Many changes 1

I have not posted for a while and it is not that I have had nothing to say, but rather that I have not made the time. Many new additions to the farm. Buttercup has had a new calf, born Dec 18th, 2008. Moremeat is his name, Moremy for short. He is a beautiful purebred Dexter. Unfortunately, as his mother is not registered, he cannot be either. Hence, he is castrated and will live up to his name. We were hoping for a heifer.

We now have 2 gilts, that is unbred female pigs. Winnifred and Pruscilla. Winnie is a purebred, registered, Tamworth from Bob Ottenbrite's farm. Pruscilla is a spotty pig from a pig farm that was going out of business. Scilly has had her tail docked, a barbaric practice of intensive farms to prevent them from chewing on eachothers tails. Both the girls are large, pushy but friendly. They eat like pigs. We will have them bred in a month or 2 to provide us with the young pigs to raise for meat this summer. As most of the pig farms in the province have shut down, we have no real worry about selling our excess piglets.

We sold Rhyme and Raisin, our 2 youngest goats. We were finding they were bullying their mothers and eachother and we were getting no pleasure from having 4 goats. Now Pyramus and Frisbee seem a bit happier. I think the 2 girls went to a good home, where they will be pets.

Adventures in A. I,

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, getting Buttercup bred has been proving more difficult than we first imagined. Way back in October, we had borrowed the gomer and had had the AI guy out once, to no avail. Buttercup was still not pregnant. Gillian, our vet, had suggested we wait until spring when she should start to cycle again as she didn't appear to be coming into heat. So all winter we waited, feeding her huge amounts of grain to improve her condition. Well, now it is March, and finally, finally, there are signs that she may be ready to be bred again.

A couple of days ago it all happened. We called the AI guy, who came out and checked and said, yes, indeed, she was coming into heat. He would come back in the evening, bringing the straw of semen. Nine pm he arrives. It is dark and we never got around to putting electricity in the cow shed so we are doing all this by the light of the truck headlamps and a couple of flashlights. Buttercup, seeing the halter, and the AI guy, makes a quick exit out of the shed. She may not know exactly what is in store but she knows it probably won't be much fun for her. With a bit of bribery we get the halter on her and tie her up to a post. I won't describe the whole experience, as it starts to sound a bit perverted when I describe it, but ultimately, it seems we have a very good chance of having a calf next December.