My How They've Grown

I went out this morning to try to get a photo of DH with some of our cows, so there was a reference point and you could see how big they have grown. (DH is 6 foot 6.) Belle & Chuck aren't as tall as I thought they might be at their age...but Chuck is blind so he is behind the 8 ball anyway...and I don't know if White faced Herefords are real tall to begin with.


Belle has sure gotten Beefy looking though, even if she isn't as tall as I thought she might be by now, (she is over a year old now) but then I don't know cows to well yet. LOL She is FAT...well probably not really fat, but her body is certainly a chunk! She should give us some good beef cows if we can get her bred...although if we have enough Jerseys, we might not really need the extra beef since we will butcher the male jerseys. I wouldn't mind trading Belle for a Jersey even though I like her...but they aren't real common in our area, so doubt that will happen. LOL

Chuck (the black one) will be in our freezer in another month (I hope) or least shortly after that. He isn't full grown yet I don't think, even though he is over a year old too, but we don't want to take him through another winter...and even if he isn't full size he will still have a lot of good beef on him that should be yummy this winter. We have to wait till the weather gets cool enough so we can put the meat we want ground up in our car overnight (since we don't have enough room in the fridge to cool it down) so we can grind it the day after we butcher him...which means it has to consistently get cold at night. (No we don't "hang" our meat...we like fresh meat, not meat that is starting to rot.)

Sorry if the fact we actually are going to eat a animal we raised upsets you...that is what happens on a working farm a lot of the time, it's part of life and doesn't bother me as long as I know that's what we plan on doing with them. LOL I might have a little trouble if we decided to eat Belle (only for a little bit though) but we planned on this for Chuck, so it doesn't bother me to much...just like we plan on it with Stew...and Mabel's calf if it's a boy, although I'm really hoping it's a girl so we can have another Jersey to eventually give us milk if it does ok! :)


Speaking of Stew...this little guy is growing like a weed. He isn't up to DH's waist yet, but DH doesn't have to lean over to pet him anymore. Course the cows were standing right on the edge of a slope, so it's probably not a good reference, but since it was "breakfast" time it was hard to get them to move. LOL He only gets to be with Mom for a few hours in the morning now, so we can let Mom out to wander the yard...stew is banned from there because he molested one of our little peach trees, he's lucky I didn't kill him on the spot! LOL

(I know what you are thinking...why would we have them out where they can get our trees? Because they hadn't been touched all summer. We had watched them at first to see if they would, but Daisy and Mabel were good and left them alone...so guess we expected that to continue, silly us. LOL)

Anyway, just thought I'd share how our cows have grown...Belle and Chuck since we got them last fall, and Stew since he was born three months ago today. I sure have enjoyed having cows a lot more than I thought I would...who knew I'd go from being a goat lover only to actually liking having cows around. :) The really sad part about it is, I've been out to see the cows more than the goats lately...think I need to remedy that. LOL