think of it.

Some Oldies From This Summer's Fair