Elvis is now running with the rest of the little herd full time. He got milk up until about 10 weeks of age, as well as being supplemented with good hay and weaner pellets. He still gets weaner pellets as much as he likes, he can help himself to them. I’ve rigged up the gate into the calf pen so that only he or the other littlies can get in to the pellets, to keep the gobble-guts Dora and Hotblack out.
Mostly he hangs around with the other calves. He is a bit slow moving compared to the rest of them, kind of ambles along, so he is often a ways behind them all! He has given me a few scares by not being with the rest of the herd at first, I spent hours looking for him one day, only to find him sitting in the shade up by the dam, while the rest of the cows were on the opposite side of the farm! The good thing is, if I call him, he normally answers with a Moo, which makes it easier to find him!
He still loves his scratches, he stretches out his head for me to rub under his chin. He also still chews on my hand. And shirt. And anything else he can wrap his chops around.
The grass is really drying off now, and soon we will start feeding hay and lucerne silage to the cows again. They do well on the lucerne over summer, without losing condition. They tend to hang about in the creek areas at the moment, as there is still green pick there, won’t be long until it is all dry again though.
The flies are terrible at the moment, there’s a gap in late spring and early summer, between the spring active dung beetles and the summer active ones. When the dung beetles aren’t on the case, the flies build up. Apparently the Ag department have another dung beetle they are working on releasing to hopefully fill this gap.
I tried to take a photo the other day with the timer on my phone to show how big he is getting!
magrathea farm 