Hmmmm

Another day of bookkeeping brain strain.  Bruce had another silo out of door and the feed box to fill again out of Ed's silo.  It was nice that Ed had time to fill it so Bruce could do other things.  Animals have alot of time to create trouble so today Bruce built a fence to keep the goats from going around their warming box and moving it around.  In the process of that he realized that the goat that had twins eating on one side now has mastitis.  The original plan for today was to sell some fed cattle.  Alot of our days start with "the original plan was".  The gates used to sort cattle are now frozen down so extra gates have to be carried down and secured so we can use them.  Cattle sales postponed until tomorrow.  Bruce got to the barn to feed tonight and a cow was having her calf.  Large bull this time.  He gave it its oral rota coronavirus vaccine and went on to feed cows.  We discovered we had this virus on our farm probably 20 years ago.  Untreated, calves will seem perfectly normal for 7-10 days and will be dead the next morning.  This simple vaccine eliminates this problem but its ideally given to calves immediately after birth before they eat anything.  Feeding cattle was followed by feeding us and then heading out to milk.  We are still waiting for culture results so in addition to the extra work involved there, Bruce ran a bottle of 23% calcium solution under the fresh cows skin.  I started milking the other cows myself and when the regular milking was done Bruce milked the fresh cow.  I tried to feed the new calf with a bottle but he seemed to think fighting me was more important than eating.  Its ideal to get 1 gallon of colostrum in a calf for its first feeding so I used a stomach tube to get the job done.  Needless to say, the calf wasn't really any more impressed with that idea either but he got fed and I wasn't as beat up.  A win for both of us.  I walked into the house at 10:30.  Its now 11:25 and Bruce is done feeding cattle and is now trying to feed a couple of very hungry goat twins.  One thing I know, 6 a.m. alarms come too soon.