Reports on Everything

The morning started a bit late with both of us over sleeping. Needless to say, milking ran just a bit late.  Bruce took milk cultures and I ran them to the vet clinic after they were frozen.  Freezing breaks the cell walls so we get a more accurate culture.  Within a few days we will have results and milking in general will be more streamlined.  The new heifers will continue to need extra watching for awhile.  So far we don't have anyone that is particularly mean but they do need to learn to stand still.  It's all just part of learning to be a milk cow.

There was lots of pounding going on for awhile today.  Bruce wanted to try to straighten the hump out in the roof steel for the chopper box.  He was quite successful so we will only need to buy 1 additional sheet of steel for the back of the box.  Considering how bad the box looked laying on its side we have gotten very lucky.

We got a call that our tractor is already in the shop.  If it had to break, this is good timing.  No one is in the field so the local shops are pretty caught up.  Nothing is getting fixed unless it breaks with a farm economy that is still struggling even with higher current prices.  If this had happened when we were making our first hay crop we may have lost feed quality with whatever delay it created or we would have had to rent a replacement.  There is always a bright side...I guess.

We got to the barn this morning to find the heifers in the pen looking at us as if to say "what did we do to end up in here?"  No new calves.  The new calf from yesterday is eating well.  She is smaller than I am used to which is typical of a heifers calf compared to the calf of a mature cow.  If the c-section heifer had carried a calf this size she could have delivered it without a problem.  Not an unfamiliar problem in the people world but it is much more uncommon in cattle. Bruce did manage to get the dry cows treated.  Cows with higher somatic cell counts are treated in each quarter with a longer term antibiotic.  With dry periods of 6-8 weeks the drugs have plenty of time to work and are generally cleared by the time the cows have their calves.  This is why we run a drug test on every cow, just in case they need a little extra time for a negative test.

Bruce's day was a little more in control.  He had 2 silo's that he needed to let down a door.  Ed filled the feedboxes for the yard here and the one at the other place.While he did that Bruce cleaned up around the bunk and hauled a load of manure from Ed's yard. It sometimes seems that the heifers' sole purpose in life is to convert feed into manure. The guys from the county were here to remark the contour strips on 40 acres so they are now ready to work when the weather cooperates.  It was sunny and beautiful with the grass turning pretty evenly green.  The pasture's are a little slower than our yard grass but it won't be too long.