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Grace has been confirmed in calf to Itaska’s Fillpail Twinkler and is due on December 8 2017.

Stacey was dried off yesterday and is now on maternity leave until she calves mid July 2017.  I’ll be milking Lily but at least I can have a few days off now and again.

Lottie was AI’d again last week.  As Jean has gone away for a few weeks I took Lottie up to see Winston just to make sure she is in calf.  I hope it’s the AI as it is sexed but Winston is a beautiful little bull.

Grace has been scanned and is in calf to Itaskas Fillpail Twinkler and Lily’s milk strip test indicates her progesterone is high on day 20 so I’m fairly confident she is also pregnant.

A single line means high progesterone   I’ll send a milk sample to Farmwest in 10 days for confirmation

Lottie will be 21 days post insemination next Friday.  Jean used sexed semen for Lottie so the chances of a pregnancy are not so high as with normal semen.

I think Priti may be in season today.  Lottie was being particularly aggressive towards her and presumably ended up by ramming her up against a fence.  My fences are good but it only took one piece of sharp wire.

Thanks to technology I was able to send Garnett a quick photo.  He confirmed that it would be best stitched so I brought her into a stable to keep her clean and he came over later and stitched it up for me.

Jean came over in the morning and based on the milk test strip we decided to inseminate Lily.  Lily was 21 days since her last insemination and was showing absolutely no external signs of estrus.  Much to our delight when Jean was raking out the manure masses of clear discharge poured out of her so the milk strip wasn’t lying.

Jean also inseminated Lottie.  The only clue there was dull Colin was sniffing her vulva and he normally isn’t interested in much at all.

Today we went down to examine the two heifers; Grace had blood on her tail which indicated she had ovulated! Now we wait 21 days.

Lottie still showed no signs of estrus so we decided to leave her as the sexed semen is too expensive to waste.

It was day 20 for Lily.  Last night I tested her milk (P4 Rapid) and got a negative result.  I decided to separate the calves and milk her again this afternoon when she was full and repeat the test. 2 lines with the lower one darker indicates imminent estrus.  However, if you test the milk at the wrong stage of milking you can get a false reading.

Although she showed very minimal signs of estrus Jean came over and inseminated Grace on Wednesday. We were both gratified to see a nice clear discharge indicating that she was in season.

Lottie also showed no signs but Jean inseminated her anyway as she had been injected.  However, her cervix was closed so it was probably a waste of time.

When you use estrumate it is a blanket insemination of all animals is frequently carried out in case you miss the physical signs.