After checking on the heifer for what seemed like forever, doing day, evening and night checks, Lazer's baby finally arrived and it's a heifer (girl) calf.  I will admit we were not disappointed in the calf being a heifer.

Lazer has turned into a very good momma, here they are when the calf is about 10 hours old and trying to find some breakfast.  I think we went to sleep around 12:30 a.m. after what could have been a disaster but turned out not too bad.  The heifer was pretty weak still around the 11:30 p.m. mark, being about an hour after she freshened, and not really standing up yet or even trying, we helped her to latch on to get some colostrum into her which is very vital for her as soon as possible.  Jim got up at 2:00 a.m. to get her to latch on and suck and Lazer would stand but wanted to continue to lick her which is great, but the calf needed to get to eating.  Jim had to tie her to a post so that the calf could suck.

Jim being the always early riser that he is headed out to the barn to check on momma and baby.  He took this photo as he sat in the stall to watch the two.  Being that Lazer is a first-time momma she has been an absolute gem; we fortunately were able to get up close to not only her but her calf as well.  I'm guessing Lazer is enjoying her new home with us and trusts us with her calf.

We haven't named our new calf yet and we need to do that soon.  The experience of seeing the birth of an animal here on our homestead was nothing short of amazing.

Where do I even begin.  Our cow Tilly is no longer with us.  We had to bring her to the sale barn for slaughter as she wasn't well enough to be a milk cow for our homestead or for that matter any farm or homestead.  Bringing in our vet who took some blood, the results of the test he took on her we found out that she had Johne's Disease.   Hearing that was a very disappointing blow to us, we were getting very attached to her already and had even gotten a new calf from a neighboring dairy farm because our other calf was actually purchased for some friends.  The calf is with our friends who have a dairy cow that took our calf until she can be weaned.

So, we had to do some cleaning up in the corral area and pastures where Tilly had been before we could even think about bringing another milk cow onto our farm.  We cannot pasture any new milk cow where Tilly pastured for at least a year.  Our beef cow is okay and will be fine.  After we got everything all ready which was not an easy task, we were ready for a new milk cow, and I'm happy to say we found one and her name is Lazer, she's a registered Jersey and is a first-time heifer and will freshen in about 12 days.  We are so excited to have a birth on our farm other than the kittens that were born a few weeks back.

We also got pigs again this year, but we got them a bit later than we did last year.  These guys are quite small, but we plan to fatten them up pretty good.

Our two barn cats had a total of nine kittens.  I just had to show you two of my favorite ones.  The top one is a male and is by far the biggest of all the kittens, our grandsons named him Tom.  The second one is such a pretty girl, but my photos just don't do either of the kitten's justice.

Seeing the volunteer sunflowers growing in amongst the oats was such a pretty sight and having new life on the homestead makes up for everything.