Dolly The Wonder Cow

This is Dolly The Wonder Cow.

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Or Dolly for short.

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We love Dolly and here’s why:

  • Dolly is calm, cool and collected.
  • She never gets nervous or hysterical – like our other cows.
  • She never tries to hurt us – like our other cows.
  • She never gets homicidal – like our other cows.

The other cows pick on her. They push her away from the feed bunk.  They domineer over her like a bunch of bullies. But Dolly is too easy-going and too much of a lady to fight back.

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Unlike all the rest of our cows, Dolly is not 100% Black Angus, a breed known for aggressiveness and hostility.  She’s part Black Angus and part Holstein, a milk cow breed.

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She was also a bottle calf, so she was raised by humans. As a result, she’s not paranoid about or hostile towards humans. She likes us.

While the rest of the cows start sharpening their knives when they see us approach, Dolly thinks to herself, “I wonder what those nice humans are doing?”

When we are working cattle and the rest of the cows are literally climbing the walls to get away from us, Dolly is out front of the pack: “Oh, you want me to go into the chute and up the ramp into the truck? Ok, I can do that.”

Sigh….we love Dolly.

Here’s Dolly’s calf, Blaze.

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Dolly loves Blaze and is a very good mother, always keeping an eye on her.

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We’re hoping to keep Blaze back as a heifer next year.

Blaze makes some pretty goofy expressions though.

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Her eyes look like they’re trying to get out of her head.

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And so does her tongue.

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Hope she grows out of this and becomes more like her mother. Dolly never makes strange expressions.

She –

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Oh well.

We still love Dolly. She’s our favorite no matter what her expression.

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xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxo

Suzanne

Cattle, corn, wheat, beans, mud, snow, ice, and drought. Plenty of fresh air and quiet. Our life is sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous, but never boring.

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20 Responses

  1. Tina says:

    Okay I am asking the obvious here…why raise black angus then? Why not get more Dollies as it were? I don’t know about ranching obviously but I am guessing the market is higher for angus. But I think Dolly is beautiful and I love her calf, she has such a sweet face. Tell the other cows to straighten up!

    • Suzanne says:

      You guessed right, 100% Black Angus are the breed of cattle that brings the most $ at the livestock auction these days. When I was a kid, Hereford was the popular breed, but sometime in the last 20 years Angus has been the popular breed. They have a longer frame. Longer frame = more meat.

  2. Tara says:

    Dolly is a wonderful cow, and Blaze is so very unique!
    Tara

  3. Edith says:

    Why don’t you keep Dolly as a milk Cow?

    You could ship her down here…………….:o) How much?

  4. Alica says:

    Maybe Dolly’s mothering skills will rub off on “the prisoner”! She reminds me of our last steer…a Holstein/Hereford cross. Love her white head and mostly black body.

    • Suzanne says:

      You’re very astute Alica – you’ve spent too much time watching cow behavior! 🙂 For the first time this year, we have her in with the heifers. The group this year is unusually nervous, jumpy, so we turned calm cool Dolly in with them hoping it would help them to calm down, and we think it has helped. I’m thinking we should put her in with the heifers every year from now on.

  5. Becky L says:

    A fun cow post. Love expressions by Blaze. Cute kiddo!

  6. Claudette says:

    Dolly and Blaze are so-o-o cute. I know nothing about cows,so are they going to stay with you or do they have to be eaten 🙁 I obviously would not be a good cow caretaker. You do take the most amazing photos, as always love your blog. How is Kitty?

    • Suzanne says:

      Dolly will stay with us until she’s old and can’t raise calves anymore. If Blaze turns out to have good confirmation, we’ll keep her too and in a couple years she’ll start having calves of her own.

      Kitty is enjoying the warmer weather and hopping outside for a little bit every day now. She loves to eat grass.

      Thanks for stopping by Claudette!

  7. Jeanne says:

    Love this little story. I can’t help wondering if Cutie Blaze could have a tongue that’s a little too long for her mouth! S’pose?

    • Suzanne says:

      Who knows? But the tongue hanging out is a calf thing. They grow out of it. They nurse with their tongue hanging out and then forget to put it back in their mouth when they’re done. Cute!

      • Jeanne says:

        Oh! I didn’t know they did that. My sweet Mom milked cows (for the cream $$) when I was young, but the calves were never left with their mothers. They were taught to drink from a bucket by sucking on the person’s fingers, who then would lower their head into the milk. It was hard for them at first, but they caught on. Anyway! I never got to see them nurse! They were fed some kind of powdered milk – I don’t know what it was.

        • Suzanne says:

          Sounds like you had a little dairy. Ours is a beef operation, a cow/calf business. We keep the cows and sell their calves when they are about a year old.

          • Jeanne says:

            What it was, was – we lived on a farm that wasn’t farmed! The cows were mostly Holsteins, and actually belonged to my uncle, but he did nothing with them, so Mom milked them herself. There was no bull on the property, but the neighbor’s bull came over to visit and took care of that!

          • Suzanne says:

            Now that’s living off the land.

  8. Kerry says:

    I just want to tell you how much I enjoy your blog. The pictures are just beautiful and…you have such a wonderful way with words. Just lovely! I’m a country girl living in the burbs for a while. My husband and I plan on moving to our little farmhouse in Iowa in the next few years. I get to have chickens again!
    Nothing sweeter then calves with their Moms. They always grab my heart.

    • Suzanne says:

      Well Thank you Kerry! Good to hear you’ll be getting back to the country soon. You can’t take the country out of the girl, right? I’ve never had chickens, although I’d like to raise some for meat. I don’t know about the butchering part though….

  9. Mary J Luse says:

    Dolly looks a lot like the Maggie that we used to have. She was a polled hereford and angus cross. She had a very good disposition and was easy going. We finally had to let Maggie go last fall. She was getting old. We didn’t want to see her go down where we would have to end her life. She wasn’t a pet but she was special.

  10. Tina says:

    Suzanne, please get some chicks. We need a new adventure. I think someone else could do the butchering. You would also get the benefit of the eggs.

    • Suzanne says:

      Ah…therein lies the problem. Chickens are butchered at about 4-5 mths old. They’re just kids. 🙁

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