You do not have a veterinarian AI your cattle. Contact the company who sells the frozen semen and find out who their representative is in your area. Cost should be about $25 for the labor plus the cost of the semen, which can be anywhere from $15 to several hundred, depending upon the reputation of the bull you select. You must have a safe way to confine your cow for the AI. A squeeze chute with a head gate is the safest method, and if you do not already own a squeeze chute, you have no business keeping a bull. Either you must be able to tell when your cow is ovulating, or you do a timed insemination, using drugs to induce ovulation. That is what is usually done with a herd, so that the inseminator can inseminate multiple cows in one trip and the cows will all calf within a 2-3 day period. If you want richer milk, do not mess around with a jersey bull. Buy yourself a nice purebred jersey cow, and simply combine her milk with the milk of your Holsteins. If you have a small farm, you should not be breeding to dairy bulls, anyway. Breed your cows to an Angus bull and then your steer calves are worth something, at least, instead of being worthless. There is no point in your trying to breed purebred dairy springers unless you have performance tested and registered cows of outstanding pedigree and you breed them to an expensive, fashionable, and high test bull. I don't know what the heck you would do with a Jersey Holstein calf. The bull calves would be totally worthless, you wouldn't be able to give them away, and the heifers would be nearly equally worthless. Why would you spend the money to raise one, just to discover in 2 years that you have a runt cow that produces a low volume of no fat milk? There is no guarantee that when to do a cross that the resulting calf will only have the traits that you consider desirable. They could easily be born with all the traits that you consider to be undesirable. If you want Jersey cows, buy 1-2 nice registered Jerseys, and then if you want more jerseys, have them AI'ed with semen from a high test top quality, proven registered Jersey bull. It would be cheaper and more certain, though, to simply purchase another young Jersey than to go to the trouble of breeding and 50% chance of getting a bull. Although on the issue of the sex of calves, it is possible to purchase sexed semen and get whichever sex calf you prefer.

How is the little bull calf doing? Has he started to eat your flowers yet? We would let a friend keep a pig in with ours, and we split the feeding chores. He owned and ran a little bar and grill contributed a lot in the way of 'roughage' for the little piggies. We bought the regular feed. One afternoon, my DH and I wandered back to the pigpen to check them out. They were all staggering around, I was horrified! I was going to the house to call the vet, because I just knew my pigs had a horrible disease; Mad Pig, maybe? DH wouldn't let me call. Come to find out, the owner of the little bar and grill would empty every bottle of beer into a bucket, and give it to the pigs. Everyday! They were all drunk, but it didn't seem to hurt the pork chops. Janie

Is is possible for you to get lamb's or sheep's liver? Much nicer, less coarse flavour. Do NOT add salt - it really toughens the meat. Soaking in milk does not tenderise liver - but it does help to remove any bitterness in the taste. Leave it soaking in the milk for about an hour, if possible. Liver is best cooked only until medium-rare. The longer you cook it, the tougher and dry-er it becomes. I prefer to cook liver slow-and-gentle. http://www.ochef.com/166.htm

Nice capture...I had to laugh at myself cos I thought calves and a limousine?...I've never heard of that specific breed before...They are a lovely color!