As of yesterday, after a two week baking hiatus, I’m back on cow and cheese duty. While I enjoyed my time in the bakehouse — and learned quite a bit — I’m happy to be back in the barn and creamery. It’s funny, really. The barn is a hot, smelly place. The cows exude heat (among other things) but I’m starting to feel quite at home in there.

We’ve had a few births over the last week or so. In a few cases — namely Sara’s and Betty Davis’ — we caught only a quick glimpse of the calf before it went into hiding for a few days. Boop, Betty’s bull calf, was missing for three days or so. Likewise, no one has seen Sara’s calf since Saturday. Apparently, this is a characteristic of the Kerry breed. Their young tends to go into hiding for the first few days of their lives, during which time they do quite a bit of sleeping.

Interestingly, even the partial Kerries seem to do this. Boop, for example, is half Kerry. His father, like all the new calves, is John; Betty Davis, his mother, is part Ayrshire. It seems that most of the Kerry traits are dominant. All the cows are black or brown, for example, and start grazing very early. It’s interesting that less tangible traits should also take hold.

This hiding behavior makes a lot of sense, really, as they’re on the defenseless side at this point of their lives. It makes things a little stressful for us, though, as we’re never sure whether the calf’s actually ok and hiding or just kind of dead. Boop eventually came out of hiding, though, and we’re assuming the little Kerry will too.

In addition to the above mentioned calves, Brunhilde finally had a baby. We’ve been waiting for weeks for this birth and were starting to get a little worried (well, I was anyway). I haven’t seen the calf yet (mother and son are out in one of the fields by themselves) but hope to find the time to get out there tomorrow.

We’re planning on taking photographs of all the bull calves. I’ll try to post some of them here soon.