farmlet.co.nz

Not long ago, Kevin and I came to a decision: We ought to sell Esmerelda and her calf. Esmerelda is our dear pet, and a fabulous beast, so this was not an easy decision to make. We love Esmerelda, and will really miss having her around, even though she’s a bit big and stroppy!

This is the picture we used on the FOR SALE flyer

Why would we sell Esmerelda?

* The size of the Farmlet means that we are not really big enough to run three dairy cows, especially if we also want to keep some of their offspring to raise for meat. (We were really only looking for one more cow when we found Rosie and Coco, but they were only for sale as a pair. That’s how we ended up with three cows.)

* Esmerelda is a big cow. She eats a lot more grass than the Jerseys. Her larger size also makes her less than ideal for the steep terrain on our land, especially when it gets muddy. Her hooves make a real mess!

* For our own consumption, we prefer Jersey milk over Friesian milk.

* It doesn’t seem right to separate Rosie and Coco, who have been together since birth, so Ezzie is the most obvious candidate for a new home.

Since we are so fond of Esmerelda, we wouldn’t like to sell her to a commercial dairy herd. We’d rather she went to a small farm, where she can still be Queen of the Paddock and get treats from a bucket! It’s very important to us to find a good home for her. Two days ago, we designed a fabulous flier to put up at our local store, the “Bush Fairy Dairy.” I also prepared an ad. for the “pets and livestock” section of the local newspaper. At $600, including calf, we think she’s a great buy. (I called a local stock agent, and he advised us as to a fair price to ask for her.) She’s got lots of milk and would be a good house cow and/or nurse cow. She’s friendly, and can be moved around and managed without a dog (All it takes is a plastic bucket with a treat in it.) We hope that the right kind of person is looking for a cow just like Ezzie.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Cows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.