We are a 5th generation dairy farm in Wisconsin. My husband and I rotationally graze our dairy herd and heifers and also raise beef and goats. We are in our mid 50's and are the primary labor on our 60 cow dairy. We hope you find our blog interesting. Sometimes its hard to explain every detail so feel free to ask questions and we will do our best to answer them. This is a daily diary about our life running a dairy farm.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Yes, Hot And Humid Still
It has continued to be a very warm and humid weekend. The cows are spending their days in the barn and evenings out on pasture. Jim came home this weekend and he and Bruce worked on the chopper box. Perhaps the project that we are most pleased with is the reorganizing of cattle. Today was cloudy which helped temper the weather. We got the group at the other place, 1/4 mile away, in the building and sorted the steers from the heifers after treating them for flies. Between the driveway and corn field we put up a temporary fence as a suggestion of the route we wanted the cattle to take. We then herded, I should say Mike & Bruce herded the steers down the driveway, across the county highway and across 2 cow paddocks to the far corner of the pasture. We then sorted the smallest group here and took those steers through the cow yard and out the lane to the back of the pasture to join the other group. We now have 24 steers that will follow the cows. Their job is to eat what the cows don't since there is usually plenty of nice grass left. They just have to work a bit harder at harvesting it than the dairy cows should. After that group was in place we herded the heifers from here through the cowyard and out the lane to the end of the pasture. They then turned left and crossed the county road and traveled up the driveway to join the heifers there. We still have 4 groups on pasture but now but it's cows, steers and 2 groups of heifers. The whole time we were moving the last group it rained lightly. When we were done we all needed a change of clothes but it felt wonderful!
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