Happy Solstice!

It is summer solstice here where I live. And as such I am going to head outside and enjoy the sunshine, fresh raspberries, and a garden salad.

I thought I would leave you with this cute little video of my two bull calves eating burdock. I train my cows to eat weeds and they are remarkably good at it.

Train? Yes. This is a learned skill.

While the cows are in a holding pen waiting for turn out, I bring them an armload or two of the weeds I want them to focus on. Burdock is especially nasty here on the farm. It gets into coats, manes, tails and worst of all eyes, causing serious distress. And it also entraps and kills bats and small birds. The less I have of it the better!

By teaching the cows to eat it, I know if there is burdock in their pen they will take it down to the ground as long as they get to it before the burs start to form. The mothers teach their babies to eat it too. If you can teach one or two cows in the herd to eat weeds, the rest will learn to do it too.

So here is Paddy and Patrick demonstrating their new skill. Patrick is the younger of the two and the one pulling off the big burdock leaf. [Note: these are Dexter cows - bred as dual purpose cows for small farms]

Enjoy - and Happy Solstice! I’ll write again next week.

S

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