Finally!

Arrived at the barn this morning to find a heifer calf.  Given the fact that her mom has been identified as having staph aureus already we fed her colostrum from another cow.  Since staph aureus can't be cured we need to do what we can to manage it.  We made sure that 4 milk samples were taken for drug tests in hopes of making the evening a little more streamlined.  Sure enough, they all passed! (and there was much rejoycing!).  Two of the cows are already identified with staph aureus so we will only need to do cultures on the other two before they can blend into the routine.  In the meantime, we can sell the milk but we need to sanitize the milkers between cows.  The amount of milk we are dumping right now is crazy and it will be nice to finally get paid for some of it.  We had a 2nd heifer calf arrive about 6 today.  This one is darned cute since her mom is a holstein/brown swiss cross. Pictures tomorrow.  This morning we took 2 more calves out into hutches, leaving one empty hutch. With this last calf our hutches are full.  It's nice to have feeding so much more streamlined.  Since I feed milk to bulls and milk replacer to the heifers, when I put calves in hutches I put the bulls starting on the west end and heifers starting on the east end.  That way they are atleast in groups and I can feed right down the line.  Some sanity finally : )

Bruce managed to "putter" as he called it.  He replaced the fan belt on the skid steer that had been slipping.  The heifers got fed and the goats got feed and new bedding.  Ed's silo needed to have the unloader let down a door and some silage chopped loose.  Sometimes, when it rains hard, water seeps between the staves (concrete silo sections) and soaks into the feed.  This isn't a problem unless those little spots  freeze like a rock and the unloader can't chew them up.  That is what was happening.

We had another awesome spring feeling day today.  Getting to the hutches currently is a challenge with the water running down the driveway and over the ice.  A couple more days and we should have driveways down to the gravel again!