Jumped right in w/ Shorthorns

Tana Mc · #1 11/04/06, 05:57 PM

I have three Milking Devons. One is a cow with a wicked set of horns and an attitude to go with them. I AI-ed her last year and she did a really nice job raising a heifer calf for me. I do have her halter broke but but she honestly did not have any extra milk so I never bothered putting her in a stantion (sp?) to milk. The other two are heifers ( the calf and another yearling that I bought). Both of the heifers are pretty gentle and I am looking forward to messing with them next year.
This afternoon, we went to visit some friends and ended up buying THREE Milking Shorthorn heifers.
So, I am going to have to get to work on my milk barn. I already milk about 20 goats and I am not happy with my set up. Looks like I will be spending this winter making plans and saving up money for renovations!
Tana Mc

Judy in IN · #2 11/04/06, 06:02 PM

Wow! That's a lot of milk you're going to have going! What do you have planned for it all?

If I couldn't have Jerseys, I'd go with Shorhorns.

Tana Mc · #3 11/04/06, 07:56 PM

Well..... I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to cut back on the number of goats that we milk. Somehow, I just can't bear to sell some of the girls and the list just keeps getting longer! LOL!! I did manage to sell about 12 milkers and 4 or 5 doelings this year. I am going to go out and make another cut when they freshen in the spring.
This year, we raised about 15 calves, several litters of dinky pigs ( too small to go straight into the nursery at weaning), and a Tn Walking Horse colt. I have about 30 lbs of soap curing in what should be our dining room. I had 3 or 4 steady milk customers,too.
I have requests for cheese but there are only so many hours in a day and I really need my sleep since I passed 40.... LOL!!
Two of the heifers will not be old enough to breed for a while so I have a little time before they are milkers.
Tana Mc

dezeeuwgoats · #4 11/05/06, 11:35 PM

The most I've milked is four nubians - heavy milkers all. This year I'm freshening TEN, and I'm raising up a holstein cross heifer (I'm guessing) so in another year and a half will be adding her to the line up. I'm selling horses in order to buy a milking machine, lol!

I just had to have the cow - I hate cream separators! Skim milk for the piggies I raise, the lgd, and the chickens, goat's milk for us human types, and real cream for coffee, whipping cream, and ice cream! WHooHoo!

Good luck with your new cows and on designing a cool, new, set up!

Niki

Up North · #5 11/06/06, 01:07 AM

Tana - Congratulations. I think you will find the Milking Shorthorns to be easy keepers. They generally carry their flesh well without any fancy rations. Do you know the Carl Nichols Dairy at Westphalia, KS? They could tell you more about Milking Shorthorns.

Tana Mc · #6 11/08/06, 06:11 PM

No, I am not familiar with that dairy but I will certainly look them up. My husband has been pouring thru breed catalogs and searcing the net for shorthorn semen. He has told me about so many different bulls that I can't keep them all straight and just smile and nod my head while he comparing them for me..... Now if it were Alpine bloodlines, I would have a clue. LOL!!
Tana Mc

Up North · #7 11/08/06, 07:56 PM

http://www.fennewaldagresources.com/..._field_day.htm is a link to the Carl Nichols Dairy. Innovators, to say the least, LOL.
For a Leading Breeder of Milking Shorthorns, contact:
BESTYET AI SIRES
Winifred Hoffman & Family
4279 E. 12th Rd.
Earlville, IL 60518-6079 email: bestyetaisires@juno.com
You can buy from them direct or thru www.taurus-service.com

Have fun looking,LOL

Tana Mc · #8 11/09/06, 12:07 AM

I really enjoyed the Nichols site! I don't live very far from them...... I am thinking "Field trip"!!!
We got the Taurus info and catalog in the mail yesterday. Hubby is looking very hard at some of the New Zealand bloodlines...... Have mercy! Who would have ever thought?!?
Thanks
Tana Mc

Oxankle · #9 11/15/06, 10:28 AM

Tana:

It is always exciting to get into a new venture. Sounds like fun. From your comments I gather that you still have your nitrogen bottle and can do your own AI work.

When you get time how about favoring us with a couple of pictures of your cattle. I want to see the one with "horns and an attitude to match".

Be careful when she freshens again. Forty-year-olds do not skip about as easily as when they were twenty. A woman with a houseful of kids and a husband cannot afford to be laid up so that the cooking, washing, ironing and scrubbing go undone.
Ox

Tana Mc · #10 11/15/06, 04:50 PM

Ironing??!!! You must have me confused with someone else! I don't even know where my iron is......

I have not yet figured out how to put pictures on the net. I have them downloaded from my digital camera to the computer but I don't know what to do with them now!
The shorthorn heifers will be coming home early next week.

Tana

Oxankle · #11 11/15/06, 07:08 PM

LOL on the Ironing!

Somebody tell Tana how to put those pictures on the net. I am no good at it.
Ox

Up North · #12 11/16/06, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tana Mc

I have not yet figured out how to put pictures on the net. I have them downloaded from my digital camera to the computer but I don't know what to do with them now!

Tana

First you set up a free account with photobucket.com
Then upload pics from your computer.
There are tutorials on photobucket.com
Once you have photo uploaded on photobucket you copy the Img line under your photo.
Then you come to HT and start your post. In post area you click on little picture of the mountain and then you paste in the Img line of the info you copied.

For us mere mortals who would rather work with cattle or the Hogs, this may take a couple days of monkeying around to master it, LOL..Good Luck

Up North · #13 11/16/06, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oxankle

Tana:
... A woman with a houseful of kids and a husband cannot afford to be laid up so that the cooking, washing, ironing and scrubbing go undone.
Ox

Ox - With the new generation of farm wives "UpNorth" a comment like that would insure that none of the above items got done for a week.

signed, A diaper-changin', meal-cookin', floor scrubbin' Husband....LOL

Tana Mc · #14 11/18/06, 10:56 PM

Oh Ox!! Dumb blonde references on top of everything else!! LOL!!
OK-- I have been away from the computer for a few days selling goat milk soap at a craft fair. I will take a crack at putting up the pictures tomorrow when I am not so.......tired and blonde!
Ox and I have met briefly in the "real world" a year or two ago on a chicken/bunny swap. I think that it is safe to say we both came away with warm regard for the other. It is no secret around here that I would rather skin a live cat --- or deal with a horned Milking Devon--- than do housework.

Speaking of Leda, the Great Horned Beast, I had to move the pair to a new pasture since their drinking pond is drying up. We are desperate for rain.
I had put up a few portable corral panels a couple of days before the move. My daughter normally gives them a little feed each day when she goes to check on them. That keeps them coming to the gate when they hear our vehicle. I had her to feed them in the pen at the gate. The morning of the move, I had her just close the gate behind them and I drove over with the trailer a few minutes later. I got in the pen and began to move them in to the trailer. Faith jumped right on the trailer and Leda turned and shook her horns at me. I wasn't afraid of her and knew I could bluff her down but... My daughter was outside the pen wringing her hands and worrying and near tears. I had one of those enlightening moments. I decided to not push it. The thought just flashed thru my head that I did not want my daughter's last memory of me to be the sight of her mother gored by an ornery red cow. I shut Faith in the front of the trailer and got the lariat out of the truck. I flipped a loop over Leda from outside of the catch pen and she led right up into the trailer from the outside with no strain on me or horn shaking from her.
I don't care if her breed is on the endangered list.
I don't care that she is one of only 500 females in the world.
She will not be handled up close and personal again.
She will not be bred pure again and I turned her out in the pasture with the beef cows.
If she behaves herself, she can stay there. If not, she will make a lot of hamburger. I think that my daughter would grill the first one!
Tana Mc

Oxankle · #15 11/19/06, 08:12 PM

Looking forward to the pictures.

Poor old girl shook her horns just one time to many. Tana, your way is the only way that the breed can be kept useful. Breed a mean cow, get a mean calf. Fighting cows, fence breakers, jumpers, crooked toes, shy breeders--there are a sackful of reasons from culling a cow.
Ox

Up North · #16 11/20/06, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oxankle

LOL UpNorth;

... I was just ribbing Tana a bit, and she knew it....

Figured as much, LOL. Actually, I was thinkin' maybe she was a daughter-in-law or some such thing. I figured if Arnold can wash dishes for Maria, I could admit to my domestic duties as well.

Old Chippewa Chief say " Dry Ranch Make Dry Wit "...