I Love Lucy…the Cow!

In the past I introduced you to Doug the Bull and Archie the Bottle Calf, but today I want to introduce you to my favorite of all, Lucy the Cow.  

Lucy was born in January of 2007.  I can remember this without having to look because I remember when we purchased her mother who was pregnant with her.  Kevin and I had a family Christmas to go to one day in December 2006, but on our way (not really) we stopped by a cattle sale.  Kevin had already scoped out which ones he was interested in.  Right after we sat down in the stands, one of those bred heifers was up for sale.  Kevin ended up with the winning bid, so we paid for her and headed down the road to the family Christmas.  That was the fasted cattle sale I have ever been too!  Usually you have to sit there all day long waiting for the ones that you’re interested in to come up for sale.  

Lucy was born the following month and she had a distinct face.  We never tagged her because we both know who she is.  She’s been a great addition to our cattle heard over the years.  

Most of the time she is hanging out in the pasture with her other friends and her calf.  Then every June we artificially inseminate her.  She then spends the next 40 weeks pregnant.  We shoot to have our cattle start calving in March in hopes that the weather is starting to warm up a little by that time.  

Lucy is like most of the other cattle we have on our farm.  We run a cow/calf operation which means we have the mommy cows that give birth to the baby calves.  We eventually will sell the calves and keep the cows which will have another calf the next year if all goes as planned.  We also have some bulls that assist in the breeding process if the artificial insemination doesn’t take.  But mostly we have a bunch of heifers (first time mommas) and cows (who have had more than one calf) on our sixth generation family farm in Iowa.