What Storm did next - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 11 August, 2014

by Rosemary Champion at 9:36am in Cattle No comments Add your own

We brought Storm home on 22nd July to run with the four cows. There was much "actvity" when he went out and he seemed to spend a couple of days with each of the cows pretty much in turn, starting with Breeze. I never saw him serve any of them - I saw him try to mount Breeze but she wouldn't stand for him. I'm not worried about not seeing him work as we didn't see him last year either, and he clearly did :-)

You'll recall that the three cows calved on consecutive days in May this year - our vet said that in small herds, oestrus was sometimes synchronised naturally.

Now, having been in 19 days, he seems to be "courting" Breeze again. A cow's oestrus cycle is around 21 days, usually between 18 and 24 days, so I'm hoping that she was maybe going out of season when he went in rather than not having held to a first service.

I'm now all anxious about whether the cows are too fat to get in calf - although, in nature, all spring calving cows will be fat when they get in calf again. There's no reason to suspect that the bull's not fertile.

Anyway, nothing I can do about it. He'll have seven, maybe eight weeks with them then he's off. And we'll find out the score a few weeks after that. Off to see what he's up to today - sheltering from the rain, probably. Fingers crossed and hope for the best.