Tuesday-For a combination of reasons, bedtime Monday night was nearly midnight. As a general rule Bruce sleeps all night but he happened to be up at 2:30 and I could hear him getting dressed to go out to the barn to take care of a new calf. He returned to bed and, as usual the alarm went off in the blink of an eye. Dominic was here bright and early so Bruce began teaching him how to mix feed. As I was getting ready to head to the barn I saw a calf being born via camera. I didn't see anyone in sight so I called Bruce. He was in the milkhouse and pretty sure I was confused, and I was positive I could see a calf. He went out to find that I was right, and was totally taken by surprise since they had been working around the barn and never saw she was calving. That was a quick delivery! Between training Domenic and dealing with 2 new fresh heifers, morning chores went late and it was after 10:30 before we managed to get breakfast. Bruce decided to lie down for a bit, so I did too. As a general rule we set a timer for 20-30 minutes but this time neither of us set a timer, and when we woke up it was 1:30!!! Oh My Goodness, we had lost half a day in the blink of an eye! Just as we were upright Ed came, ready to start the projects discussed earlier in the morning. Needless to say, Bruce hadn't gotten anything ready so Ed had to come back in an hour. It was nearly 3:00 before they got started hauling manure from the yard in the lower building here. I started milking while Bruce was still feeding. The good news is the heifer with mastitis and herpes had passed her drug test and has healed well so we can put the milker on her. Milking ended with 4 special needs cows to deal with.
Wednesday-Domenic came again this morning and cleaned the feed alley and then mixed feed and fed the steers and calves. It is our hope that he will take these things off of Bruce's "to do" list. After milking Bruce had a therapy appointment in town so he was gone until early afternoon. Ed was here before he was back so Ed started cleaning the steer yard. Vicky came just as Bruce got home so we met with her. Discussions today included the heifers freshening and how they are adjusting, calf care and breeding information. For some reason the pregnancies that I am reporting when we test milk are not showing up correctly in her information so she was pretty concerned that we had many more open animals than we actually do. After therapy Bruce moves a bit slower than normal so he focused on feeding. After milking we needed to close up the door that is still on the "to do" list so we braced the old door in place for the time being. Winter is starting to move in. It was 20 degrees when we got in.
Thursday-We woke to the phone ringing this morning. We expected it to be the announcement of another new calf but instead it was Domenic, wondering if it would be OK if he didn't come this morning. Hmmm. Bruce still wasn't moving very fast so I started milking myself. I had an appointment in town and then errands to run. Bruce and Ed cleaned the rest of the lower yard here, which actually means he is caught up to a year ago when he pushed the manure in the yard up into a pile in hopes of hauling it before it froze!!! The manure from these yards gets spread on the fields that will be corn again so we are basically applying spring fertilizer needs now. Milking tonight started a bit earlier since we have our card party date tomorrow night and will need to adjust our milking time to get there at a reasonable hour. We shipped the 2 high somatic cell count cows that we had been milking at the end, and all the heifers are now being milked into the line. The only complication is we don't have cultures done yet so we are bleaching milkers between uncultured cows. Bruce tells me he will do this soon. I highly suggested it would be in his best interest to do it! heheheh : )
No comments:
Post a Comment