Just Super Busy

It has been a long time since Jim came home for a whole weekend.  We got a lot done, mainly bits and pieces, so I will just make todays list.  Milking.  We decided to let 1/3 of the cows out in the yard today as a practice run.  To do that we have to fence off the steer feed bunk so they can't eat there. Steers have nothing to do but damage things so we needed to redo the fence which, of course,  required a number of tools and parts and as soon as we got the fixing done we let them out.  Cows run and kick like calves but in a much less graceful way so we are always glad no one gets hurt in all the enthusiasm.  We were pleasantly surprised that the older cows came in and remembered where there stalls were and the new heifers took our suggestion as to where they should go easily.  Bruce, Jim and I worked on finishing marking the contour strips.  Now all those 40 acres are ready to go and more user friendly.  I mowed lawns today, at least until the drive belt on the mower broke.  We had noticed it was cracked but hadn't gotten one on the shelf yet so that will be continued tomorrow.  Ed's silo is officially empty so the heifers got large round bales of dry hay yesterday.  We decided to let the animals at the other place out on pasture so that happened this afternoon after Bruce put the initial dividing fence in.  The pastures get broken down into paddocks (sections) so they eat them efficiently and then when a paddock is eaten the heifers (or cows) are moved to another so the previous one can start growing again.  This is referred to as managed intensive rotational grazing. We attempt to manage forage quality for a particular class of livestock by the length of the rotation.  Dry cows and heifers don't need as high of quality of pasture so they can be rotated slower, allowing their forage to become more mature.  Milking cows and small growing heifers need a higher quality forage and therefore need to be rotated faster, harvesting the feed at its most nutritious. Now we have 1 less group to deliver feed to since it didn't take them long at all to start eating grass.  The pastures are still pretty short for this late in May.  About supper time Bruce came to the house and wanted help. The chain hook had broken on the gate that keeps the heifers here in the yard and out of the pasture.  Since that fence isn't ready to go yet we had to get them all back in for the night.  Between the heifers love for corn and the dogs enthusiasm for herding we got them back in fairly quickly.  The goats have been taken off of pasture and moved back into the yard with the feeder.  The group is big and all eating so they ate the pasture they were on pretty quickly.  More fence to get ready to go this week.  Tonight the dog is tired.  He moved the new steers into the barn and then the bigger steers into their holding pen. He moved cows out of the barn and back in.  Went along marking strips. He helped get the heifers at the other place out onto the pasture. He got the heifers back when they got out and moved the goats back into the yard. It has been a long winter for him but today he got to live the border collie dream : )