The newest bottle baby

This is Brisket. As I mentioned two days ago, aside from the lamb and the kids, we’ve acquired a calf. Last November, we had just sent our steer off to the butcher and with all of the new kids arrivals, our does are giving a lot of milk. I was browsing on facebook close to a week ago, when I ran across an ad for a 2 week old bull calf.

Perfect age for bottle feeding! He was at a decent price, so my dad and I drove to the dairy farm that this little guy was born at, and picked him up. He is so small that we brought him home in the back of a pickup truck in a extra large dog crate. He is mostly Holstein with a little bit of Jersey in him. Usually, beef bred is better beef but we won’t turn our noses up on a dairy calf. Especially one with Jersey in it. Those tend to be great eating when they reach two years old. We have found that by two, they are big enough to eat.

 

When you get a bottle calf, if you have goats, you will need to dilute the goats milk because cows milk isn’t quite as rich. Goats milk can scour a calf if given to them as is. (Scour is a bad case of diarrhea and can be deadly.)

The lively homestead

I know it has been two, nearly three weeks since my last post. I am sorry about that. Life on the homestead got very busy. Two weeks ago, these lovelies came along and have kept us very busy!

We have 8 goats, a lamb, and a calf now. The babies are all bottle babies which takes up a lot of time, energy and love. We enjoy the vast majority of it though.

I say vast majority because prior to the does kidding and during immediate kidding season, I can’t say that we enjoy the loss of sleep. But once we are past that and are milk does and loving on these playful little lovebugs, all is well. Even our dogs think they are great!