poor dandie

Oh for today is the day! What day you ask? Well...

Weaning poor Dandie.

 This is when he started to build her stanchion. The hens decided to eat Dandies grain. It's a little narrower then Maggie's, but she's also younger and smaller and we are praying we won't still be here when it comes time to be milking her, and have a bigger barn. I did help by handing him things and holding the wood as he cut some pieces!

 Here it is all done with Dandie in it. Looks nice dontcha think?

 Now if you look real close she is sticking her tongue out at me! I'm on her poop list. She has all the hay, water and grain that she wants. So far there has been little mooing on either of their parts. She jumps around and pulls her head and pushes her butt down to try to get out, to no avail. Matthew looked at me and said "wait until she's hungry, then you'll hear her." Oh boy. At some point we will move her water and grain bucket, but for now it has to stay there on the side.

She looks really cute here, but  I think she is really not happy with Matthew who is standing right next to her, and she's giving him the evil eye, and he's on her poop list too! He put her in there after all. The kiddos all ran out side to go see her, and feel bad for her. We all do, but it's time and I try not to humanize the whole thing too much. It's part of her life and the next step to becoming a productive member of our farm. Granted it will be a while before she pays for herself, you get what I mean!

Here's My Man reading a book ("When Life was Young on the Farm" by C. H. Stephens), in case you were wondering, in the barn right next to Dandie. He's sitting out there with her to make sure she doesn't strangle herself. We know a dairy farmer who lost a cow that way. Somehow managed to fall down and couldn't get her footing to get back up. Kinda scary. We would all be devastated if anything happened to Dandie. She's such a sweet little calf.  I'm sure during the night we will be up to check on her as well.
We decided to wait and wean her when it had warmed up. Last week it was so cold and windy that we didn't. We didn't want all that stress of being taken away along with below freezing temps to have a negative affect on her. We figured that her having all that nice warm milk in her belly would be better then cool water while it was so cold.  This week is supposed to be warmer, 30's-40's! It can't be too bad they are right next to each other and can lick each other.
Oh and we think Maggie is in heat today!!! Hooray!! We have a call into the AI Tech and should be getting a call back from them soon!! Very excited about that! I'll keep you posted!
Exciting times are coming here on the farm! I can almost smell the spring! hehe