Meet The Bad Weather Girls

Sleet, slush, snow, freezing rain, all at once. It was a yucky day and my five bovine girls had to endure it all. I went out early in the afternoon to rescue them by fluffing up their hay and opening the barn door to let them in early. And I took pictures, so I figured this would be a good time to introduce you:

Number 32 is Jasmine. She's bigger, older and clearly pregnant. She's also quite tame and placid. Jasmine is my big teddy bear. I hope she has a heifer calf, because I will want to keep it:

Number 3 is Amy, she of the arched back. Amy is the smallest of the herd and the bottom of the pecking order. Rightly or wrongly, she feels she must spend more time outdoors than indoors with the bossy cows (notice the abundance of snow and icicles clinging to her fur). Amy is not pregnant, and that's probably a good thing because it will give her more time to grow and strengthen on the huge amount of hay and grain she consumes:

Number 2, on the left, is Scarlett. She is the most skittish cow and has taken the longest to calm down and allow me to handle her. She's a dark red beauty, though. She doesn't look pregnant, but hasn't come into heat. So apparently, she's carrying a calf.
Number 35, on the right, is Violet. She's a larger cow but also rather skittish. Or perhaps I should say that she was skittish until one day when her bovine brain connected me with the grain. She immediately warmed to me and now we're friends. I can't tell if  Violet is pregnant. She looks like she is but acts like she's in heat sometimes:

Make way for the aptly numbered "1," or Gracie - the Big Boss Bovine. Gracie is a smaller cow but her personality is of the dominant variety. I sometimes suspect that she and Violet are lesbian lovers. Again, I can't tell if they are in heat or just in love:

Here's a close-up of my sweet Jasmine, all covered with snow and ice. She's a lighter color than the other cows, and looks to my untrained eye as if she might be carrying twins. Or perhaps she's due to calve very soon. Or perhaps she's just fat. Only time will tell:

And a close-up of Gracie, with a mouthful of hay - not good hay, from out in her feeder, but dusty, filthy, ancient hay thrown down as bedding from up in the hayloft. There's no accounting for some cows' tastes:

These girls always have hay out in their hay bale feeder, but it gets covered with snow and ice. They just keep munching away, breaking it down. I help them sometimes by fluffing it up with a hay fork:

That black thing next to the fence is their 110 gallon stock tank, which I keep filled with water and thawed with a submersible heater:

They don't seem to mind the cold during the day, but they sure do want to sleep indoors at night. They lie down in the bedding hay with which I cover the concrete floor and sleep all together as a group:


I've gotten better at identifying them without seeing their ear tags, but they sure do look alike. It would be very difficult to know one from the other without the ear tags:

So all is well with the Red Polls, and they seem to be surviving the winter in fine form. We'll all be glad when spring arrives, though: