The new addition to the farm has a new addition

We have wanted cattle since before we were married.  So after 20 years we have moved to a home that will accommodate a cow.  We picked a small dual purpose breed, Dexter.  We picked her out Friday after Thanksgiving  and she, Erica, was really pregnant at the time.  We figured she would have the calf before we could get her but she hung in there and nine hours after she arrived at our farm she delivered.  Boy, oh boy, did Erica deliver!

                                                         A beautiful red bull calf. Ted.

Ted is three weeks old now and doing great.  So now the fun begins.  We are going to try to take a pasture raised dexter cow and gentle her to the point that we can sit down next to her, reach under her, grab her teats and milk her.  Wish me luck! 

So here is my thought process.  Get her used to confined space and us being very close. So I add two round pen panels into her larger pen.  I will feed her between this two panels and slowly decrease the space between them.  Here is a picture of our first practice.  I closed the panels to form a triangle once she was in there. I waited until she was calm and eating again before I opened the panels.  I hope to do this every day until I can have her walk in between the panels set up like a stanchion.

                                        Just had to add pictures of that cute face.

My Wages Farm is a small homestead founded in December 2010. Our first Jacob sheep 'Angie' was bought in February of 2011 and lambed 'Ivy' April 25 doubling our flock size. In October 2011 rams, 'Lightning Bolt' and 'Thunder', and ewe 'Vanessa' joined the flock. So begins our adventures in caring for a heritage sheep breed. The farm has other animals and birds that are under our care but the sheep will hopefully be a source of income...My Wages.

Why 'My Wages' for the farm name?

I think I read Genesis 29-31 about ten times hoping to find something that would make a good name for a farm with a herd of Jacob sheep.  What I found was wages and my wages is what jumped out at me, nine times as a matter of fact.

Gen_29:15  Then Laban said to Jacob, "Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?"
Gen_30:18  Leah said, "God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband." So she called his name Issachar.
Gen_30:28  Name your wages, and I will give it."
Gen_30:32  let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages.
Gen_30:33  So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen."
Gen_31:7  yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.
Gen_31:8  If he said, 'The spotted shall be your wages,' then all the flock bore spotted; and if he said, 'The striped shall be your wages,' then all the flock bore striped.
Gen_31:41  These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

Since my Jacob sheep are what I hope to earn  money from, that income if any will be my wages.