Looking for 2 horned Hereford Heifers

[Haggis]

Does anyone within a few hundred miles of northern Minnesota know where I can find a couple of horned Hereford heifers? They can be grade stock as long as they are for the most part Herefords. I would prefer them to be between 3 to 6 months old.

[uncle Will in In.]

Haggis, I think you were born a hundred years too late. Back then it would have been very hard to find a herford that didn't have horns. They have horns that curl down towards their nose. They look great, and are about as gentle and weatherproof as any beef breed. Do you plan on making oxen out of them?? Why not get a pair of longhorns. Some of them are marked beautifully.
How are you enjoying the Indian summer up there in tropical Minnysoda? We got a batch of wind off of your homestead last week, and we don't want any more of that stuff down her.

[Haggis]

I'll try to do a bit better job of controlling where our wind blows Unc.

You know, a gal from Texas came up here and bought my little Milking Devon herd right out from under me. So no more Devon calves to train up to pull.

My oldest Jersey house cow will likely be sold just before she freshens next time, and my sweet little Jersey heifer, Tulip, is due to freshen the for the first time next summer. We are planning to sell her as well IF we can get a span of Hereford heifers going.

After milking Jerseys for a while now we have concluded that they just give too much milk for Herself and I. We give milk to our kids and Grand-darlings but are finding help with the cattle or the milking slow in coming from their end. We've even sold as much as 25 gallons a week for feed and hay money, but I'm no dairyman and don't want to sell milk again. For the most part, we are just milking cows and selling milk so we can afford to milk cows for those who don't want to be tied down?

It seems that a couple of Hereford cow would be nigh onto perfect for us: they are gentle to a fault, they will give more than enough milk for their calf, so we can rob some for our table, breeding the Herefords to local Angus bulls would give us the highly desireable "black baldy" calves for any market, and a couple of Hereford cows would pull a small plow in our garden, and firewood from our woodlot. They would be used for triple purpose without drowning us in milk, or eating us out of house and home. The Milking Devons could have done the same thing but rare breeds means rare replacement stock, rare buyers for surplus stock. It also means that I can't just run the old critter to market when I want to sell; well, not if I want a fair price.

I would prefer the Herefords had horns so I could use a German forehead yoke rather than a neck yoke. Here is a link to a friends' site in Germany. He uses these forehead yokes on his Pinzgauer cattle.

Click on Pinzgauer and then on Gespann at the bottom of the page. Yeah, it's all in German, but the photos are multilingual.

http://www.eifelkorb.de.vu/

[heinola honey]

Hello Haggis!!!
Try the following link it has some Mn breeders of herefords listed on the sale catalog for the Hutchinson sale next month. Maybe you might find some there
www.herefordamerica.com/gopher.htm

Stay Warm!
Ruth

[cowboyjed]

try dale bellefy at bellefy herfords bagly mn 218 694 2994

[bob clark]

dont herfords require horn weights to bring them down?

[rev]

Hi Haggis,

Reading your comments on the great amount of milk provided by the major dairy breeds made me think first of the lttle fellows, the cute little Dexters... but then I remembered that there are several very prominent Normande breeders that are only a stones throw from your place.

Since I too have been pining for a couple cows on the place, and I want cream - cream for the morning coffee, and cream to make real butter... butter that I can make from just skimming the cream off the milk without having to set up the cream separator; then cleaning and washing it after every use; it occurred to me that perhaps it makes more sense to use an all purpose or dual purpose breed of cow that is found closer to home.

Then as some folks have mentioned, just milking once a day and buying a few newborn calves to finish the job and use the milk the rest of the day. A guy could sell the calves as either replacement heifers to local dairymen; make steers of the bull calves and sell them for grass fed beef, which is growing in popularity - or in the case where the dams are Normande, even leave the bulls intact and try to sell them to local herdsman that may want to incorporate Normande beef traits into their herds; it seems to be becoming more acceptable to cross breed the dairy cows now that the bigger herds do not keep their cows for such a long time.

Here's the Normands website:

www.normandeassociation.com

Kirby (MN)