5th and 6th calf 2018

What a morning! Came over extra early in hopes of being able to make it to church, but it wasn’t long and we knew that wasn’t going to happen…

First, we could make out the outline of Uno and a calf; and then as we approached them, we could see another calf in the distance.😯

These next few pics are not very good. It was still pretty dark, super cold on my ungloved hands, and pretty chaotic to say the least. Rather than scrap the pics, I decided to lighten them up as best I could and keep them as a reminder for memory purposes.

Here is Uno with hers – a girl!!😍 This is Uno’s 3rd calf for us. [Click here to read about her calf last year.] [Click here to read about when Uno was born.] We’ve decided to name her Lulu – mainly because it sounds nice with her half-sister’s name that you’ll read about below…

And here is RedRobin’s (a.k.a. LilRed) calf – another girl!😍 EXCEPT – she was NOT with LilRed, but Tangerine.🙄😡

This is LilRed’s 2nd calf for us. [Click here to read about her calf from last year.] [Click here to read about when LilRed was born.] This calf is the great-granddaughter of Buttercup – one of the 3 heifers my Grandma and Grandpa Cegelka bought for the boys back in 2005. (My Grandpa wanted to buy the boys their first calves.❤️) [Click here for a cool Buttercup post.] Of the 3, Buttercup was the only one that made the cut as a dairy cow. She had 5 calves for us and was a GREAT milk cow. In honor of her, we wanted a flower name for this calf. So we decided on Lily.😍

Lulu was still kinda wet and getting cleaned up, whereas Lily was pretty dry and spunky.

Since most of the activity was centered around LilRed’s, we decided to try to get it and the rest of the milkers to the barn first.

The walk to the barn was probably the most stressful walk we’ve had yet. Many lessons learned this season…😬🙏🏼

She petered out halfway across the barnyard so Mike carried her into the barn. At least she wasn’t as big as Fiona!👏🏼

She was pretty exhausted after her big morning…

Mike laid her down in the pen with Lloyd. Then we put halters on Lloyd and Fiona and walked them next door. Fiona walked great. Lloyd – NOT SO MUCH. Mike came back to help me get him over.🙄👍🏼

We still needed to milk before we could feed the calves. Until then, we kept Fiona and Lloyd on one end of the corral. Patty and Fillup were on the other side, but they hadn’t come out from the barn to meet them yet…🙂

After milking, we came back and fed these 4. Here are a couple pics of the new calf headlocks Mike is building. They aren’t finished yet because we needed live models to see if our spacing is correct. Good thing we waited to finish them – we’ll need to make them a wee bit smaller.👍🏼 The saw horse is working ok to hold the buckets for now. Maybe this week, Mike will attach a board that will go all the way across.

After cleaning up from feeding calves, we decided we were going to run the mamas who have already calved back up to Grey Heaven. We’ve had enough of them being in Isengard.😉

That meant we needed to move their round bale feeder and mineral feeder, too. So that’s what we tackled next.👍🏼

Uno+Lulu, Sarge, and Coco stayed. (Of course, I couldn’t help but take a few pics of them while I did the gates for Mike.)☺️

After we opened the divider gate, we headed up to Grey Heaven.

Don’t let the sunny day fool ya – today was SO COLD! The wind was nasty, and after a 4.5 hour morning in it, my whole body just hurt.😬 Yep – that’s ice in those puddles!❄️

Still needed to feed some hay to the ones we left down by the barn, and then we could head inside for a warmup.👏🏼☕️

And we were blessed with a beautiful sight right before we headed home…❤️

3 hours later we came over to check on Lily in the barn. We were so thankful she got up! Such a cutie.😍 We tried to feed her, but she wasn’t interested. Decided we try again later and we let her rest some more.

Went back out several hours later and did the afternoon feeding with some friends. Then it was time to bring Lulu to the barn. Extra hands meant someone else could take the pics! Thanks, Jennifer & Grant!☺️