We have Jim home these days since he has the week off. His primary reason to come back is a house project for me but of course there are many project options here. Joe was back yesterday morning and has been helping milk. He and I start and then Bruce takes over and I feed calves. We are liking this option although school will start again next week. Domenic is back and looking for things to do, and this morning Ed was also here offering to help. The winter options are a bit more limited but as the days go on we think of more to do. Yesterday Jim helped Bruce fix the manure spreader so today Ed cleaned the steer yard and also got some corn fodder stacks to bed them. Being able to clean yards this late in December is unusual. Another project for yesterday was fixing the motor on the auger the Harvestore people put in our silo. The pulley on the motor was nearly worn out when it arrived and fell off. Since Ed no longer uses his Harvestore they fixed the problem by using the motor from the auger off his silo. The good news in fixing it is we can now get corn out of the silo in half the time it was taking. It is not as fast as we are used to but a big improvement over the original auger.
Today we had both Domenic and Joe here to help so we started a massive barn cleaning. Generally in fall we have the barn walls whitewashed. This includes blowing down all the lose cobwebs and dust and then the walls are sprayed with a lime powder mixed with water. We didn't do that this fall so today Bruce let 2 rows (about 20) cows outside and then took the leaf blower from our shop vac and blew down the cobwebs and dirt and also used a broom on the walls. Once the dust settled (they wore respirators and had the 3 big fans blowing) Joe and Domenic scrubbed the pipeline. The pipeline was filthy! By this time of year it gets pretty dusty and we have cows that make a huge mess with their tails. I know there is a group of people that have a problem with tail docking but those people have never been hit with a manure and urine soaked tail or tried to keep working areas clean. For the pasture the cows have their tails. I personally miss having their tails docked. By the time they got those sections done and the cows back in it was time to eat dinner. The project will continue tomorrow.
Our latest culture results came back fine so tonight we could milk straight through without having to bleach any milkers. We could get used to extra help and cooperative cows : )
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