We bought a Hereford bull last week. Not overly exciting news but what was amusing (and of some concern initially) was his reaction to the Friesian cows.
In typical fashion, we were a bit late buying him in that we should have gone to look at bulls two weeks previously so he’d have time to settle [...]
New update – 18th January 2014
Garrendenny Thomas has had a name change. I can’t remember the twitter conversation with Progressive Genetics but apparently I made a comment that it would be fun to have a name based on matchmaking given the title of my book. I knew there was a bull in New Zealand called Matchmaker. ?We were just checking details yesterday and noticed his name has been changed – it’s now Garrendenny Matchmaker, which is kind of cool. [...]
It’s been AI season now for about 3 weeks. I should know the exact date we started as it is all written in a little white book but I’m up in Athboy for the Blue Jeans Country Queen festival (which I’m judging, just in case anyone thinks that I somehow bribed my way into the contest!) and this is the first chance I’ve had to blog for a wee while. You’d never think I spend half my day [...]
It’s AI season here on the farm at the moment, started on 1st May. ?We use about 95% artificial insemination for our cows, just using a bull for some repeats (when a cow doesn’t go in calf on the first serving) if it is getting late in the season. ?It is entirely possible for a cow to have many calves and still be theoretically a virgin!
We’re celebrating this weekend – at long last! It’s a bit of a long story but last spring, Dovea AI (artificial insemination) were interested in two of our bull calves to use as test bulls ?which would hopefully go on to become successful and profitable bulls for them. ?They eliminated one and really wanted the other but there seemed to be one delay after another. For example, we had one cow that was ‘doubtful’ in the TB test, she was [...]
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