“Blue,” the bull arrived Sunday as scheduled. He is a pleasant chap! My son thought he was going to be like in the rodeo or something, but he is quite calm, nice, and friendly. He is a Charbray/Angus cross so, since our cow is an Ayrshire dairy cow, we will not have a purebred dairy breed calf. However, if we get a heifer this time, I’ll probably keep her and will probably still get some great milk from her.

I’ve actually recently read about a number of people who keep Angus cows for milk. I had previously thought you only use the Angus for beef, but evidently you can milk them AND the milk is supposedly a high butterfat milk like the Jersey milk. I don’t personally know anyone who keeps an Angus cow for milk but it’s an interesting idea.

Cows have a gestation period similar to humans, about 9 months. About 60 days before she is due to have her calf we’ll have to dry her up so no milk for that period of time. I’m debating whether I want to buy a second cow at that time or try and borrow or lease one for that period of time. It’s something that I need to consider because, wow, the work that goes with keeping a dairy cow is not a tiny amount. But actually I don’t think a second cow would increase the work significantly.

Anyway, Blue’s family was very nice and I think they are going to go ahead and keep him to lease out to people. They had planned to sell him at first but now that they’ve gotten some lease customers they’ll most likely keep him. I like that idea because next year we can have him come by again.

Oh yes, he did exit his pasture one time because we let Alfalfa (our cow) out in the adjacent neighbor’s 60 acres (as we always do every day) but we left Blue in Alfalfa’s field. Then in a few hours Alfalfa decided to come up to the horses’ pasture to see if they had left any hay, and Blue somehow got over there. We don’t know how because there weren’t any boards down. He possibly jumped. Or crawled under. Or removed and replaced the boards. Heh.