Oops!!! Our Mistake

Good Morning!  Wow, I had no idea that I had been away that long.  I have really missed blogging and being able to record all of the great happenings on our homestead.  They just seemed to be coming so fast and furious that I couldn't find time to post them all.  Over the next few weeks I will be trying to catch you up on the homestead as well as discussing the current chaos.

Maggie, our beloved Jersey, is currently dried off and awaiting calving.  I am enjoying the break from twice-a-day milking and what seems to be constant cheese, yogurt, and butter making.  On the flipside, I am also missing the fresh products Maggie makes possible.  I find it really difficult to go back to commercially produced food once I've had our own.  Maggie is due to calve on June 29, only a little over a month away.
By the time that gets here I hope to have everything under control and schedules running smoother.

In the meantime I've been busy in other areas.  In early March we were given a blind steer to raise for meat.  He has regained sight in one eye but the other has difficulty focusing.  He's getting bigger every day and now is 4 months old.  The timing was a little bad, since Maggie is dried off and I'm having to buy milk replacer, but I really couldn't turn down meat for the family, even if it is two years down the road.

We named him "Little Bit" because he was so small.  The name doesn't really fit anymore, though.


Then, in late March, the same rancher called to say that he had a two day old orphan bull calf for us.  So we went over, picked him up, and put him with "Little Bit" and named him "Fireball".  Now I was bottle feeding two calves.  At the end of April, we decided that we really needed to get him fixed.  Michaela has an elasticator for use on her goats but, as she said, the rings only go so big.  It took Ray, Michaela, and I to get him turned over and set to band him.  To our surprise, it appeared to already have been done.  We guessed the rancher had someone do it before we got him.  And life went on.  A week or so later, Michaela was out at the pasture when Fireball peed.  Imagine our shock to find that this supposed bull-steer calf was actually a heifer!  In our defense, her naval was very large and covered with a lot of hair.  Add that to the fact that we were in a rush and took the rancher at his word that we had a bull and there you go. 

"Fireball" who has now been renamed "Sassyfras".  We have all had a great laugh about our great level of cattle knowledge.  We actually do know how to tell the difference, but it was a somewhat humbling experience.  I don't think that I will ever laugh at someone else's mistake again.

May Yahweh bless you in this new day!

Laurie