Hydeaway Calf Hotel (Heifer Raising)

Hydeaway Farm started raising heifers in September 2009. Currently we are raising stud Friesland heifers for Brett Gordon of Arcadia Farming.

How it Works

Once a month we receive a batch of about twenty heifers, newly weaned off milk and ready to be fed only hay and concentrates. For the first month they live in groups of ten; and then up until they are twenty-two months old and two months from calving, they live in batches of twenty according to age and weight.

Every month they are weighed, measured, and de-ticked. They are also given any innoculants or deworming remedies they require. Every day, twice a day, they are fed a carefully chosen formula of concentrates individually; once a day either Dinki or Jon supervises the feeding. They are fed in their individual feed bowls to easier pick up diseases. If a sick animal is noticed, she is immediately isolated and treated according to her disease.

The calves are also fed as much Smutsfinger hay as they will eat.

When they are fifteen months old the calves are artificially inseminated with the semen of their owner's choice.

The calves live in a feedlot system, a series of grassy paddocks of moderate size, where they have enough space to frolic as calves are meant to frolic. They do not go out to graze, however, due to the size of the farm. We try to keep their handling as stress-free and relaxed as possible. We are very careful to keep the records up to date.

We are hoping to expand the heifer raising business, but we only raise dairy heifers.

Our Heifers

Though it took us a month to get used to the sheer size of these Friesland things, we came to rather adore them, and personalities are standing out. None more so than our beloved Jentle, whom we will be very sorry to send back to Arcadia.

Jentle is tame even by our standards. She follows us around and licks us and tries her best to digest our clothes when we're not looking. She's a shaggy, mostly white heifer from our first group, the Js (because the first Arcadian ever to set hoof on the farm was promptly named Joy). Sometimes she gets a little spoilt when we sneak her a handful of pellets that the other calves are too wild to take out of our hand. She's more dog than cow to tell the truth and all the Hydes adore her limpid eyes and long, white lashes.

There is also Jaylynn, a pretty young girl from the J group, who has the most beautiful symmetrical blaze down her nose, which made us give her the most beautiful name we could find to match; so she was promptly named Jaylynn.

The calf with probably the most personality was named Just Nuisance after she jumped over the bars of the crush, hurtled through a barbed wire fence, charged through the midst of the Blind Squad (making them wander wildly in circles, bellowing their indignation and trying to butt Just Nuisance but none of them had any clear idea of where she was), and took three tries to catch. We only caught her when she stumbled and fell over, when six people piled onto her like Steve Irwin and the crew pile onto a twenty-foot crocodile. Just Nuisance kept up this performance two days later when she jumped the fence and gambolled off with half the group at her heels. She is an enormous hairy creature and despite the fact that she is, well, a nuisance the Hydes love her for her fun personality. She's become something of a legend. When the dog dashed underneath the desk, pulling the speakers, keyboard and mouse down after it, it had done a Just Nuisance. When the calves got into the house and pulled the tinsel off the Christmas tree Firn said, "Looks like Just Nuisance." When the foal got into the garden, panicked, ran through two electric fences and ended up in the henhouse, it was "Just Nuisance again."

When Group Two arrived we watched an enormous beast gallop laps around the cows' paddock with a handful of her herdmates at nine o' clock at night, causing one to fall through the wire, we regretted that we had already named the leader of this expedition Snippet. Snippet is almost worse than Just Nuisance, if that is possible, but she's quite tame so she gets extra handfuls of calf feed too. When Group Three arrived, we were ready. When the first one tried to make a run for it we called her Trouble, and when the other one jumped through the bars and did a Just Nuisance we called her Triple Trouble. Unfortunately one slipped through our fingers and was named Trickle when she should have been called Ten Times Trouble. Trick has become rather a favourite, and last time we put heifers through the crush she escaped three times because we could catch her again.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the behaviour of Snippet, Trickle, Trouble, Triple Trouble, Just Nuisance and co., we find the naughty ones are our favourite ones because they are invariably very beautiful and have very strong personalities, especially Just Nuisance. (Last time Brett Gordon arrived to inspect his 'young ladies', Just Nuisance snuck up behind him and calmly started eating his shirt. Typical Just Nuisance.) Sometimes the Hydes muse that Frieslands really are a lot nuttier than Jerseys, aren't they, since they find the only patch of mud in their paddock, squeeze into it and stare woefully at whoever passes, mooing, We've Got Mud Stress. Then we feel so guilty we move them to a fresh paddock without a droplet of mud in it.

(More often than not, Just Nuisance leads them back into the original paddock, or any other paddock with mud, and they do the whole Mud Stress thing again. Maybe Just Nuisance bribes them into doing it.)

Jentle and Firn                                                                            Just Nuisance standing still for long enough to plot

                                                                                                        the next escapade.