Loren took our daughter Avery Jane (11 months) out to the ranch this weekend. Avery owns one of her own cows, it was a very generous gift from another Marin County rancher. We are hoping her cow (and its future offspring) will produce enough calves in the next 18 years to give Avery a jump start on her college fund! The cow had one calf last year and is about to have another calf in the next week or so. You can see in the photo below that her eartag says “AJ.”

Avery at the ranch with Loren.

We are very pleased with how the grass is looking right now. We are hoping for a few more rain showers in the next couple of months to set us up for a great summer.

While most of our cows have their calves in the Fall, a small group have their calves in the early springtime. We call them our Spring Calvers, even though it is really still the wintertime here (even in sunny California). Of this group, we have had 18 calves so far and are expecting another 10 or so in the next 10 days.

This is a Valentine’s Day calf, born yesterday. This calf is one of the few on the ranch that have any white of them. We call calves like this one a “black baldy,” which means it is a cross between a hereford bull and an angus cow. This calf is 3/4 angus and 1/4 hereford, while most of our cattle are 100% angus.

This Black Baldy calf was born on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2010.

Today we moved a group of about 120 cows and calves from the east fields to the west fields.  They had been in the east fields since the first rains of the season and had eaten just about all of the available grass.  The west fields have grass and clover about 14 inches tall, just perfect for the cattle to graze and gain healthy weight.

Moving to greener pastures. Green grass ahead.

This time of year our sheep begin to lamb.  We have had about 40 new baby lambs born in the past 2 weeks.  Seeing the little lambs run through the green grass is just amazing.  Here are some of the newest additions, they were born on Christmas Day.

These are twins when they were just 1 day old.

Another shot of the twins.

A group of sheep.

A few weeks ago we put seven of our bulls in with our cows.  They will have about sixty days to breed.  Since this is a family friendly website we’ll spare you the details and real action shots but here is a photo of one of our bulls in a field of about thirty cows.  This bull weighs about 2,000 pounds and is two and a half years old.  He can easily breed up to five cows per day.  Not too shabby considering he was a virgin two weeks ago! 

Bull #7860 taking a look at his prospects.