A surprise!

I 'm a little late getting this up, but hey, I'm a college student. I do what I want! Two weeks ago this Thursday I got a call from home saying I would never guess what they had at home. I went through my typical guesses. Puppies, kittens, lambs, chicks. It wasn't any of those.

Betty, one of the yaks, had just had a surprise calf. We didn't think Betty was bred when our last bull left for his new home last August but what do you know nine months later there's proof to the opposite running around the pen.

Yaks are so shaggy it's kind of difficult to tell when they are pregnant. Here we are thinking the poor gal was just fat off of hay!


This is the first purebred yak calf to be born at our place. Our first calf was a dzo or a cow x yak hybrid. The big red lummox in the photo is that calf. Her name is Ruby ( the yow). Cow +yak = yow...Get it? It's easier to explain than dzo in any case

Unlike most hybrids Ruby is fertile. Female dzos ( dzoes ?) are fertile while the males are born sterile.

In any case we're happy to have the new baby, whose been named Sophie, join us!

More picture of Sophie, Ruby, the new girls, and the rest of the gang when I go home for summer in 18 days!