We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. In the forecast we were right on the line between rain and snow with this storm so we were thrilled to see snow instead of the inch of rain that was possible. Rain this time of year with frost in the ground just gets "ugly" as Bruce calls it. By noon the storm was pretty much over and we probably got 4 inches of heavy wet snow. It is warm enough that the snow won't stick around for long, which is pretty normal for March.
One of the projects I managed to get officially started was our financial statement. Our lender requested one last October when our loan was renewed and I promised one at year end. Well, its March and we finally have some numbers written down. I did the inventories earlier on what I could but so much of the information is in Bruce's head. Getting him to stop long enough to do paper work of any kind is a challenge. The other dilemma is setting a value on everything. This is a project we both hate doing, thus the procrastination.
Today was a calf day. I got the rest of the hutch calves started on pails. I had planned on bedding the hutches but Bruce was nice enough to get there first. Now that it's warmer the bedding gets wet faster. The calf with the joint infection has been moved in with the other calves I want to wean. That has been a strange situation since his heifer twin started with the same thing about a week ago. Both of these calves were out of the cow that we thought was going to die so we are questioning whether she had a whole system infection she has passed on to the calves. As it turns out they will all survive but not without a lot of extra work to keep them going. It's one of those situations that's just frustrating. This morning we had a cow that was not eating, had diarrhea and cold ears. Since she has been milking for a while we are assuming her symptoms aren't calving issues and will treat her for pneumonia. By tonight she was looking a bit brighter and at least eating some feed. We are looking forward to getting everyone outside. As strange as it seems, even with all the ventilation fans, we treat more sick animals in a warm building than we ever do when they are outside in the cold. On the flip side of that we also treat more animals outside when it's hot and humid. Bruce brought home stacks for the lower building today and bedded them. Tomorrow they get their shots and hopefully will be pregnant this weekend! The hope is to have confirmed pregnancies before they go out on pasture. We have the facilities to get them home when we need to but once they are on pasture it's just more work.
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