“Dairy cows are super skinny until they are two to three months old.”
The little calf in question looked like it was all skin and bones. I would have liked to have said it was cute – after all, what baby animal isn’t cute? – but in reality, it looked so pathetic it made me nervous. This feeling must have stuck with me as I found myself this morning writing a blog post about skinny cows. To reassure myself I ended up doing some research online. I Googled: skinny dairy calf vs beef calf – nothing about calf sizes, but a lot about feeding regimen. Why are dairy calves so skinny? – nothing about dairy calves, but a whole section on showing dairy cows (hair is buzzed off) vs showing ‘fluffy’ beef cows (hair is combed to make them look puffy). Ultimately, I ended up discovering lots of interesting facts about feeding dairy cows, breeding them, their four intestines (they don’t actually have four stomachs), and statistics for how much dairy we consume in the U.S. The only mention of skinny calves turned out to be an animal activist discussion of how taking calves away from the mothers too early effects their weight. I’d like to be able to say that I walked away with a better understanding of how calves are weaned and why. But actually, after all my reading, I am more confused. I suppose this is why there are entire Ph.D programs for bovine husbandry. On the other hand, some of the research I found really interesting and wanted to share with you. Given that it came from a local dairy site, well, it may have a slight bent to it. Even still, I particularly like the one about how much ice cream Oregonians eat. COOL COW FACTS – courtesy of Umpqua Diary. (Find more here: http://www.umpquadairy.com/recipes-more/cool-cow-facts/)
Anyone else feel like a big bowl of Moose Lake Fudge? What’s your favorite flavor of Ice Cream? Do you have any milking experience? I’d love to hear your stories. And to prove it I will be giving away a copy of my book, UNTANGLING THE KNOT, to one lucky commenter in October. Leave a comment for any of my blog posts and at the end of each month I will randomly select one visitor/commenter to receive a free download of my book. (Note: winner will be notified by a reply linked to their original comment…. Check back at the end of the month for directions on how to claim your prize!)
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“Aww, how cute.” It was a teacher work day and we were at home watching educational YouTube videos of cute animals. It began with an email letting me know that our new little lion cubs at the Oregon Zoo had their first health check. Since we didn’t even know that we had new lion cubs, we of course had to check out the video. For any of you who have been on YouTube, you know how easy it is to move from watching videos of lion cubs, to elephants playing, to a baby koala eating leaves, to a buffalo jumping on a trampoline. It’s a great marketing model and made me think, what would school be like if we could take advantage of a child’s (okay, or adult’s) short attention span and link off to new areas of connected learning. Maybe it would look like the 4 through 8 charter school my daughter just started going to. Take, for example, their first semester theme: Survival. They have taken this theme all the way into their social world (forming teams which compete for tools of survival in order to build teamwork and friendships. In literature they are reading survival books, like Hatchet. But wait, there’s a shiny object – when Hatchet encounters a tornado (shhh, don’t tell my daughter, she hasn’t read that part yet:>) they link off and begin learning about how a tornado is formed in science …. Ooooh, another shiny object- spirals. In art they begin learning about how to draw spirals and then in math, what does that look like. It is a model which millions of people who use YouTube recognize as working. But, in case you haven’t experienced this phenomenon, I’ll get you started. Here’s the YouTube video on the baby lions and a link to another video with elephants playing (seriously, you have to watch it, it is too cute). Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myB-ySL9PAg&list=UU3oWOleSolsVhal5krntOlg I’d love to hear where you go from there. And if you end up at the YouTube video of me visiting Vikingsholm or kicking field goals let me know which bright shiny objects got you there.
I love hearing from my blog readers. And to prove it I’m giving away a copy of my book BETTING JESSICA to one lucky commenter during the month of September. Leave a comment for any of my blog posts and at the end of each month I will randomly select one visitor/commenter to receive a free download of my book. (Note: winner will be notified by a reply linked to their original comment…. Check back at the end of the month for directions on how to claim your prize!) |
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June 2020
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