03/30/2026
Spring '26
It used to be that fall was my favorite season. The older I get (read: the more my bones creak), the more I appreciate the warm seasons and spring with its pretty blooms is simply delightful. Now is the time to get things done before the heat forces you inside again. Our projects this year are mostly in our front yard. Among other things, I’d like to tear down and redo the outdoor enclosure of the chickens, since it’s falling apart and getting unsafe. We were able to place some of the chickens, all the roosters and ten hens, so now we only have 21(!) hens left. Far too many. I’d like to get rid of them all, take a deep breath and tackle the project, giving it the time it needs. If any local peeps read this, could you use some hens?
Earlier this month we entered Mini Jersey Land with the purchase of Tin Stone Evangeline Luv. She’s a bit too tall, a bit too plain, her stats are off by just a marker here and there, meaning she was affordable. She’s structurally sound and healthy, and her dam (another plain Jane) is who I consider to be the best cow in the Tin Stone herd. Little Evie is still on the bottle. She is very much Dave’s cow, and he has gladly taken over evening feedings. Her designated sidekick is Gretchen and the two have become fast friends. Her future lies in paying for the Dexter habit of her famers by producing high dollar mini Jersey calves. For that she’ll get coddled and rocked to sleep with a lullaby if needed. It’s very strange for me to go window shopping for AI bulls based on only size, stats and color. All the things that make no sense and have no bearing on the health or productivity of an animal. But I digress.
The next one to wean is Albert, formerly Griffin, Luxa’s calf. He will go to a new local farm together with a cousin from the Redeemed Coop. Two chondro steers on adventures, sounds like fun! After Albert, I’ll focus on Lizzie. Her dam Charlotte will leave in late spring, and I want to give them both a couple of weeks of supervised adjustment. Elora and Fabio will get weaned in the summer. Elora gets more time because she’s so tiny, Fabio because his dam needs to keep her girlish figure.
Oh, man, the calves. Ever since Tuck, I’ve been used to calves that “pop”. Other herds have calves that don’t pop, here they do. Our herd is different, as quite a few visitors have said. Yes, it is, thanks mainly to the Chambers family (who I will be forever indebted to and whose coat tails I shamelessly ride). The AI calves were born, and they had varying degrees of the pop factor. Then Lizzie and Elora came along, and I hitched the trailer and took Damien to the sale barn. Mind you, neither of those little girls know they don’t pop. They are small, fairly scrawny and they love their farmers. I’m a sucker for a pretty face, so I try to focus on those, because when I look at their bodies, I flinch. They look like the calves we used to have, in the Dark Ages, before Tuck. For now, they stay. They’ll get trained to halter, bred, then trained to milk. I’ve seen some weird things happen between two and three years in a bovine, and I don’t want to throw away those udder genetics. In the meantime, I’ll burn sage and pray to the ancestors. Gretchen, with her AI dad being Galaxy, is also a bit lighter than what I’ve become used to. Still, she’ll have her place in the herd, especially once she overcomes her hatred towards me. I put weird ropes on her head and that’s awful. The only one who did truly pop was Matilda’s son by Maverick. He’s been renamed Fabio, because, drumroll, he’s just too handsome with his excess white. And I’ve been harping on for years about the lack of a breed standard and the downfall of the breed because of it. Well, since the projected new bull isn’t happening, it’s time for me to eat some crow: we’ll be using an excess white bull for at least next season. We might get spotted calves, we might be producing for the sale barn, but the important thing is that we get calves at all. Fabio really is very handsome. He’s got the bod, the mind and the genetics, not just the dangly bits. So, out of five calves, two that I can use, two that make my eyes water, and one to sell. Ouch. Without a bull, we AI-ed again, to the usual candidates plus one. I’m not telling because I don’t want to jinx it. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed and dreaming baby blue dreams. Since AI and a possible bull overlapped, we still have one cow to get bred. The calves will be all over the map next season, but that’s ok. The main thing is that they get born and are healthy.
All I wanted was normal, chill and relaxed. Maybe next year. Let me know if you need chickens!
https://jesseshill.com/honest-to-goodness-blog/f/spring-26
