Once there was a little bull calf named Mac…

Just kidding, but not entirely. Because we’re happy to introduce the newest member of our herd - Mac, the bull.

Mac might look a little small, and that’s because he is! Mac is barely over a year old. Bulls start to reach their peak maturity starting at two. What does that mean? Why did we get a bull? Or my favorite question so far - are we going to ride him?!

Mac is what we call an unproven, young bull. Farms like ours have a bull for breeding, to help maintain or grow the herd. Mac is unproven because he is so young and he hasn’t gone through a breeding season yet. He’s sort of like a teenager right now, still growing physically and starting to take an interest in the females.

Getting an unproven bull can be a bit risky. He’s still figuring things out! But that’s also why it’s exciting, because he’ll figure it out on our farm. The first calves he’ll father will be born and raised on the farm. And this is our goal - to eventually raise the entire herd directly on the farm, without having to get any animals from other farms. This can be a long process, and since we’re in the early years of our farm, we still have to get animals from other farms to help grow our herd.

As for that last question - no, we’re not going to ride this bull. That’s a whole other thing! But I love that someone asked because the most some people see bulls is in bull riding on TV.

A few other people seemed surprised that we named him, since it’s generally a rule of thumb to not name your animals. Bulls and cows are a little different, since the hope is they’ll stick around for many years. It’s actually common to name bulls and register them (think similar to when dogs are registered).

What’s with the name, Mac? Well Joe and I are both Spartans in every way possible - alumni, fans, we’ve both even worked for MSU at one time or another. And MSU is actually part of what brought us together. It’s so much a part of our story, that when we knew we had to pick a name, we wanted it to tie back to MSU. I was all for Leonidas (“Spartans, what is your profession?”). But that seemed a little heavy for this little bull. And Sparty seemed too obvious.

So we went with Mac. This was actually the name of the college at one point in its early history, Michigan Agricultural College. There’s still a road on campus called M.A.C. And we felt like this represented many layers for us. Joe decided to come back to Chesaning and transfer to MSU to go into one of the ag programs. I met him the summer before he started there. And ag has been part of our story since.

Mac changes more every day. We’re excited to see what he brings to the farm and to watch it grow right alongside him.