Are you pulling my tail?

Sort of, but more accurately, he's pulling hair from Sandie's tail. He first had to wash and dry her tail to get it clean. She was a good sport and waited patiently.

Checking to make sure he got enough hair with the follicles attached on that pull.

Wearing gloves? Taping the hair together? What are they doing? Getting DNA samples, so we can send them off to UC Davis' genetics lab. Washing the tail, wearing gloves, putting samples into zip-lock bags - all part of avoiding contaminating the DNA samples. Part of the boy's homeschool science class.

Nutella was next. Boys had to wear two sets of gloves per cow - the first ones for washing and drying, the second ones for pulling and bagging hair samples. Don't tell Mom they were using her midwife gloves. I'll buy her more after we sell these girls.

Starting to get an audience of curious sheep.

Each cow's hair went into separate zip lock bags. Did three cows this day, then I went online to UC Davis lab's web site to order and pre-pay for certain tests, then mailed the samples. Will get the results emailed to me next week. We will do it again next week with two more cows and our bull, Red. I want to find out what milk gene he carries - A1 or A2. It could make a difference when breeding him to certain cows, and selling his off-spring.