Who's the calf?

Each year or so Daryn heads to the sale yards to buy calves. We generally buy weaned calves and sell them 12-18 months later, depending on how much grass we have and what the pricing at the sale yards is like at the time. It only takes a few days for new calves to settle in and understand the drill here on our farm. We enjoy having cattle, they are intelligent animals and we generally only have between 20-30 here at one time. Their time here is calm and quiet, with no working dogs, just Daryn calling them to new paddocks and me trying to get them to pose for the odd photo.

This years group came from 3 different farms, but it doesn't take long for them to make new friends and work out their place in the herd.

It's entertaining to get to know the personalities of a new group of calves. As a general rule of thumb there is always in the group: a smart intuitive leader, a couple of friendlies who'll come right up close, and an annoying thick one who over-analyses everything and takes forever to follow along to a new paddock ... or totally freaks out and takes off in the wrong direction!

Some of this year's calves are Speckled Park breed ... with striking black and white smudgy dotted coats. I've been charmed at how they contrast against the other calves' black coats.

When we buy calves from the sale yards, we usually don't know much about where they've come from.

Sometimes, there will be a 'friendly' with an ear tag that's got an actual name on it instead of a number. Of course, the calf can't tell us that they were a calf-club calf or someone's herd favourite, but you get an impression that by the way they act, they were something special to someone.