The ear tag identifies the calves as boys or girls.  Yellow for girls and orange for boys. The baby girl calves are called HEIFERS.  The baby boys are bulls.

We use the tags for more! On their tag they have a special id number, their birthday, and on the back the names of the mother and father!

When the baby girls are grown up and have their first baby we give them a name and then they get a second ear tag with their name on it. 

A holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake, no two cows are exactly alike.  But we know our cows individually as distinct personalities, we are with each cow twice a day when we milk them.  They  are all different...some a bossy, some very sweet, some eat cookies and apples, some always seem to be having a bad hairday!  Some of our girls are decended from log lines of milking cows in our herd and we know their Mom's and Grandmothers.

The cow must have had a calf before she will produce milk.  A new baby holstein calf weighs about 100lbs and can walk within a hour after birth.

A heifer is a young female who has not given birth yet, they become a cow once they have had their first baby at around 2 years old.

Some people say a cow has 4 stomachs, but to be accurate, a cow has one stomach with 4 compartments, the omassum, abomassum, rumen and reticulum.

We have Holsteins, big and black and white. We have brown Swiss, fawn brown and very stubborn, and we have some Jersey cows, they have higher butterfat in their milk and quite oppinionated!

Ruminants regurgitate their food and re chew it.  This helps them get the most nutrition our of their food.  Cows spend lots of time eating, up to 8 hours a day.  She chews her cud for 6 to 8 hours a day.

Cows teeth are different from ours. On the top front they have a tough pad of skin instead of teeth. They have 8 incisors on the bottom front and 6 strong molars on the top and bottom of each side to grind their feed.

All farms are different, but here at Calder Farms each cow produces about 65lbs of milk a day which is about 7.5 gallons. That is an average of 2759 gallons per year.

An adult milking holstein weighs between 1,200 - 1,700lbs.