YoYo is a red heifer calf born the middle of last January. A heifer is the word that describes a female cow that has not yet had a calf.
She has been featured here in "Hoof Prints" before (see two items below). YoYo is now 9 nonths and growing up to be a big girl. Here she is at the hay feeder with another of our calves, a dun (brown) heifer calf born last spring.
YoYo was an appropritate name for this little red heifer because she had so much energy she bounced around like a yoyo. All of our cow names start with "Y" this year. The American Highland Cattle Association publishes an slphabet where each letter corresponds to a year. By naming our Highland calves with names that start with the letter for a particular year, we always know how old they are when we call their names.
October is traditionally the month when we wean the spring calves from their mothers. It gets really noisy when we separate the calves from the cows. These girls will soon be in the weaning pen where they will need to stay for three weeks while their mothers dry up. It's important that the mothers stop lactating to conserve energy during the coler months so they are in good physical condition for calving again next spring.
