Happy Easter!

APLX Santana 11Y

Happy Easter from Applecross.   As we pause to reflect on this week-end holiday, we remember that Easter has always been about rebirth.  In this years’ case, it has coincided with (finally) the onset of spring, and the rebirth of the land from a long winter slumber.  We have had more snow this year than we’ve experienced in our time out west (according to lifetimers, the most snow since 1974), and an unseasonably late spring has lead to our snow pack just melting down now.  Spring is about 3 weeks behind, but if the next few weeks can stay this warm and sunny, hopefully we’ll be able to catch up and still have the cows to pasture in late May.  One advantage of the late spring is the slow melt of our snow (we had about a foot and a half base), which should ensure lots of grass come summer.  We have the moisture, now let’s see some heat!

Pictured here today is Santana – a mid-March calf from Dora Lee Christina and Spruceburn Starfire.   While only just over a month old, he is developing into a good bull calf already.   Probably the most unique thing about Santana is his colour pattern.  The small white dot on his forehead, is the only white on his entire body – he is almost entirely cherry red.    While we don’t necessarily breed for colour; I do try and breed for eye pigmentation, and whenever I am on cattle tours I always take a second look at cattle with white (a topic for a future post).  Santana has quite a unique colour pattern, but hopefully it will be his length, volume and style that we’ll be talking about when we go to make our final bull pen selections in September.

Once again, Happy Easter.  We hope that you are enjoying this special day with friends and family; and are also experiencing the return of wildlife, nesting birds (and nesting calves), in this glorious rebirth of spring.