After Bruce talked to the mechanic about our skid steer he also talked to our son who happens to be an engineer for another company and, as luck would have it, happens to work specifically with skid steers. He also suspects the same problem as the mechanic and added the professional opinion of "it's not terminal". I am hoping for a relatively cheap fix. We haven't heard anything about our tractor this week so perhaps they are still waiting for parts, or as Bruce suggests, sold it for scrap iron. I did see one person planting corn in our area yesterday so, regardless of the temperatures, the ground seems to be getting a bit dryer.
We did have some very good news from Matt, our seed dealer. We ordered our seed late last year and neither of us thought we had ordered the alfalfa at that time. Matt was getting our order ready to deliver and called to let us know that there was indeed alfalfa seed already ordered and paid for. That is $2000 that is already taken care of!!! Corn seed is bred for particular climatic zones, meaning if you are in a northern cold zone the growing season is shorter than in a southern warmer zone. Therefore you need to pick a corn that has a relative maturity that fits your local. In our area we normally plant corn in the 90-110 day relative maturity range. We are able to plant the longer day corn if we get into the field early, but this year its still cool and getting later in our growing season. For this reason Matt has already worked with Bruce and changed our corn order to include some varieties that are shorter day than what we originally ordered. Hopefully the weather will cooperate so we can plant soon. It is time. According to the news yesterday, last year 46% of the corn crop was already planted by now but we also had a very early and warm spring. This year the same area has 1% planted.
Today they were able to scrape the area behind Ed's bunk out and catch the heifers back there like they normally do. This let Ed clean the rest of the yard (after the skid steer was picked up and out of the middle of the yard) and Bruce was able to get some other things done. Between yesterday and today they hauled 14 loads of manure out of there. Perhaps we can finally get the steers home and heifers big enough to breed here also.
This morning our fresh cow seems to be following the manual perfectly so far. Our nutritionist Vicky was here this morning to check everything out. She likes the particle length with the dry hay in the mix. We have 1 cow that is thinner than she should be. Everyone else seems to be doing fine. Bruce confirmed the process he needs to use to get the steers on their full TMR finish ration, verifying some information since he hasn't used corn silage in their ration before. We had decided to sell steers this week so 4 went on the truck today. With everything that has broken lately that check is spent before it even arrives but at least it's going to come sooner than later.
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