Bruce feeds the dry cows after milking at night. We have found that doing this promotes calving during the daytime hours...generally after 5 a.m. atleast. Knowing this and having both 9 cows due and plans to go out tonight, getting to the barn this morning and finding calves shouldn't have been a surprise. Finding another set of twins though was. Realizing they were heifer twins was a shock! As mentioned before, the heifer in a bull/heifer twin combination is always infertile so having both heifers is awesome. Already this year this is our 3rd set of twins. Since we have records for everything I looked back to see when we had another set of heifer twins. In 2010 we had 3 sets of twins, all bull/heifer combinations. In 2009 we had 2 sets of twins, again, bull/heifers. In 2008 we had only 1 set of twins...that time a heifer combination. The record seems to be in 1990. We woke up New Years morning to 2 sets of twins and ended up with 4 sets in 5 days...11 sets for the year. This cow is eating like crazy so that is a good sign. I wish I could say that for the one that is struggling. Sometimes you wonder when its time to just give up. A friend once said that sometimes cows just have "the will to die". That seems to be true with that one.
Bruce had errands to run in town today and came home to find that his father couldn't get the east barn cleaner motor to start. He is thinking its a loose wire since hitting it with a hammer a few times seemed to be the fix for today. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Tonight I ran haylage and corn silage into the mixer while Bruce hauled manure. When he got back I started to milk extra early while he fed. Out of the barn in record time for our night out! Hopefully we won't come home to any new calves...the night is guaranteed to be short enough already!
No comments:
Post a Comment