We continue to have amazing fall weather. Bruce spent the day feeding of course followed by the cleaning of the pens in the barn and bedding them. When Bruce sorted the calves back he was able to empty one pen and I was able to get the 3 calves that were in the hutches in. These calves are huge since they have been weaned for quite awhile and I have been carrying feed out to them. You don't realize how much they eat until you carry everything so I am pretty darned excited that their feed will now be delivered when Bruce feeds the rest with the feed cart and they can drink out of the drinking cup whenever they want. I have a system for getting calves into the barn. I don't feed them on purpose the morning I want to get them in so they are extra hungry. I go out a bit later and I fill a bottle with milk or replacer and then lead them in. Since they haven't had a bottle in awhile they get pretty excited and will follow me anywhere. As soon as everyone is in their new pen I feed them in pails as usual. Tonight I had one lose the bottle and start to run away when we were already in the barn. Bruce sent Mike around her and had him lie down. That was just enough help that she turned around and once again connected with me. It is stuff like that with Mike that still amazes me.
We got our last pregnancy tests back and we had exactly 50% pregnant. Now we know where we are with everyone which is nice. Bruce commented the other day that Speckles must not be pregnant because right after she was bred she felt she had enough job security to kick the milker off routinely. She has been behaving lately so Bruce thinks she realizes her security isn't as assured as she may have thought earlier. Sure enough, she is open.
The neighbors farm is rented by a cash cropper that runs a couple thousand acres of crops in total around the county. This spring he planted all 400+ acres by GPS. This morning while we were milking he moved in with his combine, semi, and grain cart. It looks like a major army invasion when he arrives and 30 minutes later the first semi of corn was leaving! Bruce commented tonight that with the GPS system in place he could sleep while the combine did the work. Bruce is guessing that he has an equipment investment of nearly a million dollars! A few years ago we purchased corn from him and he delivered it in his grain cart which holds 1 semi load. It didn't take long to fill our silo that year since we unloaded a semi load in 9 minutes! Oh my goodness was it noisy!
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