Having a duvet day!!

First Arrivals of 2013

The first of our arrivals for 2013 have graced us with their presence. Our first arrival was a beautiful heifer calf born at the end of January. Her light colouring is due to a cheeky Charolais bull getting at the Droimeann cow instead of our Droimeann bull. But even so we are very pleased with our heifer calf. Droimeann cows make ideal suckler cows as they can be put with any bull and rarely ever have any difficulty calving. Droimeann cows are excellent mothers and have lots of milk, for his reason, crossing them with continentals is ideal as the growth potential of the offspring is excellent. When people think of rare breeds they often think of wild, primitive animals with poor growth rates in offspring. This is not the case at all. They produce excellent quality calves. When Droimeann bulls where difficult to come across my father would use a Charolais bull on his cows and the quality of the calves where fantastic. It would be great some day if people chose a Droimeann cow as their preferred suckler cow breed.

Our Droimeann x Charolais heifer calf

Droimeann bull calf

 Our next calf was a handsome bull calf (and yes this guy is from the Droimeann bull). He is a lovely Droimeann bull calf with lovely markings. He is very white in colour a the moment but he will get darker as he gets older. This calf is the first calf of our new Droimeann bull. We bought the bull at 6 months and he was let out with the cows as a yearling. The remainder of calves due from our Droimeann cows will be off our Droimeann bull, so we look forward to seeing the rest of them.

Our young Droimeann bull at grass last summer

And finally, young lambs are arriving, some a little earlier than anticipated, our sheep on the farm are a mixture of Scottish Blackface and Jacob crosses and they are then  crossed with a Suffolk ram. Our ewes are extremely protective of their lambs and have often petrified our sheepdog with their craziness. Alot of foxes are living on and around the farm but for years now, since my father introduced Jacob breeding into the flock (it was all Scottish Blackface ewes previously), we have never had any lambs carried by foxes. This just goes to show that being a little bonkers can pay off :) 

first lamb of 2013