Cows and one old sewing machine.

I wrote somewhere (here or in an answer) that I would show photos from the farm someday, well it's not so much to see outside in the winter and hard to get decent photos of the animals inside although the houses are well lit with floor lights they don't light up the photos. But it's the beginning of spring and we have better daylight so now you will meet a few of our cows. The first one is Brydja, her color is brindle and she has just given birth to a beautiful little heifer.


Here she is, the color is not quite right in the photo, she's much darker, but will most likely end up with the same color as her aunt (mother's sister). Our calfs that are born red can grow up to be dark or light brindle (no calf is born brindle), sea gray, or sea gray brindle or all kinds of red, light (sometimes pink), medium and a few shades of dark red, like the aunt in the next photo.


Here is auntie Brussa. She has red ears, the top of her head is red, around the nose is a very light red color and a line that runs from head to tail on top of her back is also red. The rest is very dark, almost black.


Next is Lygi, she's the only cow we own at the moment that is pure black, well, with some white. I think the red you can see is from the camera flash. The red one beside her is Sleggja.


This is Grabrok, she's sea gray brindle. That is not a common color.


Karma was born red and white, but turned out the same color as Brussa.


Now this is Hogvaer,that means modest, she was the picture of modesty when she had her first calf's last September so that was what I named her. It only lasted about a week, that cow is pushing, really pushing, but she is ever so modest in her pushyness so she got to keep the name.
She had twins, they had bin dead a few days, most likely because they were so huge and all tangled together, this is the second time in 20 years that a cow has twins the first time giving a birth. She is light red and white.


Here are the first twins born from a young heifer and luckily for the mother they were very small. This is Dyrd, she and her sister are light red and white with just a few slashes of brindle here and there.


The other twin is named Dasemd. They are so much alike and very close, they don't like it if they are not side by side.


This is Litla-Raud (Little-Red). She is light red and had her first calf about two months ago. She has not produced any milk that has bin good enough for selling, hm, could not even be used to feed the calf's. We are waiting for her to get the penicillin out of her system so we can slaughter her. We don't like to use penicillin but in cases like hers we have to. She got so sick after giving birth, got a high fever and the works and would have died if not for the penicillin. But that meant two months waiting after the last injection. By then we were pretty sure she would never be any good , she only got better of the fever but nothing else got cured.


And last, but not least. Here is our Hyrna. She's a dark red lady of an unknown age. We are her third owners. The first one died, I think in 1997 and then our friend bought her. She had given birth to at least two calf's by then. A year later the new owner moved to another part of the country so we bought her. She is still very light of movements, and only got an udder infection for the first time when she last had a calf. That was in September, ehem, 2007.

Yes I know, I know, it's not efficient and profit giving to feed an unpregnant cow for such a long time, but she was put in a stable for a few days with some other cows and a bull. They were all waiting for the car that would take them to the slaughter house, while waiting she got in heat and the bull got loose and impregnated her, at least that's what hubby hoped for so he held her back when the car came. She will give birth next September and that will be her last time. It's bin getting harder and harder to get her pregnant and I'm pretty sure this was her last egg.

She's quite a character, she's easily offended and shows it by not looking at you and not allowing you to pet her, which is something she dearly loves. When hubby put her in the horse stable last autumn (we needed all the stalls in the cow stable for milking cows) she got so offended she did not look at him for all the weeks she was there. When I came to check on her and she was so moody that I just had to laugh, she gave me one wounded - murdering look and it took me days to make it up to her.

She has the most beautiful horns and is very careful where she positions them when we are near, unless she's grumpy, then we need to push at them to get her to behave. And she's plenty grumpy these days, she's gotten so fat that hubby is feeding her less quality hay, it does not do animals good to be too fat.


Now then, here's a sewing machine that I got last autumn. When my mom visited her brother one day, he and his wife were cleaning out a storage room and asked if she thought I would be interested (was I ever) in this old sewing machine that had belonged to my aunts mom or granny. I'm not sure which and have bin meaning to phone to get more info. It's so beautiful, it was really, really, dirty and black all over. You could not see the name plate at first look, but now it turns smoothly although I'm told there are some things missing. Like the shooter? meaning the bobbin in today machines. I think.


I've tried to search the Internet for information about it but have come up with nothing. The plate says CLEMENS MULLER (with two dots over the U) DRESDEN and then TRADE MARK under the magical beast. If anyone knows something about it or where I can find info, I would be so happy to hear about it.


Well that's it for now. I'm off to bed, this post took way to long to make. But that's okay, it was fun.

Sunna