Still no sign of any bulling from Parsley – if we don’t detect anything by the end of the month we may well need to talk to Rachel at Market Vets about inducing her cycle or oestrus. As well as wanting Parsley to calf next year, we also want to make sure she is not too far behind the other two cows with her due date. It will make management easier to have the calves roughly the same age (as this year) as well as more fun for them in that they can all play together. The photo shows Parsley's bull calf (left) and Sage's heifer calf, named Blackcurrant (right) looking especially gorgeous together. Blackcurrant is two weeks younger but has always been bigger. She should go on to make a fab cow. We are still not entirely sure what our selling plans are. Ideally we would like to keep ALL the calves from this year and then sell both Blackcurrant and Caraway (Thyme’s heifer calf) as in-calf heifers next year. Technically we have the 'room' as we easily satisfy the minimum requirements for indoor winter housing and have twice the recommended space for winter outside space (i.e. the woodchip pad) BUT, even with selling one of last year’s steers now, that would still leave us with seven cows for the winter. Last year we had five and that was a fair bit of work. We also have a problem with selling one animal on its own, albeit one that will be going for meat in a year or so. We could sell one of last year’s steers AND this year's (i.e. Parsley's calf) to get around this but that would mean a gap of a year for us without a steer for meat!!!
Decisions decisions and it is not as though we can guarantee we will sell what we want anyway, even once we have made up our minds!!! It's sort of a nice problem to have but one we need to solves alongside other selling decisions - nothing can ever be in isolation when running such a busy smallholding as most things impact upon something else.