...And Done!

 

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She's here, the final calf of the season!  We were a little worried that it would be November or later - Kerry has been running about 14 months between calves the last couple of times, and last year was Oct. 22 - but last Saturday, the 7th, she showed up with a little red girl. A teeny little one, too, but healthy-looking which is all that really matters.  That gives us one lost girl, 3 surviving girls, and 5 boys, all red.  Of course, one of the girls is white, so we'll have yet another white cow mama in a few more years.  We have 4 already, and have a hard time telling Myra and Fern apart.  It doesn't help that they're full sisters...

This calf makes 9 for the summer, 8 surviving - our biggest growth spurt yet for the herd!  I think that brings us to 25 cattle total!  Hard to believe that just a few years ago we had only 2 grown cattle and baby Myra!  Well, okay, it was more than a few years - but that in itself is hard to believe...

Speaking of babies, in a way - on Wednesday we picked up a ram for the sheep girls, he's a Gulf Coast Native/Romney cross. It was very difficult to even find a wool sheep ram, everyone we could find both locally and online has meat/hair sheep.  We finally located this fellow, actually the offspring of a farmer-friend's herd, and I'm interested in what he will add to the fleece genetics next spring.  The Gulf Coast side should add typical "good fleece" characteristics like crimp and fine texture, and the Romney should add length.  That would be nice since the Tunis, being a hot-climate breed originally, has a shorter staple length.  Either way, though, they'll have pretty nice wool, that's all I'm really concerned with.  We'd like to get a full-blood Tunis ram next year, but apparently we need to start looking long before we did this year!  We really like the ones we have - good mothers, good milkers, good fleece, just a great all-around sheep!

When we got the ram, the folks hat has him gave us a couple dozen quail eggs.  I'd never actually seen any before, they were really beautiful - I put a picture in the "Family" photo gallery, take a look!  I hard-boiled them and tossed them with some sautéed sweet potato greens with a bunch of garlic and a drizzle of balsamic - delicious!

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