Yummy veg and our loaner bull
Before I introduce our new bull, I have to post a beautiful picture of Jamie’s cukes and onions. It’s a fairly simple recipe consisting of equal parts vinegar and sugar (about 2/3 cup each), and about twice that amount of water (say 2 cups). Throw in a teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil. After cooling, poor over freshly picked and sliced Terrabyte Farm cucumbers and onions and put in the fridge overnight. You can substitute your own locally-sourced cucumbers and onions if you can’t find TBF produce in the local market.
We also had a ton of other squash and zucchini and green beans. Jamie grilled a bunch of the veg and made several batches of zucchini bread and a green bean and purslane salad. It was pointed out to us that we had purslane growing in our garden–we had considered it a weed. It’s actually a very healthy, tasty and versatile green. We absolutely love “wild” food like that.
As far as the bull goes, we coordinated with a local farmer who keeps a herd of herefords, dexters and galloways. His galloway bull normally just stays with the herd. We transported the bull here yesterday and he’ll stay through the end of August. We had three options when it came to breeding our cows:
- Artificial insemination (AI)
- Buying a bull
- Leasing a bull
The main benefit of AI is not having to “manage” a bull, even short-term. You also have a much larger range (essentially unlimited) of bulls to select from. However, the downside of AI is that you have to have someone who is trainied in bovine AI do it and you really have to watch your cows to know when to “pull the tube” (literally, out of a cryogenic freezer). Also, the success rate is generally much lower than using natural means. Given that we are busy with other things at the moment, it seemed too involved a process, but it is something we’d reconsider in the future.
We also considered buying a bull. In this case, we would have bought the bull, brought him over to breed the cows, and when he was done brought him to the butcher. This would have simultaneously bred the cows as well as replenished our supply of hamburgers and hotdogs. The downside is primarily cost, but also the unpredictability of a bull someone is willing to get rid of for a price we’re willing to pay. Keeping a bull full time doesn’t make economic sense for us given the small size of our herd and the hay/feed/vet costs associated with his upkeep.
Our third option is the most traditional. We would lease a bull, bring him to the farm, have him breed our cows and return him to his original herd when finished. While the selection of breeding stock is more limited than AI (luckily our area of the state has a good number of cattle operations, so the selection really isn’t that bad). It’s also a bit more “hands off”. We bring the bull in for ideally 2 cycles (cows cycle every 28 days just like people) and have a good change of bred cows at the end.
We chose belted galloway primarily because they are genetically polled (hornless, which is dominant so our horned cows’ offspring would be hornless), cross well with dexters, they are very hardy and the fact that they tend to throw smaller calves (a concern of ours given we have small dexter cows).
Hopefully this will be a success and we’ll have at least one if not two calves next spring. Stay tuned!
