Our morning started by taking a step backwards first. We had discussed selling some steers today, and as I was walking out of the milk house to go sort them Dominic came in and said "do you know you have cows out?" That was the end of the selling steers idea today. The cow in the first stall must have been itching herself, or whatever she was doing and managed to open the row. We had 10 of the 12 cows in that row out and in every alley in the barn. Mike was a bit timid about helping since this kind of chaos is absolutely not normal and it didn't help that a few of the cows are not in their regular stalls and had no idea where to go. We managed to get everyone out of the alleys and back in their stalls, and then we could start milking. Needless to say, the lever is now tied so she can't do that again.
Bruce had been having trouble with the harvestore and he assumed it was the motor. When he was in town the other day he stopped in and talked to the repair people and they had a couple scenario's of what was wrong. When Bruce removed the belts to work on it he realized that they were frayed so he called the harvestore people to order belts. As long as he was talking to them he mentioned the problem that he was having. They didn't believe it was the motor, but actually a problem with the fine materials that are along with the corn kernels binding the top cutter chain. They suggested ways for Bruce to fix the problem but when he tried them it didn't work like he expected, and instead of tearing the chain off he decided to have the harvestore people come and fix it. In the meantime he has managed to get enough corn out to feed and they will come tomorrow.
The next project was taking the manure spreader apart so he could replace the bearing that was out. As he took it apart he realized that not only the bearing was out, the shaft was worn and so was the bearing holder. Given all the damages he is not quite sure how it worked as long as it did. The local machinist goes by here on his way home so he stopped in and picked up the shaft on his way by and will work on it tomorrow.
Tomorrow we will also sell some steers. At this point that is the plan.
Another heifer freshened tonight. This heifer is a holstein/brown swiss cross and she had a heifer calf that is all black with the exceptions of the edges of her hooves. Now we officially have 2 heifers left to freshen. One has an udder that looks like she will deliver any day and the last one looks like she might be waiting for the new year. Then we will be done calving.....until February anyway.
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