Hooray, we have finally witnessed some proper ‘bulling’ amongst the cows. First thing this morning, we saw Parsley mount Sage and then later on the older steer from last year was really nudging her udder and then he too mounted her. Sage stood to allow the mounting so showing herself to be in the ‘standing heat’ phase. If we wanted her to become pregnant today, we would have had to ring the Artificial Insemination man and he would have come out this evening to inseminate her. The rule of thumb is to wait 12 hours or so after ‘standing heat’ and then inseminate as that is the time just before ovulation should take place.
We now know what date to expect Sage’s next season and it will probably be the one after that when we will want to call in the AI man. That will then give us the end April/start of May births we want. We aren’t entirely sure but we may have seen Parsley in season too, back on the 10th. We saw Thyme do a half-hearted attempt at a mount. If this was a season then some time in the next few days, she ought to show signs of another one, cow cycles being 17-24 days apart.
It is odd, thinking about next year’s breeding now when we still have such young calves but such is the nature of smallholding: a huge balance between dealing with the here and now and also being very vigilant about planning for the future.