Welcome Tessa

Yesterday we made it to the cattle auction towing Spanky. She needed a new home. Since my husband lost track of the auctioneer back in December, he ended up bringing home a cow that had been milking since April and still wasn't bred back. This is not normal for milking cows as they stop giving a decent volume of milk and she stopped just about all together shortly after we got her home. We thought we'd at least put some weight on her, but even though she could pack away the food, she just didn't gain weight. (Most people would love to do this!)

To market she went, but there was a sale too, with a lot of milking cows and several registered Holstiens. They must have had a lot of hair since they were outside in a freestall barn where it was cold because they shaved them down some. There was one little cow that they advertised as being a high producer with a low somatic cell count (that means she didn't have mastitis), but they did a poor job shaving her and she was some kind of thin, which means if she is a high producer then she puts her food into making milk, she was also taller in the back than the front which just made her look odd. Well, that didn't bother us! There were hardly any bids on her so my husband literally threw his hat in the ring. They weren't paying any attention to our area and he had to get their attention. We won the bid. Since she was running milk (because they didn't milk her that morning) he named her Squirt! She was actually used to being milked in a parlor, but apparently it was a different type than ours. Once she figured it out though, she was fine. Hooking her up is currently the challenge. Freestall cows aren't hooked in and don't wear collars unless they are being used to robot milk the cows. The robotic unit reads the tag on the collar or the ear to know whether to milk the cow or not. I hope she gets used to it soon, like before she dislocates my shoulder trying get her in place to hook up her collar.

We have been checking on our heifers who have been going through the parlor, albeit not getting milked. Stripe, the heifer who didn't want to come into the barn, settled right down once she was inside and except for a couple times trying to get her to her stall, she actually did better than the others. Last night we decided she might not make until her due date February 9th. We put a grate behind her just in case. This morning we were greeted with a tiny heifer calf she had delivered some time before we got in there. She accepted it once we got the slippery little girl over to her. The poor calf just wanted her mommy but got between Stripe and George Foreman. George kept kicking her. (Farmer growls audibly at George.) Once she was cleaned up and Stripe was in the parlor getting milked (without a single kick or complaint either) we moved the calf to her own stall and fed her. She has some appetite!

Meet Tessa! I don't know why I named her that; I just took one at her and the name popped into my head.