Sore feet after a 12-mile walk this afternoon to a location known as World's End. These three pictures were of the destination, but the stars of the show were cows. Hairy cows. You'd better like cows for the pictures I have to follow 😊
73 Cows is the BAFTA-winning story of Jay & Katja Wilde, beef farmers who battle with their conscience every time they take their cows to slaughter. Feeling trapped within an industry he no longer believes in, Jay knows he must make a change and do what no other farmer from the UK has ever done before.
I think this is Spunky the Ayrshire, edging in on Sassy's photo. Sassy looks appalled, but really she is just chewing her cud and flapping her ears against flies.
We visited the cows at Arana Gulch (Santa Cruz CA) this morning on our 24 mile bike ride. There are four cows grazing which is apparently good for habitat restoration in this city park open space.
Mom pets her cow, Cream Puff, at a neighbor's farm where the Puffster is boarded. Cream Puff is a very friendly cow, she was a pasture pet as a calf as well and would come to the fence to lick us.
Dolly the Ayrshire, running around her newly expanded pen at Mom's. She has her tail held parallel to the ground. A particular challenge of photographing this calf is her almost all-white fur -- the get the exposure right such that she is not overexposed and when there is snow, differentiate her from he background. Still working on it!
Dolly the Ayrshire runs around her pen, into the calf hutch, turns around, and then leaps out to run around the pen again. This photo catches the leap out phase. Dolly is currently being weaned from her bottle & milk replacer.
Dolly the calf infant showing off ears out and ears back looks. Young dairy calves frequently stand like this, they are all bony body and legs and very uncoordinated, whereas beef calves are ready to run early and more compact.
Helena (left) and Rosie (right) cow smooching at Mom's. Critters with majority-dark fur and bright bright sunlight created some exposure issues ... dynamic range compression is doing some work in post-processing here.