Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Diversity in Eaton Rapids

Today is a lawn mowing day so you get a short post.

Ducks.  Hmmmm!  Black ones and white ones.  No knockout games here.
Three mama cows and three calves.  Daddy is a Shorthorn.  White mama is mostly Charolais, the red mama with the black calf is mostly Shorthorn and the black mama has a goodly dose of Angus in her.  Eaton Rapids is what you call "diverse".
Volunteer Kale seedlings.  By the look of them, one of the parents was Red Russian and the other was Improved Dwarf Siberian.  A riot of leaf shapes but otherwise civil behavior by all concerned.
Red Oak seedling just popped out of the ground, maybe two inches tall.  The seed was collected from a precocious lass  near a big-box store.

1 comment:

  1. From Lucky in Kentucky

    "Joe…

    Looking at the photos of the cows in today’s post…

    IF indeed, the ‘daddy’ is a shorthorn, the red calf must belong to the red cow, and the two black calves belong to the black and ‘white’ cow(who may be, in actuality, a ‘black’ cow, with the Charolais color-inhibitor gene exerting its effect).



    I’ve got a few ‘white’ (and quite a few ‘brown’) cows in the herd, recipients of either the Charolais gene, coming down from a little yellow linebacked cow I bought back in ’86, or the Simmental color-inhibitor gene from some traditional yellow & white Simmental sires I used back in the late ‘80s.

    This spring, two ‘white’ cows calved – one is 7/8 Angus, and birthed a white Angus-sired calf. The other is ¾ AN ¼ SM, and delivered a black Shorthorn-sired calf. Both cows are genetically ‘black’(though the one that had the white calf this year, had a nice red heifer last year, by a SH bull), but the inhibitor/diluter genes don’t always play nice.



    We’ve been using some solid-red Shorthorn AI sires for the past 5 or 6 years, over AngusxSimAngus cows – and the SH-sired calves are blowing the doors off everything we’ve ever raised! Loving those halfblood SH steers; still early in the game to see how the SH-sired heifers are gonna pan out as mamas.

    We made the move to Shorthorn to bring in some good maternal traits… but I’m thinking Shorthorn is a really good TERMINAL breed, too!"

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