Nathalie prolapse

Not everything about keeping animals is cute and fluffy! A surprising amount of time spent staring at animal vaginas and various consistencies of poo…

I noticed red on Nathalie’s back end, closer inspection showed it to be a prolapse from the vagina. 

Quick call to the vet who arrived a few hours later, but which time it had disappeared.

The vet wanted to have a feel around to see if there was an ongoing problem to worry about, so I ties Nathalie to a tree, she wasn’t best pleased about having someone she hadn’t even been introduced to groping around up there, but overall was very well behaved.

The vet said that she was in heat and sometimes this happened with so much blood in the area and it was nothing to worry about. So Nathalie was freed to run around the field with her friends. Today, a day later she is mooing for the bull, so a long lasting heat (normally it is only about 12 hours)

Not good

Back to normal

Snow snow snow!

 We have had plenty of snow now, at home and in the ski area. What a relief!

The animals don’t massively enjoy it

Here are the cows enjoying a sunny interlude.

Each one has an egret beside it, we presume they are there eating bugs and stuff, we only see them at certain times of year, so I suppose they are migrating.

Clearing some fence lines

We have some help clearing the fence lines which is much needed and appreciated.

This is a photo of the cows helping them out - I’m not sure their help was appreciated as it involved eating branches before they had finished being cut and tossing around the ones neatly piled for burning!

It looks green in the photo after a little rain, but the grass is really in a bad way after the drought. We will be getting hay for the cows very soon I think. A month or more earlier than usual.

Bloody cows, bloody neighbors, bloody heatwave/drought

Wandering around a really steep field well after sunset chasing the neighbors cows out of one of our fields. AGAIN. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it is still hot given the heatwave and this field has pretty much the only grass left for the cows, the rest has shriveled up in the heatwave.

Pretty though…

The cows are wasters!

We built ‘wood-henge’ for the cows around this time last year, so that we could feed them large rounds of hay without the help of the farmer who had been putting them in the field with his tractor (he stopped selling hay). It is great because we can get it rolled in without getting covered in mud - they can only access and poach 3 sides of it and we roll the hay in off the drive from the 4th side.

However they have been throwing hay on the ground, which is good to a point as it soaks up the mud and makes it dryer for them to stand on, but it was getting too much, so we are trying putting the bale in a giant hay net to see if they can still get enough to eat, but waste less. We shall see!

Wellington went to the abattoir

 It was sad to see him go. He was a sweet cow, but we can’t keep the males or all the females. 

On the left here (with weaning ring). Dorne on the right will go next year.

We spent a lot of time getting him used to being caught so we could get him in the trailer. We had to get to the abattoir before the crack of dawn and we almost didn’t catch him because they were all very suspicious about this crack of dawn visit! Stressful!,

But all’s well that ends well (not for Welly I guess)

This is how to fit a cow in a small car…

Bone from a much bigger cow gifted by the abattoir to Poppy

Delicious! Best beef ever (well equal best with our other cows)

Cows to another field

 While needing to milk Venus it is convenient to have them by the stables so they have been in a field there since Clover was born. Finally she is old and big enough to be drinking all the milk Venus produces (maybe 10l or more a day!), so we have been able to move them to a field with more and lusher grass.

Beef red curry to celebrate!

Venus had her calf

She wasn’t due for 6 more days, but Doug heard crazy mooing like a cow was being murdered and in agony. I was at my desk working and didn’t hear the commotion, but I slammed down the phone on the call I was on and rushed out to investigate. We found she had given birth and the calf had slid out under a tree trunk and was stuck.

We fished it out to find a pretty little girl calf. It takes them a little while to stand and they often find it hard on our steep land.

Having a first feed while Auntie Nathalie looks on

Resting after all the effort. Poor Venus still looks worried, but it getting over the shock of it all

What a cute face! We have called her Clover

Spring green and cows

We’ve had a very very dry month and it hasn’t help the grass grow. It is just as well that the nice hay man gave us a couple of free bales at the end of the winter as that has kept the horses fed.

We’ve had a little sprinkle of rain and the grass leapt in to action immediately as you can see here with the cows coming up for their spent brewing grain snack.

Nathalie is always at the back bless her, she seems a little slow witted, but isn’t really.

Venus is 7 months pregnant (gestation is 9 months).

She does normally have quite a round belly, but I think she is showing it a bit (the calf will be on her right side and her rumen is on the left).

Bye bye Myrtle

 We have to many cows, so we have found a lovely new home for Myrtle. We delivered her today and had a nice lunch (home grown and made ham and cheese!) and looked round their lovely gites and property too (always enjoy being nosy!). She should hopefully have a lovely calf for them in June (Venus should have one around the same time).

Here she is just before leaving. She was very good and went in to the trailer very easily

Meeting her new friends

Tucked up for the night in her new home... she’s going to be mored pampered there than here!

We came away with some lovely jersey milk and butter. Bonus!

The building of Wood Henge

At the moment we have a local farmer who puts hay in one of the fields, but he is going to stop shortly as his son is increasing their herd, so they will need the hay. The place that is convenient for him and the tractor is a bit of a trial when we have to roll the bales in ourselves because it is at the bottom of the field and very muddy.

We also buy a lot (400) small bales that we can handle more easily, but this year the guy who makes them couldn’t get help during covid so he didn’t make them

As result we have had to roll the bales through the mud a few times and we realised this isn’t going to work when we need to do a bale every week next year.

So we set about building a feeder that we can roll the bales in to down hill from the drive.

The bales weigh 350kg or more!

Testing it out with a little bit of hay

The hope is that I can get a bale in to it on my own. I can unload from the trailer single handed, but I was a bit nervous to try the first time rolling it down the hill in to the feeder alone as I am keen to avoid being smushed!

We have a few adjustments to make, but overall we are pleased with it, the days spent building it were well spent,  as it will save time and effort in the future.

Snowy Animals

 It snowed a few days ago. Fortunately we had just got hay for the cows and horses so everyone has a full belly or warming hay. The sheep even accepted a little, generally if they have any grass at all they reject hay...

It’s melting off a lot now, but much colder than it has been here for years. The last two winters were very warm and even the few before that, though we had snow it didn’t freeze so hard.

The ducks don’t seem to mind the cold and go swimming as soon as I break the ice on their water. Nutters!

The chickens aren’t too bothered either. Apparently if it gets really really cold they can get frost bite on their combs, but not seen any sign of that

Buttercup always used to feel the cold, but the remaining ones don’t so much

The horses have their run in and plenty of hay as well as wooly winter coats

The sheep have plenty of wool, they only accept hay when they can’t get at the grass at all.

Cow Rampage!

 I was going to do the UK tax return today and Doug had useful wood chopping plans. However the cows decided to go on the rampage as I tried to move them from one field to another and we instead spent the day recapturing them and repairing the damage to two gates and a fence caused by Dorne trying to return to the others having decided to go a different way...

Looking all innocent in the field as they calmly came up 

Heading the wrong way and just before they started crazy running to and fro in the orchard, fortunately not crushing any saplings

After running in the road several times and half way to the neighbors and through one of the neighbors fields as well as a fence crushing frenzy by Dorne, they now look all innocent again. Shortly aftr this the condescended to return to their field and their nice hay.

We had beef stir-fry for dinner!

Best Christmas card ever!

 Painted specially for us, how lucky are we!

She’s called Nathalie... (though really Nathalie the cow is brown and white). She was created by Nathalie the human’s daughter. Genius!

I hope Santa and his flying cow were generous!

Hay day

Snow in slow mo. It was actually driving in quite fast. Brrr!

Perfect day to have arranged to get hay 😳

We normally get small bales as they are easy to move around, but he guy has run out so we had to roll it through the snow to the stables. Soooooo cold on our hands.

The ducks were having a nice bathin their mini pond watching us. Crazy!

First time brushing a hay bale!

The horses were please so that is what matters...

This should last them about a week. Between the cows and the horses they will get through 15 more of these 80 more small ones and 6 like this that the farmer delivers in the the field for the cows (he can’t spare more than that unfortunately)

Cow Blood Test Day

When this comes around now we are soooo thankful not to have the highlands any more as they were a nightmare with the vet. The jerseys are soooo good, it is a great relief.
We had a bit of a long cold wait for the vet, but everyone had snacks and behaved very well

Nathalie having some cow nuts

Myrtle

The three 'calves': Nathalie, Wellington and Dorne

Venus

Goodbye Buttercup

Very sad day. Buttercup died.
She was our very favourite cow and we loved her dearly. She was 11, which is getting on a bit for a cow. I have sometimes felt a little jealous of people’s stories of moving to France and having amazing neighbours who welcome them with open arms and help them with all sorts. I have also sometimes felt relief that ours mainly ignore us, when I hear about horrible feuds with neighbours. This story has a nice ray of sunshine for the ending as our neighbours really stepped up when we needed help. 400kg of dead cow would be quite tricky to get out of a steep field without a tractor! Another happy bit of the story is that we didn’t in the end have to pay 400€ to have the body recovered, because one of the many ‘social charges’ I pay each year for the animals (and don’t fully understand) covered us for this! That 6€ a year is a bargain! We still have Buttercups daughter and grand daughter, but they aren’t newly as sweet (and funny and bolshy) as she was.
RIP Buttercup.

With her family

So pretty and sweet natured

With Dorne and Nathalie earlier this year

Stu to abattoir

We decided that we would keep two of the calves until they are 2 or thereabouts but that we would do one as oldish veal. Stu was born first and so drew the short straw. We hope and believe his life was sweet though short and we plan on enjoying what we get from him including the skin.
Curing a cow/veal skin is a lot of work, we have had one not work and one that went well, so fingers crossed.
The inside of the abattoir - the staff are all very nice and friendly and we can go in and see that the animals are in a stall safely and comfortably. We take cows in the night before. Stu was in with another similar size cow.

We get the skin back before the meat. I have salted it and put it in the alum bath that has the sheepskin in it. I hoped to have time to get on with it straight away, but did not so it could be in there for some months...