Family lines, Cow names, and Saint John's history
We started a herd book when we moved back to the farm in 1997, with a page/s for each year, and as each calf was born, its name and number would be written on its own line, with its date of birth, its mother's name and number, sire's name, a place for the State required Bangs number, and room for a few notes about anything out of the ordinary. I (Claire) spent many hours reading and studying and memorizing the Cow Book, I absolutely loved the lineage tracing, and looking for patterns in families...
That first year, my mum recorded 11 heifers born and named. My dad named Yuri, Gretzky, North America (because of the near perfect white patch of a North American map silhouette on her shoulder) Wilma, and his longtime favorite, Dusty. Aaron had Gnome and Lightning, I picked Seven, and I think Mum named Boo and Sunny. There was a two year old when we moved to the farm, a little jersey cross that we named Sweet Pea, who was another definite favorite and mother of a line of favorites.
In 1998, four year old me named two heifers Blackie and Brownie, and a steer that caught my eye, Whitey. There was a bull we kept, that had four or five names, because everyone wanted to name the herd bull... but baby JJ's choice of Art was the young bull's primary name.
In 1999, things started getting more exciting, because the first calves that we named were now two year olds and having calves of their own! Aaron's Lightning had Boomer, and his Gnome had a heifer, Pixie. Dad's Dusty had Marigold, another longterm queen. We had 22 heifers that year, and about 20 bull calves. There were a lot of calves named names like Winnie the Pooh, Buckaroo, Eyeore, SpunkyRoo, Bianca, Leaf, Bambi, Dragonfly, Cute, Flopsy, Tiny, Jack and Jill (twins), Faline, Duck, Rosie, Kitty (one of my pets, she had a patch of white on side that looked like an upside down cat? :) ), Hershey Bar, Dash, Molly, Tulip, and Charley.
In 2000, my Blackie's first calf, Clown, was sold to the neighbor at a month old to be a bottle baby. I was slightly heartbroken, to learn that pets didn't stay forever, and that calves could just be sold away, but it is an important lesson to learn, and a part of life, that nothing stays forever in this world, except God. (I didn't learn the God part until later... :) )
2001, our literary names got a little older. While we still named Curious George, Piglet, Balloon, Kanga, Emmett, and Frosty Thunder, we also had Rumblebuffin (from Narnia), Matthias and Mattimeo (from Redwall), Misty and Sea Star (the Misty of Chincoteague books), Michael (probably Peter Pan), Pippi, and John Wayne (my dad's choice, from his Gretzky)
2002 we started getting more intentional about naming a calf a name like the mother's name, making it easier to trace family lines... Ray from Sunshine, Millie and Tillie (twins) from Molly, Flash from Lightning, Sunflower from Violet, Sacajawea from Pocahontas, Bob from Babe, Christopher from Pooh and Robin from Winnie (born two days apart :) ), and Geronimo from Moon Lily. Also more Narnia names, Trumpkin, Reepacheep, and Peepiceek; Yoda, from watching StarWars, and Mrs Pollifax and Duchess from Dorothy Gilman's Mrs Pollifax series. Also, my dad's mum wanted us to name a calf after her... so when a cute Jersey cross heifer was born with a heart shaped star of white on her head, we named her Louise. However, she was not more than a few months old before she earned a T in front of her name (for Troublesome), and she kept the T for the rest of her life. T Louise had Lively, Helen, Ballor, Aladyn, Leo, Dagoba, Valentine, Fritz, and finally Mrs Whatsit and Tumnus. A calf every year, and then her ninth and final pregnancy, twins. :)
2003, had upwards of fifty calves. While all the cows are technically my parents cows, we each had families of cows that we had naming rights on, and then the family would collaborate and have to agree to name the unclaimed cows. Pretty exciting as the years went by, and "my" collection of cows to name grew!
2004, we were rolling with Svetlana from Yuri, Snowflake from Frosty, Thunder from Lightning, Sunburst from Cloud, Merlin from Gnome, Seba (Arabic for 7) from Seven, Huck Finn from Blackberry, Cornflower from Cornstalk, Roo from Kanga, General Lee from Audrey (Audrey named for a girl intern from Virginia...), Garlic from Salt, Sky Boy from Balloon and Dixie from Pixie.
2005, I took over the Cow Book, very exciting to be the one writing in the entries!
2006, Mum and Dad got to name a few, but the boys and I were definitely the main namers. Johanna Spyri names (Alida, Stefili, Russli, Marta), Chief Seattle, Fezic, Winchester, Mendanbar, Mars, Jupiter, Sixty, Poseidon, Taran, and Shaker (from Salt). I guess that year, I was more excited about the bull calf names...
2007, we started naming the boys names that correspond to their id tag. We tag the heifers 701, 702, 703, etc, in order of their birth, and the steers 7A, 7B, 7C, etc... So this year we had Archibald, Ballor, Cnowman (had to get a little creative, because it snowed that day!), Dolphin, Ent, Freddy, Giant, Hotshot, Inigo Montoya, JarJar Binks, Sir Kay, Leonard, Moose, 'Nenome, Orion, (P and Q were twins out of Songbird and I think Q got the short end of the stick because while we named P Pavarotti, Q was called Quack...), Rynelf, Samson, etc... :)
2008, we had sold quite a few cows, so we only calved out 32 this year. On the 3rd of January, Tulip, out of Violet, out of Sweet Pea, had a heifer calf that we named Blossom, and Blossom was a favorite for all of us. A super sweet gentle excellent cow, nice to work with, grand in the barn, and her daughters all quite "typy", following in her footsteps. The granddaughters and great grands and great great grands have gotten a little diluted and hit or miss, but the Blossom line has been a high priority favorite choice for cows to go into the milk barn.
2009, Gnome and Gretzky still going strong at 12 years old, and Sweet Pea at 14. Back up to 42 calves.
2010, a small year of only 19 calves! The bulls were Abercrombie, Bentworthy, Cadbury, Dagoba, Eckelstein, Fitch Finn MacCool, Gandalf, and Honorary G Major. :)
2011, JJ and I had the brilliant but ridiculous idea of complicating the naming requirements as follows. The boys started with A and ended with Z, then B and Y, C and X, etc, so we got Azaz, Bugs Bunny, Colorado X, Double Trouble W, Ev, FigureTru, Giant, Horatio Biggs, Isildur, and Jaq. The girls were the mirror of that, starting with Z and ending with A, then Y and B, etc, etc. AND as if that wasn't enough, the girls also needed their mother's names initials inside their name... The fifth heifer, out of T Louise, is the only real success from that year, thanks to Dad. She got to be Valentine. All the rest were pretty silly...
2012, Blossom had her second heifer. She would have a total of five heifers, Willow, Daffodil, Sunshine, Rosebud, and Rose. Willow would have Cherry (one of Dorothy's favorites), Bambi, Cedar and Magnolia. (I'm not listing the bulls, just Blossom's female descendants). Cherry would have Carrots, and Alberta. (Bambi we sold as a milk cow, her first calf Faline, and Carrots, Cedar and Magnolia were all Red Devon crosses, so they went for beef. Alberta is a coming two year old this year.) Daffodil would have Angelica and Russet. (Angelica has Chamomile and Begonia.) Sunshine had Moonbeam and Rey. (Rey would have Reina, a coming two year old.) Rosebud had Flower and Clover. (Flower would have Violet, Trillium, and Blondie. Trillium had Larkspur in 2023. Clover had Selenia and Iris.) Rose had Dahlia, Rosalia, and Primrose. (Dahlia had Morning Glory) These cows also have had 31 bull calves in the 15 years since Blossom had her first calf. 34 heifers and 31 bulls, that's 65 calves from one nice cow in 15 years!
2013, we took a break from the alphabetical naming. :) the first bull calf was enormous and I wanted to name him Sherman, for the Sherman tanks of World War 2. He was one of our last Galileo babies, and then we started having Sitting Bull babies.
2014, one of the years we didn't get a set of twins. Usually we get one to three sets. Twins are more likely to have trouble and not survive birth, but cows tend to handle having twins pretty well in general. Jack and Jill in 1999, Flip and Flap, and Salt and Pepper, in 2000, Millie and Tillie in 2002, Raspberry and Olympia, and Ivy and Burl, and Thief and a dead twin in 2003, Leah and Rachel in 2004, Chili and Jalapena in 2005, Solo and Duo, and North Dakota and South Dakota in 2006, Pavarotti and Quack in 2007, Lily and a dead twin in 2012, Mrs Whatsit and Tumnus in 2013, Babe and Ruth, and a set that didn't make it, in 2016, Dae and Thia, and a set that didn't make it in 2017, Mona Lisa and Michaelangelo in 2018, Orlando and Cornflower, and a set that didn't make it, in 2019, Asdrubal and Snowball, and a set that didn't make it in 2022, Hal and Henrietta, Mimsy and Mac, Nick Saint and Nina in 2023, and we've only had one cow calve so far in 2024 (writing in May), with a single, so we'll see what happens yet!
2015, calved out about 40. I thought it would be fun to reuse some old names from over the years, so we had all the heifers listed as "so and so the second" this year. Pennyroyal, Marionberry, Moonbeam, Faun, Victoria, Primrose, Pixie, Boudicca, Seacht (Gaelic for 7), Firefly, Frosty, Pippi, Sally, and Marigold. The boys were Abner, Byron, Centrip, Denver, Ernest, Finn, Geronimo, Hector, Iggy, Jethro, Kassidy, Leslie, Magnus, Nuno, Ollie, Phileas, Quincy, Rafael, Sylvester, Topper, Ulysses and Victor.
2016, JJ and Dad are Seattle Mariners baseball fans, so we named a lot of calves baseball names... Babe and Ruth, Aoki, Felix, Gutierrez, Ichiro, Jamie, Kirby, Leonys, Martin, and Nelson.
2017, quite a few more baseball names, and literary names, and a few flowers and things. Clover from Rosebud, Bing from Cherry, Poppy from Pansy, Polly from Faun, Llonio from Anwara, and Danny, E-Rod, Fernando, Gaviglio, Haniger, and Iwakuma...
2018, had a dozen Black Angus cross calves at the end of the year. JJ's Lily had a jet black heifer that he promptly named Cottonball. (Later the mother of Snowball and Asdrubal... Asdrubal is the name of another baseball player...)
2019, 45 or so calves, all by Red Bull, all but one were red in color! I named 95% of them a red based name. Fun challenge, but I gave myself a little wiggle room on a few. Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Ruby, Scarlett, Clifford, Dracaris, Carrots, Frank (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), Gimli, Ivan, Russet, Jalapeno, Strawberry, Coral, Copper, Merida, Lawry, Mick, Cedar, Shiara, Sheelagh... Eureka! didn't need a red name, because he was Holly's first VBAC (Vaginal Birth after C-Section), and I'd spent a week checking her every two to four hours around the clock... (I got really good at the somnambulent trundling through the fields in my pajamas and boots for the 11pm, 2am and 5am checks... Climbing gates, finding Holly and checking her by starlight, all while trying to be awake enough to make the check accurate, but still sleepy enought to be able to sleep again when I got back to the house... )
2020, 42, again all red except for two black ones! Fiona, Calcifer, Flanders (from Poppy), Posy, Calvin, Lightning, Rosalia, Roy, Smoit, Trumpkin, Sasha, Snapdragon, Annie...
2021, Brown Swiss babies again!!!!! Except for a few by Red Bull (The Red Peril, Red Velvet, Astrid, Titania, Tango...) So nice to have gentle, tractable, blond and white and bluegrey Swiss calves again! Valerian from Pennyroyal, Fig Newton from Snickerdoodle, Trillium from Flower, Cosmos from Rose, Sunflower from Holly...
2022, I've been in full charge of naming for several years now. The boys and my parents suggest names sometimes, but they seem to have slowed down on name ideas and desire to think about it, while I still enjoy it. Peppermint from Patsy, Periwinkle from Pennyroyal, Alberta from Cherry, Iris from Clover, Cumulus from Raindrop, Serena from Tiria, Florian from Posy, Tundra from HuckleBerry, Princess from Queen...
2023, three sets of twins! And a pretty bull heavy year. Usually its fairly even by the end of the year, but this year we had 18 bulls to 11 heifers, and several of the heifers had complications and didn't make it. Alder from Cherry, Bannock from Snickerdoodle, Coll from Tiria, Elf from Pixie, Faymarr from Rey (from the movie, Safety), Gus from Nala, Impatiens from Chamomile, Kingfisher from HuckleBerry (gorgeous big bull calf), Lupine from Sunflower, Rosie Woodsorrel from Valerian...
And so far in 2024, we've got Aciano from Clover!