FINALLY! Got to meet our last calf of the season this morning… Here is Suezy, and her son, JamesMadison:

Click here to read about her calf last year.

Click here to read about our method for naming bulls this year.

His birth tied up the tally for 2014: 4 bulls and 4 heifers. 🙂

He walked down to the barnyard like a champ. Had to dodge some pretty big puddles and his mama ran him into the electric fence a couple times, but he was able to complete the journey… 🙂

Was so funny watching last year’s calves follow along the fenceline! 🙂

The end is near – almost there… 🙂

Made it! 🙂

A well-deserved rest… 🙂

Since we are done milking for today, JamesMadison will stay with his mama until tomorrow morning. With there being a little over 5 weeks between him and the last calf, it creates some challenges with our type of setup.

For instance, the first seven calves are already trained & adjusted to once-a-day feedings, but this little guy won’t be ready for that for a couple weeks… Makes it tricky for afternoon baseball and far-away double headers…

And we need his mama’s milk to help feed all the other calves, so she needs to be able to come into the barn for morning milking… But our barn setup isn’t the best for having a calf running loose in it, nor do we feel comfortable having a calf joining the dairy mamas in a single-wire electric fence as they are rotationally grazed…

So every year we think about experimenting with a “nurse cow” in the field with all the calves, but that isn’t as easy as it sounds either! Hmmmm – not sure what we’ll decide on, so I guess that’ll have to be a future post! 🙂

Thank You, Lord, for all these beautiful, healthy calves!