Yesterday was a very special day in Wisconsin. We got to pay the first half of our property taxes. We have 269 acres, 230 of which was considered tillable before we turned approximately 50 of it into pasture. For all of this our first half is only $3859! In 2006, the first year with this acreage, half was $3022. Gotta love progress huh : (
Bruce started his day with the usual feeding, followed by plowing a path with the skid steer so I could get to the barn easier and our milk hauler could get in. Since we are down on cows and milk we are currently picked up every other day. Our milk hauler is the 3rd generation to pick up milk here, preceded by his father and grandfather. Milking and feeding calves has expanded to about 2 1/2 hours twice daily for me. New calves are time consuming since the first couple feedings come from the mom and I have to wait until Bruce gets them milked. They also get fed with a bottle and need to learn how to make it all work. The latest calf was a bull that wouldn't drink for me so I used a stomach tube and got about 3 quarts of milk into it yesterday. This morning when I tried to feed it I couldn't get it to drink so Bruce decided to give it a try. He couldn't get it to try either so we decided to let it "think" about it until tonight. Tonight he had decided that he basically didn't want anything to do with whatever we were trying. We did manage to get a half bottle into him but he doesn't want to suck. While beef calves tend to be more self sufficient, dairy calves sometimes would die without human intervention. I need to move a few more calves out into the hutches but with the weather forecast being so nasty, keeping them in makes less work when the snow clean up starts. I have fed calves in hutches over 30 years. For many of those years, when we had a big snowstorm we would have to shovel out the fences and path to the doors on the hutches. We have to do this in self defense because if we get a pack of snow that gets too deep the calves start jumping their fences. A few years ago Bruce decided to try tying the fences that are in front (hog panels) flat across the doors to the hutches when we had storms. That made the clean up much easier but made it hard for me to get to the doors to feed. After all these years we came up with the best idea yet! Buy new panels and cut them so we can tie individual sections across individual hutches. Now I can still feed and all we have to shovel is between the hutches. The rest Bruce does by driving right in front of the hutches with the skid steer or snow blower. MUCH more user friendly! We wish now we had thought of that decades ago : )
The winds moved in about 4 p.m. today. If you watched the snow there was no way to tell which direction the wind was actually coming from. White out conditions. Temps in the mid teens. These are the days I am glad all I need is higher boots to commute to work : ) Forecast of 8-10 more inches with wind over night. Tomorrow will be another day of snow adventures. The dog loves it! While I got to hide inside and cook today, Bruce managed a badly needed couple hour nap and then headed out to do what he had to do. He fed the steers a half batch of feed twice today because the bunk filled with snow and needed to be shoveled out. In order to get to the lower buildings and feed the goats their TMR and the heifers their corn he had to make a path with the snow blower. When he got done the wind blew the pails out of the skid steer bucket and he had to retrieve them. For the most part he managed to work inside.
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