So It Begins

Breakfast got kind of late this morning.  We didn't start milking particularly early.  We have a special needs cow so she adds time at the end.  Bruce got the milker on her and the phone rang, we have heifers out on our yard.  I finished milking the cow while Bruce and the dog brought the group of steers and heifers to the end of the barn and put them in an empty pen.  Bruce is not impressed with the effectiveness of the fly control we are using so he retreated the cows..  Along with the regular feeding I did some extra cleaning while Bruce was treating the cows.  By the hutches there was very little breeze.  I came home to see what our weather gadget said and found 4 more stray animals wandering around by the end of the barn.  I checked the weather and called Bruce, 78 degrees, 99% humidity, winds only 7 mph and we have 4 animals out yet.  The dog is thinking this is a pretty entertaining morning, which for him makes up for the full bath he got last night and the brushing he got when he would have preferred getting cows out of the barn.  With the sun peeking out randomly and full sun in the forecast we decided to keep the cows in today.  That adds things, like bedding and feeding and anything we could think of to make them comfortable, to the day. In hind site they might have been OK outside but it totally depended on where the breeze was.  Other than a feed change I think not having to work so hard today was good.  This afternoon we got to the barn and found a heifer calf had been born. I did some extra stuff tonight since it was so nice and the cows are back out on pasture and should do fine. 

The heifers/steers that were on the yard got treated with fly repellent and put on a new piece of pasture.  Bruce strung a poly wire fence along one side to keep them from going up the driveway and the dog kept them in line and got them where they needed to go pretty quickly.  Bruce had 2 other groups to move today also, along with really really wanting to pick berries again.  By the time he got everything done it was 4:00.  He was able to go and pick for a couple hours but these berries are pretty much getting to the end.

Since we have no field work to do we have officially entered the period of time Bruce referred to as "having nothing to do".   : )