Post by mollybelle on Dec 13, 2012 17:57:02 GMT -5
I'm so pleased with one of my first-fresheners, who is a little older than the normal first-calf heifers, but I don't care!
Waaaayyy back when I was first looking for Jersey heifers (it's like a secret club; if you don't have a Jersey, you can't find one for sale!), I called a man who had an ad in the paper. He had just sold the last heifer, but offered to keep my number and call if he had another for sale. I agreed, thinking that was the last of it.
A month or so later, he gave me a call, he had a heifer that was a little younger than the rest of his youngstock, and she wasn't holding her own in the group after being weaned. He offered her to me for $200, so I jumped in the truck to go get her.
She was skinny and looked pretty rough, but I had space and the ability to coddle her, and so she started to improve over time. She grew into a nice heifer, and finally it was time to breed her.
One AI cycle...no pregnancy. Two, three, four...nothing. My husband was beginning to suspect that she was really a freemartin and I had been duped.
We had been raising a breeding bull, and he was nearing the age when he could begin to do his job, so I talked DH into waiting a bit longer, give her a chance with the bull.
He grumbled, but agreed, and after a month or two, I never saw her cycle again. Time passed (no preg check, just a hunch), and she began to build a little udder, so I happily reported that she was pregnant, which surprised DH greatly.
More time passed, she started really bagging up, and finally calved a perfect little Jersey heifer. And easily accepted extra calves. AND learned to be milked with very little effort...AND she has an amazingly perfect, high, BIG udder and gives lots of milk.
What a great cow! and it's such fun to hear DH say "what a good thing we didn't eat that one!"
;D
Waaaayyy back when I was first looking for Jersey heifers (it's like a secret club; if you don't have a Jersey, you can't find one for sale!), I called a man who had an ad in the paper. He had just sold the last heifer, but offered to keep my number and call if he had another for sale. I agreed, thinking that was the last of it.
A month or so later, he gave me a call, he had a heifer that was a little younger than the rest of his youngstock, and she wasn't holding her own in the group after being weaned. He offered her to me for $200, so I jumped in the truck to go get her.
She was skinny and looked pretty rough, but I had space and the ability to coddle her, and so she started to improve over time. She grew into a nice heifer, and finally it was time to breed her.
One AI cycle...no pregnancy. Two, three, four...nothing. My husband was beginning to suspect that she was really a freemartin and I had been duped.
We had been raising a breeding bull, and he was nearing the age when he could begin to do his job, so I talked DH into waiting a bit longer, give her a chance with the bull.
He grumbled, but agreed, and after a month or two, I never saw her cycle again. Time passed (no preg check, just a hunch), and she began to build a little udder, so I happily reported that she was pregnant, which surprised DH greatly.
More time passed, she started really bagging up, and finally calved a perfect little Jersey heifer. And easily accepted extra calves. AND learned to be milked with very little effort...AND she has an amazingly perfect, high, BIG udder and gives lots of milk.
What a great cow! and it's such fun to hear DH say "what a good thing we didn't eat that one!"
;D