Got snow!?!?!?! (part 2)

The county managed to get a path through the road by shortly after noon.  They spent most of the day working on both ends of a 1 mile stretch and tonight you still can't meet a car in a couple places but atleast its open.  The township didn't get the road by here open until 4. They tried once earlier in the day with the truck plow with a load of sand on it but got stuck.  Bruce pulled them out backwards and then they decided they had to wait for a grader. It was helpful that the winds died down by late morning so atleast what they managed to open has stayed that way. We happen to live on the corner of a county and township road so we get to keep track of everyone : )  Bruce spent the afternoon opening everything up here.  We have lots of driveway and thankfully a tractor with an 8 ft snowblower.  Today he worked on paths, tomorrow he will take the skid steer and pull the snow away where he couldn't get to and blow that also.  We once again have paths to the buildings but we are also starting to feel like rats in a maze. The mail man never did get anywhere near here today.

Monday morning was a bit chaotic and with that the fresh cow didn't get her calcium until the evening so  today we had to have the vet come and check her out. Thankfully she was just short on calcium so they did an IV with calcium, dextrose and phosphorus.  She also has a retained placenta so will now be on antibiotics. As long as he was here I had him check a calf that isn't eating like she should.  That one has a belly ache so she got something to settle her stomach and I need to feed her less for a day.  We are hoping the one that had twins will pass her drug test tomorrow.  We milk the cows that go into the tank first, then pull the pipe line out of the tank and milk the fresh and treated ones.  We catch that milk in pails and feed it to the bull calves  Currently there are 3 being held and it just makes milking extra long.  I was glad that both of the new calves drank well.  Hopefully we can find space for the hutches soon and streamline things.

Got snow?!?! Yikes!!! (part1)

As predicted we got atleast 17 inches of snow and wind.  Our property is situated as such that we do OK with a north and west wind , but from the east we get buried.  Bruce crawled out of a warm bed and trudged through 4 ft. drifts, only to find that the door on the south side was drifted shut.  Off he went all the way around the barn to the milkhouse side to get in.  A storm like this creates a number of issues.  Belts on the elevators slip.  Elevators are full of snow and have to be dumped into the mixer and then the feed cart so it can be dumped in the gutter. He even had to shovel snow out of the feed alleys in a couple places where it blew in by the doors and also where there is a hole between the stones in our barn wall.  I really don't ever remembering having that problem with the wall before. The overhead door in the feed room doesn't seal tight on the bottom so everything is covered in snow in there too. When he got everything mixing he was nice enough to take the skid steer and create a path from the milkhouse door to our front porch for me. In this weather the skid steer and snow blower tractor are always plugged in and our generator is easily accessible just in case we need it.  By the time we were half done milking  there was a new calf coming.  Bruce read that if you feed your dry cows in the evening they will tend to have their calves during the daytime.  We have found this to be true and very helpful.  The heifer! calf was here before we were done!  This morning the neighbor thought he would get lucky and make it down the township road.  He is stuck but smart enough to be dressed to walk so he went home (nearly a half mile) and will come back on his snowmobile when we are done with breakfast.  The bull calf that didn't want to eat yesterday was much more receptive to our suggestions this morning.  He still doesn't entirely grasp the concept of sucking but he did manage to get a whole bottle down, it just took awhile.  Bruce has now gotten the neighbors car safely in our driveway and out of the road.  Turns out he had spent the night at another neighbors about a mile north of here because he had gotten stuck.  The plowing adventure has begun here...

Storm fences in place.

This mornings fun

This is our spreader pit area, under roof and protected on 2 sides.

The steer bunk was shoveled out twice yesterday.

The neighbors car....optimism didn't quite do it

Bruce just left to plow out our other place about 1/2 mile from here.  There are 8 ft drifts across the county road, a delivery van stuck and a county grader trying to cut a hole through so he decided to go check things out at Ed's instead.  The township plow got within a half mile of here and couldn't get through so Ed isn't plowed out yet either.  Since the road to the west also has a reputation for drifting badly I think its probably still full also.  Guess we won't have to worry about unexpected company today : )

Winter adventure day

Yesterday was a very special day in Wisconsin. We got to pay the first half of our property taxes.  We have 269 acres, 230 of which was considered tillable before we turned approximately 50 of it into pasture.  For all of this our first half is only $3859!    In 2006, the first year with this acreage, half was $3022. Gotta love progress huh : (

Bruce started his day with the usual feeding, followed by plowing a path with the skid steer so I could get to the barn easier and our milk hauler could get in.  Since we are down on cows and milk we are currently picked up every other day.  Our milk hauler is the 3rd generation to pick up milk here, preceded by his father and grandfather.  Milking and feeding calves has expanded to about 2 1/2 hours twice daily for me.  New calves are time consuming since the first couple feedings come from the mom and I have to wait until Bruce gets them  milked. They also get fed with a bottle and need to learn how to make it all work.  The latest calf was a bull that wouldn't drink for me so I used a stomach tube and got about 3 quarts of milk into it yesterday.  This morning when I tried to feed it I couldn't get it to drink so Bruce decided to give it a try.  He couldn't get it to try either so we decided to let it "think" about it until tonight.  Tonight he had decided that he basically didn't want anything to do with whatever we were trying.  We did manage to get a half bottle into him but he doesn't want to suck.  While beef calves tend to be more self sufficient, dairy calves sometimes would die without human intervention. I need to move a few more calves out into the hutches but with the weather forecast being so nasty, keeping them in makes less work when the snow clean up starts.  I have fed calves in hutches over 30 years.  For many of those years, when we had a big snowstorm we would have to shovel out the fences and path to the doors on the hutches.  We have to do this in self defense because if we get a pack of snow that gets too deep the calves start jumping their fences. A few years ago Bruce decided to try tying the fences that are in front (hog panels) flat across the doors to the hutches when we had storms.  That made the clean up much easier but made it hard for me to get to the doors to feed.  After all these years we came up with the best idea yet!  Buy new panels and cut them so we can tie individual sections across individual hutches.  Now I can still feed and all we have to shovel is between the hutches.  The rest Bruce does by driving right in front of the hutches with the skid steer or snow blower.  MUCH more user friendly!  We wish now we had thought of that decades ago : )

The winds moved in about 4 p.m. today.  If you watched the snow there was no way to tell which direction the wind was actually coming from.  White out conditions.  Temps in the mid teens.  These are the days I am glad all I need is higher boots to commute to work : )  Forecast of 8-10 more inches with wind over night.  Tomorrow will be another day of snow adventures.  The dog loves it!  While I got to hide inside and cook today, Bruce managed a badly needed couple hour nap and then headed out to do what he had to do.  He fed the steers a half batch of feed twice today because the bunk filled with snow and needed to be shoveled out.  In order to get to the lower buildings and feed the goats their TMR and the heifers their corn he had to make a path with the snow blower.  When he got done the wind blew the pails out of the skid steer bucket and he had to retrieve them.  For the most part he managed to work inside.

The calm before the storm....literally

We set an alarm last night to check the barn cameras.  Usually I get up and check and Bruce deals with a calf if its here.  He got to bed at 11.  Alarm went off at 2 but I never heard it so he got up and checked and thought he saw a calf so he went out to the barn.  False alarm.  The alarm went off again at 4 and again I didn't hear it.  This time there was a calf so he got dressed and went out to the barn and got it where it needed to be.  Back in bed but the alarm goes off at 6 so it was a very short night.  We had made the decision to sell some cows this week but with the weather forecast "this week" turned into "today" or not til next week.  As a general rule anymore cows leave because we can't get them pregnant.  That was the case with 2 of them and eventually they just don't give enough milk to pay for their feed so its time for them to leave.  The third one that left was the one with the bad attitude that, as a heifer, caused damage to Bruce's shoulder that he still deals with.  The attitude we could deal with but she had stepped on a teat and Bruce decided that was enough....and I am thrilled to have her out of here.  She was a good cow but the milk wasn't worth the increased chance of getting hurt.  With a forecast of potentially 15-20 inches of snow and basically a blizzard on Wednesday Bruce and Ed spent the day filling the feed box and bunk as full as they could.  They also got corn fodder stacks home and bedded the heifer building and the steers here and also the cattle at Ed's. He also dug out the fronts of the hutches and replaced their regular fences with storm fences.  After feeding and supper we bedded the hutch calves and while Bruce was getting bedding down for the cows I realized we didn't have any water.  When it snows and blows sometimes the pressure switch on our well pump gets ice in the contact points and it freezes up.  I started milking and Bruce cleaned out the switch so it worked again.  Eventually we will get to bed.  Already 6 inches of snow in the first storm.  More to come tomorrow night.

Sunday Basics

With plans to travel yesterday the day started out late.  Bruce fed and then had Ed here to explain who and where to feed.  He is familiar with mixing feed for us so thats not a problem.  We milked cows, moved a couple cows to make both feeding and milking simplest and Bruce wrote down the details for the cows that have special needs.  As is usually the case when farmers want to get away, something breaks.  This morning was no exception with a stanchion that broke on the bottom.  A new piece and a couple bolts and we were good to go. We were glad to see that the cow that had twins seems to have expelled what we hope is the rest of the retained placenta.  She is eating well and pooping normally.  The calf with the joint infection continues to do OK.  With the recommendation from our vet Bruce is giving him a second antibiotic in hopes of deterring a secondary infection.  The calves in hutches were switched from bottles to getting their milk and feed in pails and have begun eating their starter.  Starter feed is a grain mix of oats, steam flaked corn, protein pellets, roasted soybeans, vitamins and minerals and something to prevent coccidiosis...the start of them eating solid food.  Bruce took advantage of a fairly warm day and pushed corn fodder bedding in the pens in the back of our barn with the skid steer today. Just when we were finishing milking tonight it became obvious that there is going to be a new calf over night.  We have a camera in the barn that transmits to a television in the laundry room so we can check cows during the night.  Its much nicer to walk in and check cows in your pajamas and then get dressed and go out when you know you need to.  This is especially appreciated in winter : )

Taking a REAL break!

Once again it was a quiet day for the most part.  Feeding, milking, feeding, feeding, feeding, milking, feeding.  We are actually going to take part of a day off tomorrow complete with having someone else feed cows and milk tomorrow night.  In order to do that and make it as simple as possible Bruce spent the day manipulating feeding.  Generally the dry cows get fed at night but got a half batch tonight so Bruce can feed them enough in the morning to make it to Sunday.  He and Ed filled the feed box and bunk so they are good beyond tomorrow. The steers also got 1 1/2 batches of feed today. This is something we can get away with the cold of winter but in summer the feed would heat and start smelling and tasting funny pretty quickly.  The simple math for getting away is do half of tomorrows work today and the other half the next day we are back.  The plan is to milk and feed in the morning and then go visit our son.  He is only 1hr 40 min away but we haven't managed to get that direction since last April.  With all the calves due we figured we better hurry up and get out of here while its relatively quiet.  Bruce hasn't missed a milking since 12/28.  I think I am more excited than he is : )

Not much news....must add pictures : )

Cows eating their TMR.

Milking.  The milk goes up the hoses and into the milk house through stainless steel pipes

Just hanging out relaxing : )

The milk comes into this jar and is then pumped through the pipe into the bulk tank where it cools to 38 degrees.

Feed, milk, feed, milk, done.  That was pretty much the day. The cow that had the new twins hasn't cleaned entirely (hasn't expelled all of the placenta) and is running a slight temp so tonight Bruce is treating her with antibiotics.  Its good timing since her milk is still being kept out of the tank anyway.  As I type these it seems like we have used a bunch of antibiotics lately.  It has been months since we used any so its just a strange streak going on currently.  Twins and winter create their own struggles.