Winter vs. Cows

A frosty look at the farm...pretty to look at, hard to work in.

Well, winter is here.  It was inevitable.  Forecasts call for even colder temperature for the weekend (Sunday might not even make it above 0!).  Cold is usually harder on the people working with our cows than the actual cows.  We work hard to prevent any problems the cows might have with the cold. 

First we provide them shelter from the snow, cold, wind, and moisture.  Our barns are made to be cool inside.  Right now the manure is freezing to the alleys, so you ask...why don't you heat the barn.  There's a major problem with that....cows have winter hair!  Cows grow a thick coat of hair each winter, by putting them in a heated barn they would sweat heavily and catch a "cow cold".  Instead of warming the cows, we allow their hair to insulate them.  We work hard to keep them dry and comfortable with fresh bedding often.  With that thick hair they hardly notice the cool temps. 

The cold dry air is drying out my skin.  My hands are cracked....and it is also drying out our cows' skin.  We use a special teat dip for our cows with lots of moisturizers in it (just like a lotion).  We also make sure that cows leaving the parlor have dry teats, because wet teats can get skin damage and in extreme cold even frost bite!

The calves are the most susceptible to the cold weather.  New calves are quickly moved from the calving pen.  New wet calves can very easily get frost bite (especially their ears!), so we swiftly dry them off, put them in a calf coat, bed them in with lots of straw, and feed them lots of warm colostrum.  As they grow we make sure to increase the calories that we feed them.  Cold weather means they are using more of their own energy to stay warm, so we compensate for that by feeding extra milk each day.  Calves also have unlimited access to calf starter. 

Older heifers also eat extra calories and enjoy extra bedding.  All of the extra effort is worth it, knowing our cows are doing well...it just takes a lot of extra time and work on our part.  So...chores are taking a lot longer than they would in fall, spring or summer....bear with us, it's going to be another long Minnesota Winter.

Word of the Week: Flexibility

Jon chopping soybean straw at sunset last week. (Check out our Facebook Page for more pictures!)

This week has been all about flexibility.  First, Thursday, we had a full schedule and we fulfilled most of that schedule.  I worked hard to continue washing away the dirt and crud of summer in the milking parlor.  Jon worked to prep the manure spreaders for hauling this weekend.  We finished those tasks, loaded 5 bull calves for the neighbor who buys them and raises them, and bred a heifer that was in heat.  We then found out that we had some unexpected visitors stopping in for a tour in a mere 20 minutes!!  WHOA! That's short notice!  I had left some supper cooking at home and had so many other things to do at home that night, how were we going to find the time to give a tour?!?!  Thankfully, my father in law stepped in to give the tour.  We gave a short demonstration of milking and the milking parlor for our friend from town and his Colombian exchange student.  The student, Juan, had so many great questions about the technology we use to milk cows.  How could I not spend some time with him, talking about how we provide nutritious milk for consumers?  I suppose we spent about 30 minutes with Juan and our friend.  It was great to share with Juan, how we care for our cows and our land as well.  Needless to say I didn't get the rest of my jobs done for the night. 

Then on Friday, Jon and I worked so hard to milk, feed and bed the cows.  Calves and heifers were fed.  I loaded up hay at my parents' house, drove it home and unloaded it.  Jon worked on more prep for the manure spreaders, and then we were finally able to start hauling manure.  We hauled 10 loads to our neighbor's field and had to stop for evening chores.  After completing calves and setting up the milking parlor, we loaded in the cows.  Apparently our cow Judas (named after the band not the apostle) needed to run into the parlor for milking tonight.  But instead of sprinting safely into the parlor, she slipped and fell in the holding pen.  She wasn't the smartest cow in the barn tonight, as she drug herself a few feet into the parlor.  This was a problem, because we wouldn't be able to help lift Judas with our usual equipment.  Jon had to use some special lifts from the farm shop.  While he gathered supplies, I chilled out with Judas, making sure she was comfortable.  Sometimes when cows slip and fall it takes a little time to get them back up, dairy farmers just have to be a little patient with them, and offer them a little help.  30 minutes later, Jon had Judas lifted up, standing on her own, and doing fine.  Our fear when cows fall, is that they may become injured.  Working quickly helps insure that injuries are minimal (sore muscles) instead of serious (broken bones or tore ligaments).  Judas didn't even show signs of a fall after milking tonight.  She felt so good, she tried to come back into the parlor for some more fun!  Silly cow!  Hopefully she learns that she should walk to the parlor instead of running next time.  Nevertheless, we were delayed from finishing milking on time, and since Judas was blocking half of the parlor, we could only milk at 1/2 speed for those 30 minutes.  If we had scheduled plans for our Friday night, we would have cancelled them, but we luckily had no plans. 

So often in the dairy industry flexibility is critical.  Cows need care 24 hours a day.  Sometimes they can handle themselves, but sometimes they need help.  I can remember times growing up at home, when my dad would have to miss a concert, a 4-H show or a church event because he needed to stay at home with a cow that was calving or had a piece of machinery break.  We grew to understand that Dad would have loved to be at our events, but he had a responsibility to his farm and his cows.  Now, I share that responsibility to my farm and my cows.  I know first hand how frustrating it can be to work so hard to finish chores so we can leave to an event, only to have something happen, turning our plans upside down!  But, at the end of the day, our cows come first.  Their care is our priority and our responsibility and we take that VERY seriously.  So....here' hoping that tomorrow will be a little more predicable and a little less random (but I am counting on something random to happen, like a new calf!).

A Tale of Two Harvests...

In Minnesota we have been enjoying some AMAZING weather!  It's been a record breaking week! We had 90's for 2 days this week, and 80's for 4 days.  Last year at this time we had 2 inches of snow on the ground, 20's and most of the crops were in the field. This year most of the crops have been harvested, bedding is being made, and tillage will start in a few days.  We have been so blessed this growing season with ample rain and heat.  Our soybeans and corn have produced quite the bounty! 

We are looking forward to the next few days to make more bedding for our cows, heifers and calves.  Dry bedding helps us keep our cows clean and dry, in addition to keeping them healthy.  Winter months and wet weather require literally tons of dry bedding to allow us to do a good job caring for our cows.  After we wrap up bedding, we will work right into manure hauling.  We have a few storage units holding months worth of cow, heifer and calf manure.  We can't haul all of our manure in the growing season, so we store it until the fall when we can hit the fields hard.  By applying the manure to fields, according to our agronomist's recommendations, we utilize all of our farm nutrients and reduce our need for commercial fertilizer.  We also apply manure on some of our neighbors' fields to help make sure that we don't over apply manure on our farm.  We use manure as a trading item with our neighbors.  In exchange for valuable nutrients and organic matter, we get the opportunity to make bedding from our neighbors' corn and soybean fields.  So it's a win/win for everyone.  So...hopefully I will get some pictures up soon.

Mental Health Day!

Every once in awhile the grind and stress of a dairy farm gets to us.  I would say that every couple months or so, we try to take at least one day off from the farm, making sure that we can relax and someone else is in charge of the cows.  Thank you so much to our awesome helpers, milking and feeding the cows and calves while we were gone.  On our day off we decided to celebrate our 5th Wedding Anniversary and the 4th of July.  We went to a local amusement park to "relieve" some stress.  It was an awesome day!  As a result though we had to work hard before the day off...and work hard afterwards to catch up.  Who knew cows were more work than milking and feeding?  Yep, we needed to bed the calves, heifers, and cows in before we left and then when we came back.  There was cows to breed, heifers to treat (one got sick with bloat while we were gone) and there were various other small projects to work on.  But every once in awhile it is nice to walk away from the "To Do List" and come back refreshed and renewed!  I know the cows appreciate that we are in a better mood...and we do too! 

So I am back and caught up...and ready to blog some more...so stay tuned, I have a bunch of pictures and video to share in the coming weeks.

Late Night Ramblings

Here I am, up at 1:54 in the morning, listening to some rock music, working on e-mails. Why you ask would I be working on e-mails at 1 in the morning? Well, the answer is easy...we didn't get home from the farm until Midnight tonight.

It was a good day at the farm, but a long day. We have been working on a cow, Number 20, who has a mystery illness. She gave birth to twins 3 nights ago, and since then she has not been eating as much feed as we hoped that she would. We had the vet look at her yesterday but he couldn't find anything directly wrong with her, so we assume that it is a couple of different things. As a result we "treated" her twice today. She received a "soup" of yeast, vitamins, minerals, and probiotics to help out her rumen-she drank this. And she got a couple liters of IV fluids. She isn't on antibiotics, because she is not sick from an infection but appears to have a digestive upset. Tonight, it was a night and day difference-she was eating everything in sight, so we hope we are over this hurdle.

We delivered 2 new bulls calves today, so we had to tend to the mothers and the boys. All are bedded in and well fed tonight. We also bedded in all of the heifers, dry cows, and milking cows. We had to fill hay feeders in the dry cow lot and the heifer lots. And then at the end of the night we had to head back to the dry cow lot, to look for cows calving-we have 3 that look to be giving birth before sunrise....which brings me to now-this is why I am up....I will be leaving shortly to drive out the farm and check on them. Making sure that in the case that they do calve tonight someone is there to help them and the new calves. I am hoping for no calves until morning-but Mother Nature always wins this argument. So, of to the farm I go, hopefully 3 news calves and 3 happy mothers will greet me =)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The radio is blaring Christmas tunes, and the weather is agreeing with the season-we have snow, we have cold, and we have blowing. It's been hard to deal with this winter weather though, because it is so extreme. We have been dealing with temperatures much below zero, wind chills much below zero, winds over 30 mph, and 6 inches of snow. This weather has cause a few problems and challenges. With cold weather we have do to some extra things each day to continue to take good care of our cows.

Challenges:

• Frozen pipes: Those pipes, with the right amount of wind will ALWAYS freeze! Water is a critical nutrient for cows and calves so we HAVE to thaw the pipes everyday, sometimes twice a day.
• Snow removal: snow blows everywhere and gets into everything. We must push snow, shovel snow, and blow snow in order to just get into the barn to feed and milk the cows.
• Moving: yes moving is so much harder now, with 4 plus layers of clothes on it get to be pretty cumbersome to walk around.
• Starting Tractors: yeah, tractors really don't like to start in the winter-it's too cold and their fuel systems like to "gel" up.
• Frozen manure: hot, fresh cow pies will freeze in an instant on the right day. Manure is so much harder to move when it is frozen-making clean up so much more difficult.

Extra Cold Weather Tasks:

• Feeding the cows extra feed: cows need extra calories to stay warm during the winter months, just like we do. Long winter hair helps to keep cows warm, but heating from the inside out works for cows just like hot soup in people =)
• Bedding the cows extra: Cows need extra bedding to stay dry and warm. Cows and calves like to "nest" in their bedding in the winter. Therefore we need to make sure that we supply LOTS of straw for everyone.
• Feeding the calves extra milk: Calves need extra milk as well for extra calories, so even get a calf "jacket" or "blanket" to stay warm on those cold winter nights.
• Baby Calf Watch: We have to keep an extra eye on the dry cows due soon to have their babies. Winter is not a great time to have a calf. Typically we would be enjoying temps about 25 right now, but thanks to this artic chill we have about 12 cows yet to calve before Christmas and they are all at risk for frost bite. We check on each of them at least 6 times each day, so that the moment that they start labor we can move them to a warm pen indoors to have their calf safely-we always do the best that we can for our cows and calves so a good start is critical!

Post #100! This day didn't go as planned :(

So this is my 100th post on my blog! I can't hardly believe that I made that many posts already, but I promise this one to be interesting....all about my day, another Monday that went unplanned.

The PLAN was to work on making bedding today, haul out manure, and make headway on our fall activities. INSTEAD....we had all sorts of chaos, good chaos, but chaos nonetheless. The morning began with breeding a heifer at the neighbor's farm. This took an extra 30 minutes out of our day, and meant we started milking later than expected, even though we got out of bed extra early. When we arrived at the farm we learned that the milking system wasn't working correctly so Jonathan started to work on that, while I hopped on the 4-wheeler to dry through the dry cow lot. We had a cow that was due to calve about 3 days ago. I went looking for the cow and found her, and she appeared to have calved, but there was no calf to be found. I started looking around the lot in a frantic. The calf was no where to be found, until I saw 2 little ears sticking out of the mud, wiggle. That darn new born calf had wondered her way out of the dry cow lot, where she could be with her mother and out into a big, deep mud puddle. She was fine and healthy, just very dirty! Oh dear calf! I loaded her up into the wheelbarrow and pushed her into the calf barn. Then we started her a warm bath. At first she didn't like it too much, but once she figured out that I was cleaning off all of that mud, she REALLY loved it! She was so cute. I dried her off and she was a lovely black calf. I hurried up and off to the barn to help finish milking. Now chores were about 2 hours later than planned. Jonathan and I hustled through feeding chores and ate a quick lunch. I headed off to haul manure from the heifer pens and Jonathan went into the fields to make corn straw stacks. After loading the manure spreader with my first load, I pulled out of the pen and through the open gate, slowly making sure the heifers didn't run out of the gate. I turned to look forward for a couple seconds and by the time I turned around I found that the heifers had pushed the open gate into the manure spreader and the gate got caught under the wheel of the manure spreader.....the gate was completely twisted and mangled!!!!! OH NO!!!!! I called Jon to come and rescue me! We fixed the fence and wasted another hour of our day. The sun was setting so I ran off to haul one last load of manure and Jonathan went back into the field. Wouldn't you know it, but Jonathan had a problem too! He broke the stack maker, and it needed to be fixed as well. Oofta! it's been one of those days! Just hoping that tomorrow is a better day ;) Either way we got the cows cared for, milked and we got to enjoy some AMAZING Fall Weather! So even though it didn't go as planned it still went well!

Soybeans done and bedding started

Soybeans were combined last night. So the custom combiner came in at about 5 pm and finished up late last night. We didn't have too many acres of beans this year, since we had lots of corn and alfalfa for cow feed. Jonathan got the stack maker up and running yesterday. He went out yesterday afternoon and made corn stacks...I have video to be posted soon.

This week, thanks to the great forecast we are hoping to make all the bedding we will need for the cows this year. We are also hoping to haul out all of the manure, work it in, and be finished for the year! Phew! Getting tired just thinking about it! haha! I'll keep you up to date as we finish our Fall Projects!

Weather is becoming Mentally Frustrating

This weather is becoming mentally frustrating. Yesterday it rained, again....just enough to stop field work and reverse any drying that happened in the fields this weekend. Today the sun was supposed to come out, but we enjoyed a cloudy, cool morning with damp heavy air. This air also didn't allow anything to dry, and when the sun did come out it was 2 hours from sunset. No drying happened today.

We are hoping to get into the fields tomorrow, working to haul some more liquid manure out of the milking barn pit. Once we finish this task, we will pull the pump out of the pit and take it to the neighbor's place to be repaired before we need it again. Once we finish that job we look forward to cleaning out calf huts and hauling that manure and bedding out to the field on Friday. 60 degrees in the forecast for Friday and Saturday makes me hopeful that we can FINALLY hit the corn and soybeans. Once those our out we can start making some much needed bedded for the cows and heifers and haul out our pack manure (7 months worth of manure and bedding from about 160 cows). Stay tuned, I hope to have some videos of all of this action~!

Rain....Again...yuck!

So it's raining again, looks like a blog post from a few weeks ago, actually it's been raining for the last 3 weeks! It could stop any day now for about 3 weeks to finish all of our fall activities. Today, I left the farm to do some tasks, pay some bills and get groceries for next week. Jonathan stayed at home and took care of the cows.

After milking and feeding this morning we moved 2 dry cows out of the formerly dry lot-now muddy lot-to get treated for apparent mud-induced foot injuries. One of the cows has a small rock imbedded in her hoof, much like humans that get ingrown toe nails, and the other has a small infection from the mud in between her toes. We cleaned and treated each cow. While they were technically not "lame" they were showing tenderness on those feet, therefore we act quickly so a small problem that's easy to fix doesn't become a HUGE problem that's hard to treat. I left after treating these cows and Jonathan continued his work. Since it rained, all of the dry cows and heifers needed fresh/dry bedding. He also bedded in the calves in the huts. Keeping our cows and calves dry is very important to keeping them healthy. So the battle continues tomorrow....more mud, but hopefully less rain =)