We artificially inseminate our cows as a general thing. This lets us have Jersey fathers without keeping a Jersey bull, a good decision for the family health and well-being, and a must when you farm on monastery land, but it means keeping a nitrogen tank for the semen straws, or rather, in our case, borrowing space in your neighbor’s nitrogen tank and then watching assiduously for signs of a desire for romance on the part of your heifers and cows. The Powley family have shared their tank with us for a couple of years; it is people like these, helpful and encouraging, that go a long way toward making people like us — inexperienced, tentative — feel like we dare keep trying to teach ourselves to farm. Tonight, however, we were hitching up the stock trailer to take two young females — a heifer and a four-year-old which has calved one time — over to bunk for a time with the Powleys’ registered Hereford bull, Timex; we want to see what those genetics will make together.
we also borrow tank space in return for a myriad of helps. the bulls are so much more efficient at fulfilling the task at hand. seems to work much better to arrange farm visits for our girls, hard to do when milking.
you said it — Shawn and Beth Dougherty The Sow’s Ear shawnandbeth@att.net onecowrevolution.wordpress.com twosisterscreamery.wordpress.com
Great name ‘Timex’ my first watch was a Timex, I hope things happen in a timely manner 🙂