Bruce went to the pasture to get the cows this morning and found a set of aborted water belly twins. The cow involved was due to be dried up in a couple weeks so they are about 8 weeks early. We have had a couple water belly calves before. Both were delivered by cesarean, both cows died. These calves are a birth defect and are just as the names says, their bellies are full of water. If they had made it to term this fluid would have made them like a cork in a bottle and unable to be delivered so its just as well she aborted them. Today she is eating like nothing has happened so time will tell what she does long term. The weather was beautiful today. Just over 90 degrees with plenty of wind to make it nice. We were concerned about the cows today with such a drastic change in temperature so Bruce put them in the paddock directly across the road so they wouldn't have to walk all the way to the far end. They didn't seem to mind the weather at all with the wind blowing so hard. Cows can't sweat so the warmer it gets the more stress it causes them. Tonight I started milking and Bruce got the fence ready at the far end again. It seems the cows automatically know when we make changes because tonight they just turned the corner and headed down the lane. Today was another one of those frustrating days. Bruce had to move 2 groups of heifers to new paddocks. When he got to the lower group here he found a heifer that had managed to go over a fence brace and in the process catch her foot and then fell and broke it just above the hoof. From what Bruce can tell she did it yesterday and had been stuck. It was one of those situation that again made Bruce sick to his core that she had suffered so long. At one point we could have sold her for pet food but with all the mad cow scare they have tightened the regulations so our only options were to put her down and bury her. She was a pregnant heifer worth $1300 if we had sold her. Such a sad total waste. We have used that pasture for 7 years and never had this happen. The brace will be changed before the animals go in there again.
The current plan is to plant corn on the no till ground tomorrow. The rest of the fields are still too wet to dig so being able to no till also has the advantage of letting us plant earlier. We went out to the field to look at the seeding and there are obvious rows of plants growing!
Bruce got just enough corn out of the harvestore to feed tonight. The unloader is making a noise it shouldn't so there will be a service call tomorrow. I told my mom this noon that at least we hadn't broken anything last week..............
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