When we woke up this morning it was raining. When Bruce got cows it poured. It continued to rain all through milking and feeding calves. As a general rule Mike spends his time outside, usually napping but also watching goats or playing with his toys. With the rain he was stuck inside and he wandered in and out by us, and every single time, with the "I'm SOOO bored" look. He made us laugh! With all the rain the cow yard gets pretty sloppy so one of Bruce's adventures today was to take the tire bucket and scrape all the manure into the corner of the yard for now. It was nice to see concrete again and having this done keeps the cows cleaner in their travels and letting the steers out of their pen easier.
Today was a work day in town for me. Bruce wormed the goats. As a general rule we have done it with two people but today he managed to set up fences and catch them easily himself. He used an oral wormer so he had to catch them and then use a syringe to squirt the liquid into their mouths. Another job off the list!
We have been frustrated with a SCC higher than it should be. The first challenge in this is 60 cows x 4 teats = 240 potential causes. We have held suspect cows out of the tank, milked quarters out of the tank and treated a cow. This morning we figured out which cow and which quarter is probably causing the problem and Bruce treated her tonight. She was never on our radar as being a problem. That means we now have 2 special needs cows to deal with after milking everyone else. We are certainly hoping that dealing with these cows will fix our problem. We also realize that with the rain and dampness of fall we could have another one with a problem tomorrow.
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