Sunday....day of rest...not!

This morning after milking I got the 3 calves that were in the hutches into the barn.  I just fill a bottle with milk, and since they have been drinking out of pails for awhile, they are excited about a nipple and will follow me anywhere.  Once they are in I feed them in pails as usual.  They are in a pen with a weaned heifer calf so that will work well.  I like starting them in groups of 4 in pens the size we have. Now that they are in the barn I can start heading them  into the next phase of eating including using a drinking cup.  Bruce spent the morning moving more snow.  One would think he would run out of snow to move pretty soon but today he moved the snow that had blown  in against the south side of the barn.  First he pulled it all away from the building and then used the snow blower to make another pile.  I can no longer see the road in that direction.  I convinced him to nap since it is Sunday but he is much like a kid and argued, then agreed to 1/2 hour and set a timer.  Today its really pretty warm (for Feb.) so he cleaned the back of the barn.  The forecast for the week ahead is really cold again.  There was no point in trying to take it anywhere since the fields are all blown shut so he used the skid steer and dumped it in a pile in our steer yard.  Atleast when it does thaw he will be able to reload it easily on concrete.  I bedded the hutches with corn fodder and took 3 bull calves out after getting their coats on.  The hutches too are getting deep.  We seem to be in a weather pattern that Sunday is the day to catch up before poorer weather.

A Day Off From Snow Removal

Bruce's father tells of the days they used shovels to open the driveway after snowstorms and of the wind filling it back in by morning.  Eventually they bought a tractor with a loader on the front.  This was a huge improvement in saving time and human wear and tear but using it created huge banks of snow and the wind was able to fill the area that much deeper. Cleaning it out the next time was a bigger job than before.  The summer I arrived here we purchased a 6 ft. snow blower on an auction.  It could be used on our smallest tractor, the loader tractor, and would remove the snow and only leave banks as high as the snow it was removing.  The downside was it was used on an open tractor so, at times, you would get plenty of snow thrown back at you depending on the wind.  Even with that, it seemed like a piece of equipment straight from heaven!  In 1995 we upgraded to this 8 ft. blower that would fit on our cab tractor.  The driveway in the video is probably about 15% of what we need to plow these days.  In snows like this we have two neighbors we help out also.  The snow blower and alternator are wonderful pieces of equipment that we are perfectly content owning but never using.

It was a quiet day on the farm.  Bruce was again able to fill the feed box out of the silo at Ed's.  The sick cows are eating hay and holding their own.  The latest cow that freshened has passed her drug test  and is now being milked into the tank  Tonight the two special needs cows added 45 minutes to the evening by the time we stop milking, pull the pipe out of the tank, milk each of them, and deliver the medications they need.  The cow the vet saw has most of her placenta still inside and attached so she will need to be watched closely for awhile yet. There are some things on farms that are frustrating.  The days are long and even when you do everything right the cows don't necessarily read the manual.  These are the days we repeat over and over and over, "this too shall pass".  

We are wishing for warmer weather so the barns and yards will thaw.  The heifers in the lower building have to get down on their "knees" to eat their grain because there is so much frozen manure/bedding in there.  Generally, by this point in winter, we have a thaw and the opportunity to get everyone back down on the ground.  When it does thaw there is a good chance that we will be piling everything because the snow is so deep in the fields we can't get to or through the fields it should go on.  If we did spread on the snow many of the nutrients would run off with the snow melt and not be available for our corn crop.  Piling means we will have double the work but atleast the cattle situation will be improved.

I spent a good portion of the day paying bills and finding the desk.  It's time to get the books in order and delivered to the accountant since, for us, taxes are due March 15.  

Silo's and snow

Another morning of silo unloaders that like attention.  Bruce is now thinking the corn silage unloader needs taking apart and cleaning.  Perhaps the grease isn't getting where it needs to go and it's sticking.  The vet visit was a pleasant surprise this morning in the fact that the cervical prolapse is just something that will happen when she lays down and isn't a serious problem and, at this point, she doesn't have the displaced abomasum (DA) we expected. When there is stress and a feed interruption the abomasum will sometimes fill with gas and then flip over causing a blockage on both sides of it. Bruce compares it to having a ball (feed) in a tube sock.  The weight of the feed keeps it hanging as it should but if you flip it, it twists. Thats what can happen to cows. A common name for this condition is "twisted gut".  If she would have had a DA they have to do surgery to correct it.  So far, so good, but given how she feels we will keep our fingers crossed.  She did test positive for the start of ketosis.  That's not a surprise since it's pretty common also with stress and feed interruption.  When a cow doesn't eat enough it sets up a chain of events that causes ketosis. What happens is that she doesn't get enough energy from the feed she is eating so she starts to rapidly metabolize her fat stores.  This process frees up ketone bodies in her system which cause depression and lack of appetite.  So if this starts it's a vicious cycle....the cow doesn't eat....she feels poorly...she doesn't eat..... Untreated she dies but generally its easily treated with IV glucose and oral propylene glycol.  This condition is critical in human diabetics.  This is why, in dry and fresh cows, keeping them comfortable, happy and eating is critical.  Delivering twins commonly sets this situation in motion.  In the case of the current cow we think the fact she was standing next to a milking cow allowed her to steal the dairy TMR and not eat her dry cow feed.  By the time Bruce got done feeding today he had set the doors down in both the haylage silo here and the silo at Ed's.  Unless one of them gives him trouble he shouldn't have to climb them for awhile.  The haylage silo here has 20 ft in it.  Its nice if we can get it empty by spring.  We have a little more than 3 months til harvest.  Now that the driveways are all open Bruce spent a couple hours cleaning the excess snow out of the goat yard and their feeder.  The dog found it to be great fun since Bruce had to leave a gate open and he was in charge of returning the heifers and goats to where they were supposed to be.

Digging out

Yesterday morning, blown shut

Opened up with neighbors truck off the road

Snow from the east creates all kinds of challenges

Just like in the city, Bruce made a windrow of snow to blow

Opening up the driveway to the silage bag

Finding the bag and making room to work.

The day started with a silo that needed to be let down a door so Bruce could mix feed.  We have 2 concrete stave silo's that are 20'x60'.  One holds corn silage and one holds haylage. As of this morning  we have 42 ft of corn silage left. We won't harvest corn silage again until sometime in Oct. so having that much left is a good thing. While the feed was mixing Bruce thought he would try using a leaf blower to get the snow off of everything in the feed room.  Our minerals come in plastic lined paper bags so having all the snow melt would compromise them.  He was thrilled that it worked better than he even expected.  Today the cow the vet saw yesterday is slow but doing OK.  When they were here they did a blood draw to check for calcium and phosphorous levels which came back fine.  The cow that had her calf yesterday is doing great.  The calf with the belly ache is not impressed with me cutting back her feed.  I am glad all she had was a belly ache.  As a general rule, if you get calves past 7-10 days they rarely give you trouble.  This one is old enough that she just had me confused.  The snow clean up continued today.  Bruce used the skid steer to pull the snow out from where he couldn't get it with the snow blower and then proceeded to use the blower to add it to the pile.  We now have a snow pile that is easily 10 ft high and 50 ft long.  In past years it has taken until mid June before it was all melted.  The size of this pile is well on its way to take that long to melt also. This storm has  taken  many hours of Bruce's time with 7 hours on the snow blower tractor alone in the last two days. Along with silo's we store our feed in silage bags.  As a general rule they are 9'diameter x 250' long.  We put the best quality feed in the upright silo's so its available for the dairy cows and the rest of the feed is stored in bags.  Years ago we baled a lot of dry hay but its really hard to get weather cooperation to do that anymore.  We use the bagged feed for the goats and also to fill feed boxes when its too windy to get feed out of the silo at Ed's.   We are trying to get the silo at Ed's empty so we have room to store this summers feed harvest.  Bags cost $965 each so the more we get in silos the cheaper our storage is.

Bruce started feeding early with great hopes of getting in the house at a more reasonable hour.  First there was a lump that came down from the corn storage bin and plugged the tube that feeds the roller mill that grinds the corn.  He ended up taking it apart and cleaning it out.  Next the corn silage unloader dug itself down so he had to climb the silo and fix that.  His only explanation for why it did that was it must have missed him and wanted him to come visit.  Neither milk sample passed the drug test so we still have 3 special needs cows to milk at the end.  When Bruce went up to milk the one the vet saw yesterday she had something coming out that we thought was potentially her uterus.  Bruce called the vet and tried to describe it and then asked her if he could send her a picture via cell phone.  She proceeded to laugh and then gave him her number.  He sent a picture and she called back and said it was a cervical prolapse.  It is something that they will need to come and deal with but it could wait til tomorrow morning.  She recommended another bottle of calcium under the skin, given her medical history thus far.  She is not eating which means her medical list will probably be longer tomorrow.

Got snow!?!?!?! (part 2)

The county managed to get a path through the road by shortly after noon.  They spent most of the day working on both ends of a 1 mile stretch and tonight you still can't meet a car in a couple places but atleast its open.  The township didn't get the road by here open until 4. They tried once earlier in the day with the truck plow with a load of sand on it but got stuck.  Bruce pulled them out backwards and then they decided they had to wait for a grader. It was helpful that the winds died down by late morning so atleast what they managed to open has stayed that way. We happen to live on the corner of a county and township road so we get to keep track of everyone : )  Bruce spent the afternoon opening everything up here.  We have lots of driveway and thankfully a tractor with an 8 ft snowblower.  Today he worked on paths, tomorrow he will take the skid steer and pull the snow away where he couldn't get to and blow that also.  We once again have paths to the buildings but we are also starting to feel like rats in a maze. The mail man never did get anywhere near here today.

Monday morning was a bit chaotic and with that the fresh cow didn't get her calcium until the evening so  today we had to have the vet come and check her out. Thankfully she was just short on calcium so they did an IV with calcium, dextrose and phosphorus.  She also has a retained placenta so will now be on antibiotics. As long as he was here I had him check a calf that isn't eating like she should.  That one has a belly ache so she got something to settle her stomach and I need to feed her less for a day.  We are hoping the one that had twins will pass her drug test tomorrow.  We milk the cows that go into the tank first, then pull the pipe line out of the tank and milk the fresh and treated ones.  We catch that milk in pails and feed it to the bull calves  Currently there are 3 being held and it just makes milking extra long.  I was glad that both of the new calves drank well.  Hopefully we can find space for the hutches soon and streamline things.

Got snow?!?! Yikes!!! (part1)

As predicted we got atleast 17 inches of snow and wind.  Our property is situated as such that we do OK with a north and west wind , but from the east we get buried.  Bruce crawled out of a warm bed and trudged through 4 ft. drifts, only to find that the door on the south side was drifted shut.  Off he went all the way around the barn to the milkhouse side to get in.  A storm like this creates a number of issues.  Belts on the elevators slip.  Elevators are full of snow and have to be dumped into the mixer and then the feed cart so it can be dumped in the gutter. He even had to shovel snow out of the feed alleys in a couple places where it blew in by the doors and also where there is a hole between the stones in our barn wall.  I really don't ever remembering having that problem with the wall before. The overhead door in the feed room doesn't seal tight on the bottom so everything is covered in snow in there too. When he got everything mixing he was nice enough to take the skid steer and create a path from the milkhouse door to our front porch for me. In this weather the skid steer and snow blower tractor are always plugged in and our generator is easily accessible just in case we need it.  By the time we were half done milking  there was a new calf coming.  Bruce read that if you feed your dry cows in the evening they will tend to have their calves during the daytime.  We have found this to be true and very helpful.  The heifer! calf was here before we were done!  This morning the neighbor thought he would get lucky and make it down the township road.  He is stuck but smart enough to be dressed to walk so he went home (nearly a half mile) and will come back on his snowmobile when we are done with breakfast.  The bull calf that didn't want to eat yesterday was much more receptive to our suggestions this morning.  He still doesn't entirely grasp the concept of sucking but he did manage to get a whole bottle down, it just took awhile.  Bruce has now gotten the neighbors car safely in our driveway and out of the road.  Turns out he had spent the night at another neighbors about a mile north of here because he had gotten stuck.  The plowing adventure has begun here...

Storm fences in place.

This mornings fun

This is our spreader pit area, under roof and protected on 2 sides.

The steer bunk was shoveled out twice yesterday.

The neighbors car....optimism didn't quite do it

Bruce just left to plow out our other place about 1/2 mile from here.  There are 8 ft drifts across the county road, a delivery van stuck and a county grader trying to cut a hole through so he decided to go check things out at Ed's instead.  The township plow got within a half mile of here and couldn't get through so Ed isn't plowed out yet either.  Since the road to the west also has a reputation for drifting badly I think its probably still full also.  Guess we won't have to worry about unexpected company today : )

Winter adventure day

Yesterday was a very special day in Wisconsin. We got to pay the first half of our property taxes.  We have 269 acres, 230 of which was considered tillable before we turned approximately 50 of it into pasture.  For all of this our first half is only $3859!    In 2006, the first year with this acreage, half was $3022. Gotta love progress huh : (

Bruce started his day with the usual feeding, followed by plowing a path with the skid steer so I could get to the barn easier and our milk hauler could get in.  Since we are down on cows and milk we are currently picked up every other day.  Our milk hauler is the 3rd generation to pick up milk here, preceded by his father and grandfather.  Milking and feeding calves has expanded to about 2 1/2 hours twice daily for me.  New calves are time consuming since the first couple feedings come from the mom and I have to wait until Bruce gets them  milked. They also get fed with a bottle and need to learn how to make it all work.  The latest calf was a bull that wouldn't drink for me so I used a stomach tube and got about 3 quarts of milk into it yesterday.  This morning when I tried to feed it I couldn't get it to drink so Bruce decided to give it a try.  He couldn't get it to try either so we decided to let it "think" about it until tonight.  Tonight he had decided that he basically didn't want anything to do with whatever we were trying.  We did manage to get a half bottle into him but he doesn't want to suck.  While beef calves tend to be more self sufficient, dairy calves sometimes would die without human intervention. I need to move a few more calves out into the hutches but with the weather forecast being so nasty, keeping them in makes less work when the snow clean up starts.  I have fed calves in hutches over 30 years.  For many of those years, when we had a big snowstorm we would have to shovel out the fences and path to the doors on the hutches.  We have to do this in self defense because if we get a pack of snow that gets too deep the calves start jumping their fences. A few years ago Bruce decided to try tying the fences that are in front (hog panels) flat across the doors to the hutches when we had storms.  That made the clean up much easier but made it hard for me to get to the doors to feed.  After all these years we came up with the best idea yet!  Buy new panels and cut them so we can tie individual sections across individual hutches.  Now I can still feed and all we have to shovel is between the hutches.  The rest Bruce does by driving right in front of the hutches with the skid steer or snow blower.  MUCH more user friendly!  We wish now we had thought of that decades ago : )

The winds moved in about 4 p.m. today.  If you watched the snow there was no way to tell which direction the wind was actually coming from.  White out conditions.  Temps in the mid teens.  These are the days I am glad all I need is higher boots to commute to work : )  Forecast of 8-10 more inches with wind over night.  Tomorrow will be another day of snow adventures.  The dog loves it!  While I got to hide inside and cook today, Bruce managed a badly needed couple hour nap and then headed out to do what he had to do.  He fed the steers a half batch of feed twice today because the bunk filled with snow and needed to be shoveled out.  In order to get to the lower buildings and feed the goats their TMR and the heifers their corn he had to make a path with the snow blower.  When he got done the wind blew the pails out of the skid steer bucket and he had to retrieve them.  For the most part he managed to work inside.