God bless my husband, but sometimes, he really should just tell me no.

Have you ever had a daydream get way out of control? Well, I have. When we decided to leave city-life (ok suburbs, but close enough), I had all these dreams of starting a little farm and making our food from scratch using ingredients I had grown in my little garden. I also LOVED the idea of milking a cow and making our own butter and ice cream. (I know, I'm a regular Oliver Douglas over here...Green Acres, anyone?) 

Setting up a homestead is hard. And expensive. And it takes time. I knew this going in, so it wasn't a surprise, but our situation was such that it felt like it was taking more time than was necessary. In my view, we had reached "sink or swim" time. 

"Babe, we should just get some cows."

I had been keeping an eye out for livestock for sale for a while but had yet to find what I was looking for. I knew exactly what I wanted - Dexter cattle (because they're small), specifically a bull and two heifers so that we could breed them. Unfortunately, there isn't a large market for Dexter cattle in my area. In fact, they seem to pretty rare here. Instead, I found someone who was offering min-jersey calves. I thought, ok, we can make that work. They're still a small breed and they're good for milk. 

We drove out to a farm about an hour away to see the calves. I learned a valuable lesson on that trip. Heifers are like gold, so don't expect to find one for sale. The farmer we went to speak with had almost exclusively mini-jersey steers and a single mini-jersey bull calf. (Note to new homesteaders - a steer is a castrated male that cannot breed, a bull is an intact male, a heifer is a young, unbred female, and a cow is an older female that has been bred previously. Ignore my error in the title - it was used for brevity.) 

When I explained what I was looking for, and why, he took me to see his Holstein herd. He happened to have a yearling Holstein heifer that he was willing to sell, but only the one. So, in a fit of impatience, I bought the Holstein heifer, the mini-jersey bull calf, and two mini-jersey steers, and the farmer agreed to transport them to us that coming weekend. I figured I could keep on the lookout for a mini-jersey heifer and start learning (hands on) how to care for cattle with these. 

Our new mini herd arrived on that Saturday, and I soon learned my next valuable lesson. Apparently, there is quite a livestock trade involving mini-jersey steers. Dairy farms must re-breed their milking stock every year. The only calves they tend to keep are the females, so the males are castrated and sold off within days of being born. This often results in very weak calves that don't live for very long. We lost the bull calf and one of the steers within days, leaving us with a 2-week-old mini-jersey steer and 1-year old Holstein heifer - not a combination that I could breed, so back to the drawing board. 

Sidenote: Holsteins do make excellent pets, if that's what you're looking for. For the short time that we had her, Cookie followed us around like a dog and loved nothing more than reaching out to lick somebody. But I digress... 

I continued looking for appropriate additions to our herd and found someone who had a Black Angus cow-calf pair, and the calf was a heifer.  He also had a couple of 3-month-old bull calves available.  We traded our Holstein heifer (because seriously, y'all, they are huge!) for the cow-calf pair, and bought a couple of young bulls, just in case. 

That was several years ago.  Our herd has shifted and changed a couple of times, but I finally have, more or less, the herd I had envisioned: one bull and two heifers.  We still haven't gotten to where we can milk yet, but that will come.  All in good time.