Everyone is hungry

Today was once again a cold but quiet day.  Cows are cooperating, goats are cooperating and even the calf on penicillin is showing great progress and doing well. If we could only speed up the feeding process Bruce would be a happy camper.  It takes twice as long as it should to run the feed out of the silo's these days because its frozen.   The cows are fed a TMR (total mixed ration) twice a day.  The largest ingredient in the batch is haylage, followed by corn silage.  Both of these come out of the silo's and is delivered to a large mixer by an elevator. Their mix
also has shelled corn in it that comes out of a harvestore silo and is delivered by auger to a bin that holds enough corn for about 1 days mixing.  This silo has a different type of unloader and is very quick.  When corn is needed its run through a hammermill which grinds it into the consistancy of corn meal you buy in the store.  Its dumped into a cart that is taken and delivered to an auger that puts that in the mixer.  Another auger attached to a bin delivers the protein mix which consists of soybean meal, roasted soybeans, corn distillers grain, fat, and vitamins. Once everything is in the mixer its stirred for about 5 minutes.  We have an electric feed cart that is used to put the feed in front of the cows.  The dry cows get fed their specific mix once a day.  The same is true for the steers that are on full feed.  The calves in the back of the barn have a mix specific to their needs and with the cold weather can be fed every couple days.  Today happens to be a long feeding day because everyone needs to be fed.  Some days you get by with just cows and steers which of course makes the day shorter.  We have a nutritionist that visits monthly and checks the cows to make sure they aren't too fat or too skinny.  She also takes note of how much milk they are producing  and how our breeding program is doing.  Feed samples are taken and sent to a lab for analysis.  This information is used to balance each mix based on the groups needs. The quality of our first crop alfalfa harvest directly effects our feed costs for the year.  Poor feed quality is balanced with the protein mix, which is very expensive.  I thought I would attach pictures of the calves in their coats and hutches.  The less energy calves use to keep warm the faster they grow.  During the winter, our healthiest animals are always the ones outside : )