Moving In All Directions

When I got to the barn this morning Bruce happily announced "I have been a very busy boy this morning".  He had the feed for the cows this morning in the mixer last night so he fed and then proceeded to call the Harvestore people to fix our unloader.  They will not be able to come for a few days, and since corn is vital, Bruce then called the feed mill to deliver a ton of corn in bags for now.  He also called to sell 6 fed steers, ordered the steel for the back of the chopper box and ordered fertilizer for corn planting since we use a small amount of starter.  The feed mill delivery came just as we finished milking.  We got the 2 smaller steers in the barn and started letting cows out.  Just as we got done the trucker came for the steers.  Bruce then made a new water tank for the cows (half a barrell with a float) and got the cows taken care of and ate breakfast.  He barely got the last bite in and the fertilizer was here.  Perfect timing!  We really do think the cell phone is one of the newest and most helpful pieces of equipment we have acquired in a long time! One of the last calls for the day was to the local ag dealer to see what it would cost to have them put the augers in Ed's silo.  With the weather being so uncooperative this spring everything is getting backed into a smaller time frame so we have to change some plans.  Hiring someone to fix something that Bruce could do himself is not something Bruce does very easily.  Besides the costs to have someone else do things, Bruce really does enjoy the challenges of building and fixing things so he is also giving up a bit of fun.

 Ed spent the day field cultivating the rest of his corn ground and then continued on some of ours that had been chisel plowed last fall.  Bruce had a few adjustments to make on the corn planter for no till and he started planting.  Sometime in the afternoon the Harvestore people showed up after all and diagnosed the noise as bearings going out.  They got the unloader taken apart as much as needed and are planning on returning with the needed parts to get us going again.  Bruce used the corn out of gunny sacks to feed tonight by pushing the regular corn cart up to the landing where the sacks were.  He then just had to drag them over and dump them and when the cart was full he just rolled it over to the auger and filled the mixer as usual.  A bit more work than normal but it would be much worse.  Tonight Joe came to help so he and I milked.  Bruce planted corn.  Ed cleaned the pen where the steers were.  The new plan is to feed the 2, not quite big enough to sell, steers with the wheelbarrow in the barn and put the 16 that are still having their diet adjusted up to full finishing feed out where Bruce can use the feed cart.  Eventually they will be in a group together.  Tonight Bruce planted until dark when the monitor went off signaling a problem with the planter.   A seed tube had plugged because 3 bolts had come loose and fell out of a bracket.  He was lucky in the fact that the bracket fell and caught on the frame so new bolts and he is back to planting in the morning.

Tonight I suddenly have a very sick calf that seems to have pneumonia.  Given the fact that the trucker this morning pointed out that last Tuesday he had frost on his roof and yesterday it was 92 it's surprising that more animals don't get sick.

Memorial Day

 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..............

Moves Complete

The day started with a plan to move the last group of heifers to pasture before noon.  Before we were done eating breakfast it was raining so that plan was postponed.  Bruce bought a good rain suit the first year we started grazing so the rain wasn't necessarily a problem but the thunder and lightening wasn't exactly welcoming. The rain quit by 1:00 but the fence didn't have as much current in it as it should have so Bruce moved a fencer to this section only.  The fences tend to get shorted out when the grass is tall and wet.  By the time Bruce got the final details done with the fence it was 3:00 before we started.  We ended up hauling 19 steers and heifers, four at a time.  The first two groups unloaded and wandered around quietly.  The third group had one catch the gate wire with their foot when they got off the trailer and dragged it.  They all got excited and started running and went through the gate on the other side of the pasture they were supposed to be in.  There was no real harm done since they were still in the pasture, just the wrong spot.  Bruce and Mike took the 4 wheeler and got them back where they belong and Bruce replaced the gate hooks that got destroyed when they went through the fence.  I don't believe we have ever gotten heifers home to that piece that they didn't go through the fence and destroy atleast 2 gate hooks.  Generally the groups that we put there have never seen a fence so it isn't a surprise.  The last 2 loads unloaded without incident.  Overall they seem like a quiet bunch.  Ed's yard is officially empty now.  We have 60 milking cows on pasture and about 60 heifers and steers on pasture in 3 groups.  For the months to come they can harvest their own feed and haul their own manure.  Nice!

This is our cattle trailer which was built in the early 1970's.  Bruce used the big tractor today so he could see over the top for backing and road traffic.  Looks a bit rediculous since our smallest tractor would have pulled the trailer just fine.

We mark the fence with masking tape so its more visible.  The yellow gate hooks get destroyed when the cattle go through the fence.  Thankfully they are less than $2 each and we keep a stock on hand for just such occasions.

One of the challenges with grazing cattle is the inexact science as to what the cows are harvesting themselves.  As the grass matures the feed value is less, and as is the case with spring grazing, we start out with not quite enough grass and then we very quickly can't quite keep up.  That is the current situation.  Part of the benefits of grazing is the ability to remove protein, and therefore the cost of it, from the cow diet.  A measure of how the cows are handling their feed balance is call MUN (milk, urea, nitrogen).  I found this explanation:

"In addition to being an essential nutrient of all plants and animals, protein is the most expensive nutrient fed to dairy cattle. When protein is consumed it gets broken down into smaller compounds such as peptides, amino acids and ammonia in the rumen. While the peptides and amino acids can be absorbed in the small intestine and used directly by the cow for growth and lactation, rumen microbes can use ammonia for microbial growth and protein synthesis (Van Soest, 1994).

The amount of nitrogen (N) required by the microbes is determined by the amount of available carbohydrate. If dietary protein is fed above the level needed by the microbes, the ammonia will be converted to urea in the liver and excreted in the urine. Feeding more energy will increase the microbes’ need for N and promote the use of excess ammonia (Van Soest, 1994).

A proper balance of protein and energy, or more specifically rumen degradable protein and rapidly fermentable carbohydrate, allows the cow to make the best possible use of protein in the diet. This could mean higher production, lower feed costs, and less environmental impact from N in manure." The ideal number is around 12.  A number higher than that means we are over feeding protein, lower and they are not getting enough.  Currently our numbers are too low.   Another measure of how they are doing is our tank amounts which have also dropped excessively recently.  Bruce has added protein back into their diet but the challenge is in the fact that the milk picked up today will not have the information we need posted online for atleast 2 days.  By the time we get the information we need its already 3-5 days old!  We also need to skip grazing a section of pasture and move the cows back into the original paddock that has just grown back.  The grass that we skip will be cut, chopped and put into Ed's silo as heifer feed, allowing new growth and better quality for the cows.  Skipping a piece and chopping it is a normal spring event since the first growth comes all at once.  Grazing creates the staggering of the growth and as the grass slows its growth the cows keep up better with the hopes of them always harvesting perfect feed.   Ed picked up the augers and parts for the silo unloader so "in Bruce's free time" they will get that rebuilt while it is still on the bottom.  Too much to do, too little cooperation from the weather for planting.  In the meantime there may be opportunity to get that project done.

The peas and triticale are up, 9 days after planting!  Bruce says he can see the rows so I will try to get pictures soon.

Extra Help

I started the day by over sleeping.  Once I was coherent I realized that Joe was here to help this morning so I let Bruce and Joe milk and I did other things.  Having a choice of what to do is kind of unusual since my mornings are normally pretty much scheduled.  There was no problem finding things to do and it was nice to get the chance to get extra stuff done.  Joe always eats breakfast here when he comes and when he was done Bruce took him out to the "40" and showed him the flags that had marked the new strips.  Joe took the 4 wheeler out to drive around the strips and pull the flags.  Somehow in the process he ended up on the new seeding strip that had been recently dug and got stuck in the mud and then wasn't able to get the 4 wheeler started.  He continued pulling flags, traveling around the fields on foot and when he got done he ran (he does track and cross country) the 1/2 mile to our house.  Bruce went out and managed to get the 4 wheeler started and out.  We also had Joe start mowing lawns, although he ran out of time to do all of them.  Since we had a funeral to go to he went home early.  He is soon to be 15 so we like to be around when he is working for us.

The funeral today was for a former farmer/neighbor/relative who was 86 years old.  When I first came here there were 17 dairy farms within a 2 mile radius.  Now there are only 6. We are seeing the passing of another generation in our neighborhood, but one that leaves many memories that make us smile. 

Tonight the cows are as far away from the barn as they get so I decided to do a time study.  From the time Bruce & Mike leave the barn with the 4 wheeler to get cows to when the first milker is put on a cow is 32 minutes.  When he is out there he resets the fence so the cows have a new paddock of grass when they go out.  Milking, first milker on to last milker off takes 1 hr 23 min.  From the last milker off until Bruce and Mike take the cows out and they return is another 23 min.  I can't say we were moving at our most efficient pace tonight but that's the basic time breakdown.  Tonight after chores Bruce took the heifers at Ed's another round bale.  They need to go on pasture tomorrow!

Spraying, Round 1

Bruce has been less than pleased with the company we have hired the last few years to apply our chemicals and that is what motivated him to get recertified to spray our crops himself.  After a few attemps at reading the textbook so he could take the certification test, all of which resulted in a nap, it is now time to spray and he hasn't had the time to get certified.  A friend told us about someone he is hiring and they stopped in yesterday after Bruce called them.  Bruce was happy enough with what he learned to hire them to spray for us this year.  This morning they came to spray burn down herbicides on our hay fields that we want to no till corn into.  They use a mixture of glyphosate (generic roundup), 2-4-d and ammonium sulfate to do this. We plant corn a couple of different ways depending on what the crop was the prior year.  No till is planted on hay acres that need to be redone.  The vegitation gets sprayed and killed and the corn is planted directly into the ground without any tillage at all.  This eliminates the soil erosion issues you get with tillage and we won't have to use any fertilizer for the corn on his land since the decomposition of legumes provides the nitrogen the corn needs.  Another added benefit is the savings of time, fuel and equipment wear and tear since we eliminate tillage.  I am thrilled to have someone else spray because it is one less thing for Bruce to do!  In less time than it would take for Bruce to get our sprayer tuned up, we have 36 acres ready to plant in a few days. 

We were told this little piece of equipment costs about $225,000!  The ends of the booms drop foam  to mark where the edge was and the boom is raised or lowered to get the best application height based on the plant growth.  Note that he is coming back and has only part of the boom spraying to finish the edge.  Chemicals are expensive so we don't want to use any more than we have to or spray anything extra.

Today Bruce managed to get the fence checked and ready to go with the exception of flagging it.  We use masking tape and wrap pieces on the fence every few feet so it is more visible to the cattle. We like to use tape because it is very visible, inexpensive and biodegradable. This group hasn't been on pasture before so they need to learn not only where the fence is but what it is.  We will need to move them early in the day so they have time to get comfortable before dark.  Tomorrow we have a funeral to go to so the moving day might have to be Sunday.  We will see.

This morning I moved a few calves around in the hutches.  I now have all the heifer calves together on one end and the bull calves in a row on the other end.  Having them mixed together was getting a bit frustrating since I feed the bulls milk and the heifers milk replacer.  A couple times, when I was feeding and not paying attention, I fed the wrong ones.  This will make feeding much more straight forward.

We had 2 cows to breed today.  The cows have been on pasture just long enough that we should be seeing heats regularly now.  Our regular cow breeder knows we have cows on pasture so he needs to come late.  The substitute gal obviously wasn't informed of this and came twice before the cows were home.  We didn't get the impression she was pleased, and if we had known there was a sub we could have made different arrangements.  In the end the cows have been bred with the success or failure known in about 30 days.

Lots of Pasture

We had sun and wind today to help dry things out.  It will still be a few days before we can start digging but sun and wind are a helpful start.  Bruce had to move everyone to new grass today.  When he was doing the lower group he found a tree limb that had blown out  in the storms over the weekend so instead of tree trimming being on the list of to do's it got moved up to today.  We still have a group of heifers at Ed's waiting for us to get their fence ready so they can be on grass also.  That was the plan for today until the trees changed the plan.  Bruce commented tonight that the heifer at the other place has finally figured out how to stay with the group since its been days since she was out.   When he got the fence cleaned up he took a round bale of hay to the heifers at Ed's (hopefully their last one for now) and bedded the calf hutches. The rest of our world is pretty quiet.  I am feeding 9 calves, all that are big enough now that they just do their own thing.  The last couple milk cultures came back fine so there is nothing out of the routine with milking so we can get through the actual milking in a little over 1.5 hrs now.  The buck goat is out grazing by himself.  In summer we put a collar on him and tie him with a rope in hopes of not having any winter kids.  He gets plenty to eat since we move him around like a portable mower : )  Today I managed to add my first video, posted on May 23!  I have the technology with the new camera and computer but there is certainly a lot for me to learn!

This is the routine.  The cows walk out on a lane that is about 6-7 feet wide.  The dog runs back and forth to keep them moving.  When they get to new grass he jumps on the back of the 4 wheeler and rides home.

This shows the difference between where they have been and where they are going.  The blue barrel is their water tank which is supplied through black poly pipe from the barn..

Rain & A Nap

Before we started milking this morning it had started to rain.  It rained most of the day.  During milking we had trouble with a pulsator that needed cleaning.  Bruce brought in a pail of soapy water and a screw driver and took it apart and cleaned it.  When we were done milking I grabbed the pail and dumped it, just like any other day.  When he asked if I had taken the screw driver out of the pail I knew we were in trouble.  Not only did I not see the screw driver, I dumped the pail so automatically that I didn't remember where exactly I did it.  Hopefully Bruce will see it in the field when he cleans the barn and before we find it in a tire.  I managed to get another section of pipeline washed but I had hoped to have it all done by tonight when we tested milk.  Since the rain has postponed field work, Bruce took the opportunity to get a therapy appointment today and then laid down for a "short" nap.  The nap lasted much longer than he had planned but it was also one he desperately needed. There are reasons, other than growing things, that its good for farmers when it rains.  By the time the day was over we had 1.75" of rain.
Tonight we tested milk.  It was good to see a bunch of cows giving over 100# while eating grass and getting rained on all day with 50 degree winds.  We took Bill by surprise tonight with no fresh cows, no special needs cows and everyone was standing where they belonged so we could milk straight up through the barn.  This too shall pass : )