Quite a day
Posted: Friday 28 October, 2011
Well, it's been quite a day.
John and I were off to Aberdeen this morning at 7.30am to collect Henry, our Shetland steer. He's a six month old castrated bull calf. We were meeting his breeder at the NorthLink ferry port at 9am- she was coming down to pick up cattle arriving from Shetland so Henry came too and transferred with no fuss at all into our trailer.
Henry, Shetland steer
He's now out with Breeze and Blizzard. They seem to quite like him - he's much smaller then them and very sweet, so no threat at all. He's not really been handled and obviously he's had a big day too, but he came over with the girls when they came for a scratch. By the look on his face, he didn't know WHY he was going to the human, but if they were going, so was he. He was brave enough to sniff and lick my hand so long as Blizzard was between him and me. I reckon with those two softies as an example, he'll soon settle down.
The other excellent news is that the vet scanned Breeze and Blizzard today and both are in calf. Breeze is due 25th May to Stanemore Odin and Blizzard is due 29th June to Collafirth Viking. We could actually see Breeze's calf - well, it's legs anyway, because she's a month further on than Blizzard. We're so made up. Just hope all goes well now with the pregnancies.
That white blob is a calf. Honestly.
The vet says they're about condition score 3.5 so he suggested that the second trimester of pregnancy would be a good time to get some weight off them. The hard bit is going to be keeping weight off them in the third trimester, since that will be March / April / May / June, when the spring grass is coming in. We may have to strip graze to restrict access.
But they're in calf, so we'll cross the next bridge when we come to it.
The vet also did their TB tests, so will be back on Monday to check them for any reaction. And I've to worm / fluke them in December - must add that to the diary right now. 
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