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We have had quite a trial with Jersey Bull calves as we did not know how difficult it was to keep them alive. Both us and the neighbor purchased a total of 5 bull calves from a dairy. We do not know how old they were (maybe just a few days) but they all died but one. The first one died of scours and the other three could of been pneumonia, worms or Coccidiosis. It was awful and neither us nor the neighbors will purchase dairy calves so young again.
The kids happened to name the one who ended up living, Loser, as he had a backwards "L" on his forehead. After we decided he was going to make it, calling him Loser seemed inappropriate. He was then renamed to Loser La Bone and affectionately is called "La Bone". He may be as young as 2 months or as old as 4 to 5 months. The neighbor gave him de-wormer along with two others who were still alive at the time. We cannot confirm that he had worms so we gave him probiotics for the first month he was at the farm.
He is a wonderful asset. We all love him. If he ends up getting ornery, he will find himself in our freezer, otherwise, he could potentially become a breeding bull.
We picked up a beef heifer in trade for our 2 year old donkey, Laby. The donkey was a sweetie but was more for fun and didn't fit into our homesteading goals. Her mother originally was acquired from the BLM as an animal in which would protect our livestock. It turned out that both mom (who left last year to another farm) and later, daughter spent more time dominating and chasing our goats, chickens, turkeys and dog then protecting them. We read that donkeys were suppose to be good protectors but found that not to be the case. Maybe it was due to their young ages or just a personality thing.
Anyway, we now have a beef heifer. She came with the name "Daisy". She is the largest animal we have ever had and we were shocked at her size (which I'm sure is normal size). We quickly renamed her "Duisy" pronounced "Doosey" and said with great emphasis. We didn't want to get attached to her in any way and called the meat packing company only to find out they were booked up for a couple months. Oh no. Since we were going to be keeping her for a while, we reluctantly let her in with the other animals. She chased the dog and goats but quickly took to the Jersey bull calf. As a matter of fact, we think she adopted him for her own. We knew it would be hard for La Bone to lose Duisy so we went on a hard search for a Jersey heifer to grow up with him. That's when we found her...
Our real prize is our Jersey Heifer. She is 4 1/2 months pregnant. We are looking forward to milking her in a few months. We traveled to Kentucky to get her as she was located close to my brother and his family. It gave us an excuse to visit and we brought back this wonderful heifer. We got her from www.cumberlandminiatures.com. A very unique farm located in beautiful Kentucky. We highly recommend anyone looking for miniature cattle to take a look at this website. The owner, Scott, has some unique and well cared for animals.
We decided to call her "Ellie" because she has a tuff of hair like the girl mammoth in Ice Age 2. We all have fallen in love with her. She is friendly, curious and small.
We first locked up Duisy in a fenced area so Ellie and La Bone could get to know each other. To our shock, Duisy leaped a 3 1/2 foot fence to get to La Bone. We could not believe such a large animal could jump so high. The next day, we put Duisy in another area. This time the fence was about 4 foot high and again, she leaped it. Not to be defeated, we then moved her into a 5 foot high strong fence. This time she stayed. But, both Ellie and La Bone stayed next to her all day. We wanted them to graze throughout a 5 acre area.
Now they all three hang out together after their breakfast. We lock them down separate at night because they eat different things. Ellie eats both Alfalfa and Bermuda hay. Duisy eats Bermuda Hay and lots of Mesquite beans which is suppose to improve the taste of her meat. La Bone eats with whoever he ends up with at night. He has not figured out how to eat mesquite beans. They all graze on grasses, mesquite leaves and beans throughout the day.
Shelly Curtis
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