We had the hoof trimmer here today, which is primarily the reason we moved cattle yesterday over to Ed's. The original plan was to move them to our other barn but Bruce found more to fix there than he had anticipated. At some point he will have to fix the fence that the snow has taken down but for this week we just went to plan B. With the middle pen open, Jared backs his trim chute right into our barn. This has proven to work great since he can come here in any kind of weather. Today was nice enough (for February) to have the doors open which was a nice change. Jared's chute has electric lights, hydraulics etc so he really doesn't need more than a plug in. The cattle are taken through the gates and into the chute where the head gates close on the front like a stanchion to catch them. The entire chute lifts the animal so they are at a people friendly work height and belly bands lift to support the animal while their feet are pulled up, generally one side at a time. He uses an angle grinder with a rotoclip head on it (wheel with carbide inserts) to reshape their hooves and hoof knives to remove any troublesome tissue. Generally the problems he finds are over growth, warts & heel cracks but occasionally they can have a sole ulcer. Once they are trimmed they are bandaged if needed and then they are ready to go. We have them checked this time of year so their feet and legs are ready to do the work of traveling on the pasture. While the cattle are in the chute, we have short waits while he is trimming and we use this time to do small odd jobs. Today we moved calves in to the pen in the barn and the new calves out into the hutches. I washed the pipeline and vacuum line while each cow was out being trimmed. That works great for me since I am too short to do it while the cattle are standing there. We use wet erase markers and make the PVC vacuum line our "message board" of sorts, identifying the cow and also if she had a dry quarter. We use leg bands to identify dry, staph and hold cows, each with different colors. Bruce forked out the areas where the calves and goats have been and rebedded. Most importantly, we trimmed in such a way that the cows that had been moved all over the barn to create dry groups, were actually put back where they belong!!! We like our cows to go back into the same stanchions all the time and it was kind of surprising how many still remembered where to go after being inside so long.
With everyone moved again milking was a bit challenging, especially since I started by myself. It didn't take too long before it all made sense. Round 2 tomorrow....
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| The entrance to the chute. Jared shuts gates while he is working and we have another cow waiting in this pen |
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| They are bandaged after a tetracycline poultice for warts or to protect the heel after the overgrowth is removed that causes heel cracks and then bacterial infections which erode the hoof further |
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| The feet are pulled up and secured so they can be trimmed. Once they are done the chute goes back down to the floor and the head gate opens so they can exit from the front. He is then ready for the next waiting cow. |
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| Red bands identify dry cows, green bands identify staph aureus cows, pink bands are cows with milk being held out of the tank. As Joe noted, black number is the address and the blue numbers are their names. |
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