Thursday, January 18, 2007


Earlier this week Rosie, our biggest milking cow, was bred to a Hereford. After months of waiting for Rosie to show anything close to a sign of being in heat, and wondering if she was just never going to, she finally did.
The way we tell that a cow is in heat here is to keep a watch them. If the other cows wont leave her alone, she’s probably in heat. Usually other cows will try to mount a cow that’s in heat, and sometimes a cow in heat is the one mounting the others. So, as you can tell, this takes some observation time to see whose really in heat, and whose just being crazy.
The timing is important too, you see, because a cow is only in standing heat for 12 hours. Standing heat is the time period when a heifer will allow a bull to mount her, and stand for him which is where the name comes from. Luckily Rosie was caught at the right time and Megan was able to call the local artificial inseminator to breed her.
During her time at The Meeting School Rose has been primarily used to produce beef cows given her size, and breed. So it was naturally a good decision to breed her to a Hereford when it came time to make a choice. In the past she has been breed with Black Angus, and we’ve had good results also.
Stay tuned for the news of her birth which will be sometime in the later summer to early fall.

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