New Calves!

Well for starters, Dad found the ad for calves in Aberdeen last night, about 45 minutes after he had posted them.  He had calves started on feed and a few others, bulls and heifers. 

I remember Aunt Lisa telling me she had wanted a nice spotted holstein heifer for breeding in the coming years, and oen of the calves started on feed was a holstein heifer. I looked at dad and said, call him, I'll pay for her- it came out of the money intended as payment for Heidi so it'll work out in the end. 

We talked some last night on our drive over to Lisa's.  Originally we were just going to take the goat go-for.  But we were unsure of the size of the heifer, and he had $60 jersey bull calves also listed.  Dad wanted to see them before commiting after Red and Amy I understand.  They are only 10-14 days old but I figured I could give 'em a wing. So we picked up the trailer instead- knowing full well that 3 wouldn't fit in the goat go-for- and if we had that instead we couldn't get any of the jersey's if they looked okay.  It was late already so instead of making dad change the ball on his truck in the dark, we took my truck to go get the trailer.

My truck pulled it with ease, just the lack of shocks kept us bouncing a little bit. 

So this morning, we both got up early I got the horses and rabbits fed(not enough time for water bottles though) and headed up to Aberdeen. 

He kenw we were getting the Holstein, we loaded her first, while dad and the guy got her out of her pen, I looked in on the 4 little Jersey's.  1 of them didn't strike me very well but the other 3 looked great, and we dad asked if they were promised yet, he said no, so said we'd like 2 of them.  The guy must of thought they were for me or something, he let me go into the pen to pick the two I liked.  3 Came to me, 1 did not.  Out of the 3 that came two me 1 was the one I didn't like, so came the two that came home with us.

The holstein is jumpy and a bit skiddish and leaped straight up in the air when we loaded the two jersey's.  I gave them some Jump start which has vitamins, minerals and a probiotic to help settle their tummy's before we let them off the trailer:

Then after that I just let them wander around my pasture while I ran to Tractor Supply to get the milk replacer and more calf feed. 

They didn't appear to have been fed this morning, so I went out to give them a bottle as soon as I got back with the milk replacer, then after a short romp in the sun I went ahead and locked them up in the barn as I'm scared to death to not be able to get my hands back on the Holstein again and I don't have enough panels to lock them into the front of the pasture.