Cattle voyeur

Agnes, you may remember, has been slated for the freezer this coming June. With the recent departures of Nellie and Molly, though, it's starting to get lonely in the pasture.  Agnes, a little wild for my herd, is still pretty gentle by cattle standards, so I'm reconsidering.  The trigger for this reversal is the attention Agnes was seen enjoying yesterday from Abe, our growing steer calf. 

Cows in heat will mount and be mounted by one another (yes, including females and steers).  The cow that stands still while others mount her is the one in heat.  Without this behavior, it's close to impossible to know when to breed a cow by artificial insemination. Twelve hours after a cow is seen in "standing heat" is the time to breed her.

Agnes, though, has always had a more reserved relationship with the females of the herd; she mounts no one and no one mounts her.  Instead, when she's in heat she gets antsy and bellows across the road at the neighbor's bull.  All fine, but it leaves us guessing about that magical window of time for precise breeding.  I just gave it a guess and had my AI tech neighbor breed her anyway.  Of course, she didn't "settle" that way, and by the time the vet confirmed her to be "open" she had developed an ovarian cyst that had kept her from coming back into heat.  He took care of the problem, but that's when I thought about beefing her.

But yesterday... I spied Agnes responding to the attentions of young Abe.  If I can predict her breeding time, she may yet have a place in the herd.  Way to go, Abe!  I have 19-21 days to consider her fate before she comes into heat again.