Many of the local children in West Michigan are following the story of Maui through Kidsville News. I thought this might be interesting for other people as well.
Here’s the first installment with some pictures:
Calf Report 1
With this article, we are going to begin the “Calf Report”. We have picked one of our newborn Country Dairy heifer (girl) calves to watch her grow over the next year. Therefore, let me introduce you to “Maui”. Maui’s full name is “View-Home Time Maui” but that’s quite a mouthful to say, so we just call her “Maui”. She was born on January 8, 2011 to Mae, one of our best cows, and Klassic Big Time (Time) who is a very excellent bull (daddy).
What makes her mother one of our best cows? As you can see from the picture, Mae is very beautiful cow! She has good body conformation. That means that her body is shaped right in order to produce a lot of good tasty milk over her lifetime. Maui is Mae’s third baby. With her first two babies, Mae averaged making over 10 gallons of milk a day! Mae also has a high butter-fat and protein content in her milk. Those two milk ingredients are important because these are used for making butter, ice cream, and cheese!
Maui’s father, Time, is a young bull. However, Time comes from some great parents who are known for making lots of high butter-fat milk and producing daughters with good body conformation. These two things are important because we need good milk and good cows that make milk for a long time.
Because Maui comes from such great parents, Country Dairy expects her to grow into an excellent cow someday. It is important for us to take good care of Maui and our other calves. One of the most important things we do is feed them. You can see that one of the pictures shows Maui enjoying one of her first bottles of milk. Have a good time on the journey with us over the next few months as we watch this baby grow into a heifer.