January passed by in a blink of an eye. Gregory fed cows every day and usually had to move snow around to either feed or to bed. Overall, the weather was pretty nice, so the boys and I would work on some schoolwork in the mornings, and then go out and play in the afternoon.
On Jan. 12, Gregory helped me take two mares for ultrasound again. They both had been called open but I had some suspicions that at least one was pregnant. As it turned out, one is definitely in foal. That means that there should be nine Eppich Quarter Horse foals this spring.
On Jan. 16, we celebrated John’s 77th birthday. We had him and Barb over for supper and cake and ice cream.
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The next day Gregory and John went to Vermillion, Alta. to pick up a loader. Gregory is looking forward to putting it on his JD 4020 and having another tractor with a loader around the farm.
Jersey cow delivers
Our Jersey milk cow freshened the third week of January. She had a cute brown bull calf. She had been bred to our new Black Angus heifer bull and being that she is a little cow and had no problems calving, we are pretty happy with our new bull so far. More of his calves should start arriving around the end of February.
We milked our Jersey and saved the colostrum. It’s going to be nice knowing that we have some on hand in case we need it, and we shouldn’t have to buy any this year. After the colostrum was gone, we started milking her for our household use. It is such a treat to have fresh milk every day and not have to buy it.
We’ve been having troublewith the deer making a mess out of our haystack. They are eating the really nice bales that we were saving for after the cows had calved and the horses had foaled. In late January, a man from Saskatchewan Crop Insurance came out to look at the damage. Hopefully, it will not be a long winter and the deer will move on in the spring.
On Feb. 2 Gregory found a middle-aged Hereford cow had lost her heifer calf. The cow had not been showing any signs of calving and it was three weeks until we were supposed to start calving. The cow is at the bottom of the pecking order and so we figured she was either hit just right by another cow or pushed around and fell down. Four days after Gregory found the dead heifer calf, he found a cow with a dead bull calf. She had twins but had somehow lost both.
The cow is very quiet and so we brought her into the corral and started milking her as well. So now we have even more saved colostrum and even more milk for our household use. I’ve been making yogurt, ricotta cheese, sour cream, cream cheese and butter trying to keep up with the extra milk. We are hoping to keep the Hereford cow milking so that she can raise a twin, if we should get one.
Gregory has been working to get the corral ready for calving by bedding and setting up our calving pens. The temperatures were supposed to drop again right before our calving was to start around Feb. 23. We hope the cold spell doesn’t last long.
