Rain

Bruce got to the barn this morning to find a feed alley full of water.  We had gotten 1/2 inch of rain over night and the original barn has a stone wall.  Historically water in the alley was normal but when we added the feed room we put in drain tile and a sump pump, along with an eves trough on the milkhouse.  As it turned out, the snow had broken the hangers on the eves trough so instead of dumping the rain away from the building it was being dumped against it.  Bruce reconnected the eve and then swept all the water out of the alley while he was trying to mix feed.  The belts on the elevator motors need tightening and the rain was just enough to make them slip.  When the elevator would stop the silage plugged in the tube it comes down in.  Twice this happened and Bruce got tired of getting wet while unplugging the tube so he decided to get the silage out of the bag and deal with the elevators on a dryer day. Needless to say, feeding took longer than usual and I did a bunch of milking again myself.  He had sent a feed sample in yesterday from the bag and already tonight Vicky has our ration redone.  Turns out the feed in the bag is better stuff than we have in the silo so the cows should be pretty pleased with the change.  The haylage silo is down to only a couple feet left.  That's great timing with grazing and making first crop hay being so close.

I am glad to say that so far the two fresh cows are making progress as would be expected.  Perhaps I should have explained the art of freshening to the earlier cows since these two seem to have understood....or at least I like to think they do. We need to take the stitches out of the last DA surgery cow but we will have to use heifer calm on her to do it.  Cows have personalities and are very much creatures of habit.  This particular cow tends to be a little more nervous than most so routine is vital.  She is used to having people come in and work with her on her left side.  Just trying to look at her stitches on her right side puts her in panic mode.  She seems to be developing an abscess there so Bruce checked with the vet on the best way to proceed.  They have recommended we remove the bottom couple stitches and allow the abscess to open there and drain.  The last thing she needs is to have it open inside so we were glad to hear that.  She is doing great otherwise so this is just an extra step in the healing process.  The fresh heifer that had blood in 1 quarter and then mastitis and then pneumonia will end up losing the affected quarter.  It really isn't responding to treatment so we will just dry that quarter up and milk the other 3.  Drying up the quarter allows us to keep her as a producing cow, we will just have to put the milker on her accordingly.  This morning I moved calves in.  The neat thing is one of them is the one that was so sick and tried to die a couple weeks ago.  She is growing like crazy and will now be weaned shortly.  Sometimes you win.

It rained pretty much all day.  The list of things I had hoped to get done pretty much disappeared with the dreary weather since we didn't get much accomplished.  Today was milk check day so I paid a few bills.  Our water heater needs to be moved up faster on the "to do" list so today Bruce contacted an electrician/plumber to see what our options are.  Not everyone deals with high temp/high output heaters like we need so the first trick is to figure out who can help us.  We need to maintain a temperature of 140 degrees in the pipeline & milker wash vat through the complete cycle.  Therefore the water coming out of the heater has to be about 180-185 degrees.  Most household heaters go to 150-160 degrees.  We always thought we would put in a tankless heater but that would include a water softener and more money than we care to invest at this point.  Prices are pending...we will see.  Bruce talked to the shop people yesterday and they think that all the parts have now arrived so our tractor should be going back together soon.  In the meantime Bruce is staying away from the fields since its way too easy to get stuck these days.  We had the pleasant surprise of a phone call today saying that Joe would be available to help milk tonight!  He and I did most of the milking and then while he and Bruce finished I started feeding calves.  We were both in early tonight, at least early for us!  Thanks Joe!