Countdown to Ayan's surprise party

I bought Ayan at the Heart of America sale in 2011.  She has raised four or more pairs of orphan calves for me, both dairy and beef.  We finally brought her home to dry her up this summer.  She had been producing for two years straight.  We had been trying to get her bred since I bought her...but no luck.  Finally in February, the magic happened.  We had sent her to the dairy to get bred by the bull, but we don't think he ever got the job done, so we had her A.I.ed.  She is due within the week.  Ayan is almost ten years old now.  

She is so big, that they couldn't tell us anything other than she was pregnant.  He couldn't even reach the fetus to actually feel it, he could just feel the nodules on the sack.  He couln't even retract it.  So what she's having is a big surprise.  If it is a heifer, we are going to have to have a DNA test done to determine her sire-whether it is Nick from the dairy or if it is the store-bought sire used for her A.I.  If it is a bull, he's going to the sale.

We're praying for a safe delivery and a healthy cow and calf.

Bye Bye!!!

Even though I would like to keep them all forever, there are not enough resources to.
At dark-thirty the other morning I had to load up Ayan, my almost-ten-year-old Brown Swiss nurse cow, her bull calf, Andy, and Manly, the Lineback bull calf.  MawMaw took me to school, and my mom hauled them all down to the Oklahoma City Stockyards.

I haven't gotten rid of any in a long time it seems.  Faith, the Holstein, got sold to a dairy.  I sold Juicy's bull calf to my breeder.  The rest of them have all been "orphan" calves that were raised on the nurse cows just for the auction.

I'm not sure how I feel about this load going today.  Ayan is one of the best nurse cows in the world, but she was SO HARD TO BREED BACK.  It took over two years!  Then she injured a second teat.  Then she hardly had any desire to push during calving.  On top of all of that, she's HUGE and eats A LOT.  (She's not very friendly either.  She's stubborn.  She doesn't like to be petted/rubbed.  You would think she wouldn't be any of those things considering what a FANTASTIC nurse cow she is.)

There, I just talked myself into the idea that selling them is okay.