12 days and counting....

This will be my second year that I am dumping the family and disappearing into the wide blue yonder.....to go scrapbooking! And I can tell ya, it's GREAT! No kids, no husband, no cooking, no organising, no calves to feed, no chastising, no bedtime rituals....and most importantly, NO NAPPIES! For approximately 60 hours, I am free. Liberated. Able to be creative. Think of no-one else except for myself.

And I'll probably miss the kids to bits! (Oh ok, and Mark too :) )

I fly out for Sydney on Friday 8th and return late, late, late on Sunday 10th. Hopefully this year, I will avoid the migraine that plagued me at last year's Little Scrapbook Shop (LSBS) retreat. But then, I was 20 weeks pregnant and leaving Tom for the first time over such a long period. But nothing disintegrated whilst I was away, no-one sustained any permanent injuries, everyone was fed and clothed and looked after. No doubt, they will all have a ball without me again this year. So I feel much more relaxed about going. My only niggling concern is for Bridie who is still breastfed and will need to make the transition to formula for the weekend. She's had a couple of cracks at the bottle already and I'm confident that she won't starve.

Calving has officially finished for this year - well the rearable heifers at least. We ended up with 128 heifers, 8 bulls and 2 Belted Galloway calves that will grace our freezer in a couple of years time. I sent all our registration stuff off to Holstein Australia, so we should get a mammoth amount of certificates come through in the next few weeks.

AI (artificial insemination) has commenced with about 40 cows already done. This year, for the first time ever on our farm, we are flushing one of our cows. Our show cow (Craiglands Luckystirke 2843) failed to get into calf last year, so we decided that we would flush her. For those that don't know, this is where you give the cow drugs to superovulate her (produce lots of eggs), then AI her, then a week later, flush the embryos out and then put them into other cows (known as recips or recipents). The benefit of doing this, is to get as many calves as possible from a cow with desirable genetics and type, in the shortest amount of time possible. So instead of getting one calf per year (and hoping that you get a heifer), you can potentially get 8 calves in one year with all the same genetic merit and increase the chances of getting heifers amongst them all. I have to admit to being unnaturally excited about all of this. I just love this cow and I am so keen to have some offspring from her that we may be able to take into the show ring.

at the Colac show 2007

She has already commenced her fertility treatment, and will be AI'd on Sunday. The flush is scheduled for Monday 4th August. Maybe I can take a heap of photos of the flush and scrap those the following weekend.............