Post by eljay on Jul 30, 2014 10:45:17 GMT -5
eljay
Your girl Betty l looks like she is coming along, and you will soon have a beautiful calf on the ground! I am praying all goes well and she has an uneventful birth!
I cannot say how much I love Betty's conformation! I hope to have a cross out of my Holstein/Jersey girl Sugar that is similar to Betty. The hopefully heifer calf (fingers crossed and toes that it is a heifer and not another bull calf ) will be half Hereford. I know it is hard to tell which genetics will "shine through" in the cross, but I hope to have an easy keeper (Hereford side), good personality( Sugar is a sweetheart and the Hereford bull is awesome too) , and medium producing ( Sugar peaked at 9 gallons this freshening and I do not want that much so hope to take after the Hereford here) calf. I hope to get a cow that can be mostly grass fed cow that stays in great condition. That being said, I may be asking too much but one can hope and dream!
What do ya think? I
s this Betty's first calf? If not, how is her production? She looks like an easy keeper. Is she?
Sorry so many questions! I am excited to see such a beautiful dairy cross girl and hope to have one of my own some day!
Crystal
I got her in January and she was 6 months into her second lactation so I don't know what she peaked at. She had just been bred in December and I was thinking that she would start to dry herself. She was raising two calves, hers and a foster. She was pretty skinny, more Holstein looking than beef cross. She began to gain weight and up production immediately. She went up to 3 gallons by the end of February and stayed there until mid April when we went to once a day milking. Things slowed down after until the spring flush came on and the popped back up again. All this was on free choice grass hay, 6# soaked hay cubes, and 6# of 16% sweet feed. I may have been able to get away with less, but she is attached to being fed while she's being milked and it made my life easy.
She's really a nice cow, mellow and easy to handle. Summer, our jersey, makes the same or just less in terms of milk, but she goes through twice as much feed and I'm constantly trying to put weight on her.