Keeping Cows Cool: It's more than sprinklers and fans!

Last week supplied some down right unbearable heat in the upper Midwest! I know several dairy farmers were posting pictures of their cows enjoying sprinklers and fans on their dairy farms. Other than spraying dairy cows down with cool water (cold water actually causes shock in cows!) and blowing them with fans, what other options do farmers have to keep cows cool?  Additionally, how does hot weather change the day to day operation of the dairy farm? 

Cows laying down is an excellent sign of cow comfort and cooling!

 

You’ve been hot all day, chances are you are not very excited to eat anything.  Cows and calves are the same way.  Dairy farmers will work hard to keep extra cooler water available for the baby calves to drink as well as even supplementing water with electrolytes (much like Gatorade).  Calves can be bedded with sand instead of straw which in the shade of their calf huts actually provides a dry and cool place for the calves to rest in the heat of the day.  Calves can be further cooler by opening hatch doors on their huts and even lifting the huts up to accommodate more air flow.

For cows and heifers, they might be fed at night rather than the heat of the day to help them feel cooler and more eager to eat.  Additionally, cows and heifers might be fed more frequently in the heat so they have the opportunity to have fresh feed more often.  Feed spoils more quickly in the heat so fresh feed is critical.  There are even electrolytes for cows that can be added to their water to improve their hydration.  Dairymen and women might postpone doing some extra tasks during the week of heat stress, focusing on only doing the necessary tasks that provide excellent care.  Vaccinating calves and cows during this weather is not advised, so not to put the animal’s immune system under even more stress.  Moving cows to different pens is also not advised, however, when cows decide to have babies, that cannot be predicted.  Cows calving are kept in cool, shaded locations and when they have delivered their calves, they receive plenty of cool water to drink.  Cows are provided with lots of fresh bedding to keep dry after their sprinkler baths.  Most dairy farmers will avoid breeding cows during the heat because the increased internal temperature of the cow reduces her chance of becoming pregnant. 

In operations, dairy farmers are working to do everything they can to keep cows cool and keep them from getting stressed.  Farmers will change feeding time from morning to night.  They might not vaccinate or dry off cows during an extreme heat week like last week.  The might also only do the necessary jobs on the dairy, allowing them to take care of themselves.  So often farmers in general, will work tirelessly to take care of their cows and forget about themselves.  It should be noted that they are some of the best people because of this but they put themselves at risk.  I know dairies with employees will stock fridges with cool beverages and lots of frozen treats.  They will encourage their employees to also take breaks when doing extremely physical tasks, like cleaning stalls.  When a heat wave like this comes through, it effects everything from the cows to the people on the farm!  Stay cool everyone!

Too mad to go to bed!

ARG!  Looks like Mercy for Animals (MFA) found yet another example of abuse in the livestock industry.  I watched their video, which they will be releasing to the press tomorrow, but it did not sit well with me at all (I'm so MAD at these people, I couldn't go to bed without posting)!  It was really hard for me to watch such pain and disrespect for these calves.  Heart wrenching doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.  I wanted to reach through the screen at take a swing at the abusers!  Everyday, dairy farmers like myself work diligently, putting the care of our calves and cows first, most times before our own care.  It is a black eye on our industry when another situation like this is found.  Abuse of this nature is not commonplace in our industry, even though some activists would lead you to believe this. Orange Patch Dairy and other dairies across the nation strive everyday to improve the care we give our animals.  We do not treat our animals like waste and we do not withhold medication/medical care.  Our cows get our VERY BEST, EVERYDAY!

Thank you MFA for finding and reporting this abuse.  It is an example of completely INAPPROPRIATE animal care.

Please see the following links for other farms/dairies and videos...showing how much we truly put our cows needs first! 

Don't go Vegan to protest abuse....prosecute the abusers!

RayLin Dairy, California
Haley Farms, Ohio
Dairy Farming Today YouTube Channel
Dairy Farming Today WebSite

New Winter Pictures Added

Our cow YoYo, caring for her newborn bull in the sun, on a brisk February afternoon.

Bambi: basking in the warm sun shine in our calf barn, she sure loves her "spot" here!

New Pictures added to our Facebook Album...check out more views of winter on our dairy farm!

Why we LOVE Dairy...new video!

Please check out our latest video..."Why we LOVE Dairy".  It's a short video feature only a small sampling of the things we love about the role we have in feeding the world.  It features pictures from spring/summer 2010, which I couldn't help but enjoy being we are enjoying much above normal temps (50's) here at the farm....so check it out!

Calving Season in Full Swing!

Well, I haven't posted in a little while thanks to the beginning of our calving season.  It's so exciting to greet all of my new calves.  We calve cows year round, but thanks to the seasonality of the herds that we purchased 5 years ago when we started farming, we calve heavily during the fall and winter months.  The farmers that owned the cows before we bought them enjoyed not calving in the hot summer months and during planting.  Therefore, we have LOTS of babies to be born in the next few months.  Last week we were expecting 10 calves.  With a 120 cow herd, that's almost 10% of our herd calving in one week!!  We only had 7 calves born, currently I have 3 cows that are 3 days over due.  We broke our bull calf streak last week, as we had 4 heifers born in a row! (followed by 3 bull calves in a row, but we are still pumped about the heifers!)  The calf barn is once again busy, as is the fresh cow pen.  Each morning Jon now has to check a handful of fresh cows to make sure they are doing great.  It's awesome to be busy caring for our cows, this is my favorite time of the year.  It's very rewarding to help a cow deliver a healthy calf, raise and nurture the calf and watch the new cow excel.  I am hoping to post some of the awesome calf pictures in the coming days, so stay tuned!  Off to bed, I might have some new calves waiting for me in the morning!!!

Where has the summer gone?

As I write this short blog, I am pondering where in the world has the summer gone?  Seems like just weeks ago we were still in June, enjoying June Dairy Month & various promotions, but now we are closing in on August, including county fairs & the great Minnesota State Fair.  Our summer has definitely not decreased in "business"!  In the coming weeks I will be working diligently on my various projects for the Brown County Fair, mainly around the 50th Anniversary of the Brown County Dairy Princess Program.  To learn more about this great program, check out our blog at http://cowsncrowns.blogspot.com/. So...If I am a little slow at blogging, please bear with me =)

Back at the farm things have been incredibly busy as well.  July was our busiest month of the summer for calvings.  We had 14 cows have calves, 10 of which were heifers.  This means that I have almost quadrupled my calf chores.  I am not complaining, but merely stating that I have more chores.  Those calves, especially the youngest ones, require lots of time and care to make sure they have an excellent start.  I can proudly say that my new girls have been doing great!  Lucy, our first registered (full bred Holstein with papers to prove her family tree) even calved in with a beautiful heifer calf, which I have named Luciana.  I will try to get some pictures posted. 

We have been getting a LOT of rain at the farm.  A couple of nights we had some flash flooding, but all in all the cows and corn have been doing great!  Our silage corn is putting out ears & in full tassel.  It has stretched out to almost 10 feet tall!

I hope to post pictures of these events 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.

Check out Cows n' Crowns!

Hey All!  I've been busy lately, devoting time to my new blog Cows n' Crowns a tribute to the 50 years of Brown County Dairy Princesses.  If you get a chance, please check it out, we are currenlty featuring princesses from the 1960's.  It's been a blast collecting information from these lovely ladies!  More to come in the next weeks.
As for the farm, well today was moving day for the calves.  I usually move calves all at the same time when I have a group of 4 ready to move to group housing from the calf huts.  Today was moving day for Theresa Joy and Theresa May.  They have been growing so nicely.  Both calves have gained about 50 pounds a piece, they have been dehorned, check by a vet and they are ready to be in a group pen.  In this pen they will join 4 other calves, teaching them about social interaction, preventing them being over whelmed by new friends.  We will move this group of 6 calves together for the rest of their lives as heifers (animals that have not had calves) until they freshen (have a calf).  Theresa Joy and Theresa May were so easy to move with the halter.  All of the attention from the preschool kids on our farm tour definitely helped to mellow them.  It's amazing how much attention and care from humans helps to calm a calf, developing a future animal that will be easy to handle, trusting of humans.  So I moved the calves inside, moved the previous calves in the smaller pen into a larger pen, the calves from the larger pen (about 12 head) were moved to the outside lot...where they will stay until they are comfirmed pregnant.  Of course all of the calves were moved into pens that were freshly bedded, clean and dry.

Other than moving calves, Jonathan has been working on getting our hay equipment ready to go.  We have about 7 days until we have to cut down 2nd cutting of alfalfa.  So our clock is ticking ;)

Kids Ask, I Tell...Part 2

Highlighting more great questions from the tours last week, here's a couple more!

3. How come the calves sleep alone in the calf huts? Where's their mommies?
Great question!  Calves are moved to calf huts within hours of birth.  We house our calves in huts, as we do not have an adequate calf barn.  These huts allow us to house our calves individually, protecting them from germs from other calves (like kids in kindergarten).  They are able to stay healthy in these environments.  It may seem lonely, but calves and peak outside their huts and see herd mates down the row.  Each of these huts work like individual "bedrooms" for the calves, where they enjoy space to run around and plenty of soft and dry bedding.  Their mommies, the cows are in the milking barn, where we are able to better care for our cows.  We can focus on giving these cows the nutrition and care that they need after having a calf, instead of the cow worrying about the newborn calf. 

4. Can you drink the milk fresh from the cows?
Well, that's a good question too.  And yes you could drink the milk fresh from a cow, but it would be very warm, about 100 degrees.  It would also be very thick-as most cow's milk has a higher butterfat content that that milk that we buy in the store.  Also, milk from cows should always be pasteurized before people can drink it.  Milk that is pasteurized is guaranteed to be free of disease causing bacteria.  Bacteria is everywhere in food production, pasteurization allows us to insure that those bacteria (good or bad) are not present. I don't know about you, but I would like to drink milk that is cold and free of bacteria. 

More fun questions to come tomorrow~!

Rainy Day Projects

Cool rain falling outside meant that I could clean the parlor today.  Now that I have a working power washer I thought I would take advantage of a rainy day.  Once I have the parlor spotless, I like to keep it that way.  Success!  So far it's been clean, because you never know who might stop by.  2 years ago a young couple who work for one of the local pig farms stopped in to find out about dairy farms.  We definitely let the enjoy the visit, but obviously we would have liked a call first =)  They learned so much that night about how we care each day for our cows.

Theresa May and Theresa Joy met the vet last week...they are now dehorned.  Our vet and I restrained them, and we used a horn burner to "pop" the horn buds off.  Honestly, I don't think they even know that it happened, as they went back to running around in their huts and have been growing quickly ever since.  As you may recall we dehorn calves at a young age at our farm, to make sure the pain is minimal.  Dehorning is needed for the safety of animals and for the people that work with them.  Horns can break off and get infected and they can damage barns.  Silly calves feel great now...and we excellent patients!

Spring Update!

Spring at the farm! Just thought I would add some pictures to the blog and update you on the cows and calves at the farm. Below is Theresa Ann. She's doing better now. She's a spirited little heifer. We have to use some restraints to milk her. New heifers are always a challenge, since they have never been milked before, but Theresa Ann is worse than others. The key to training heifers is good care, gentle and kind. We work hard not to raise our voices at the animals, and work carefully around and with them. Sometimes our tempers do get to us and we do yell, but those occasions are rare. Working with animals requires calm and quiet.... so milking becomes a more desirable activity and not something that is scary. Theresa Ann is slowly getting better each time she gets milked. Theresa Ann and Disturbed, chilling out in the pack barn.

Below is Theresa Joy. She's been a riot to feed! She's always waiting for me, excited for milk and a good scratching behind the ears. Theresa Joy is already drinking from a pail and nibbling on calf starter (dry protein pellets, corn and oats).

Theresa Joy, resting in her straw.

Just some cows, eating in the sun shine!!!!


Signs of spring...crocuses blooming in the garden!!!!!

Our Response to ABC story tonight.

Like other proactive dairy farmers, I will also post my opinion about the news story that aired on ABC tonight titled "Got Milk? Animal Rights vs. US Dairy Industry".

First, let me set the story straight, we at Orange Patch Dairy and everyone of our dairy farming neighbors put the welfare and well being of our cows first everyday. We constantly strive to care for our animals, because the better job that we do caring for our cows, the healthier and happier they are. Happy cows make higher quality milk in greater quantities. If you read my blog you know first hand how hard we work to put our cows needs, some days, before our own.

At Orange Patch Dairy, we do not use tail docking as a management practice. Industry research has shown that tail docking, which was originally done to help keep cows clean, neither benefits nor harms cows. Being a null practice, we decided long ago that we would not dock tails to maintain cow cleanliness on our farm, but instead clip the long hair on the end of the tail. The short hair prevents the cow from getting full of manure and covering herself with it. We feel a hair cut is better than losing the aesthetic of a cow tail. The tail, while it looks pretty does have a purpose-swatting flies in the summertime, providing cooling, and something to hit that itch the cow can't reach.

We do however dehorn calves on our farm. I watched this video, and frankly saw only a couple things I would change. Cows with horns actually have a recessive trait, whereas cows naturally without horns (polled) have a dominant trait. The problem in the dairy industry is that the AI (artificial insemination) industry has not been able to produce enough popular polled bulls to help us breed the horn trait out of our traditional dairy cows (we expect this to change shortly). As a result, we have cows with horns. Horns need to be removed for the safety and protection of the animal, the facilities and the people that raise them. Cows with horns have the ability to do serious harm to each other, destroy buildings and fences, and harm the people that work with them. The injuries can be pretty gruesome. Horns can also break resulting in terrible infections or even bleeding to death. For these reasons, we remove our animals' horns.

At 14 days of age we dehorn. At this age the horns are very small and easily removed. The older the animal is, the harder the horn is to remove. We have our vet remove horns, mainly because he owns a gas powered dehorner, and we don't. We could do this but having a vet remove horns assures us that the horns are removed. We halter the calf, pull her out of her hut and make sure that we have her tied securely-so not to hurt ourselves and herself. We do not use a anesthetic at this time. We have discussed this practice with our vet and he believes that the injection would inflict more pain than the actual removal of the horn. We use a gas powered dehorner to cauterize the horn tissue surrounding the horn bud, and after a few seconds of brief pain we can pop the bud out. The calf is untied and returned to her hut. I know that this process causes little to no long term pain or damage, because by the time we walk back to the calf hut my calves are looking to have their ears scratched, neck rubbed and yes, even their head scratched. The benefits of doing this process at a young age is that they will never notice that it even happen. Years ago horns were removed when cattle we much older and they had to be cut out, leaving large wounds that could get infected or even bleed out. Sometimes this method was unsuccessful-and horns would grow back. Cauterizing horns, when done correctly is 100% effective. Days after dehorning calves, all that remains is a small scab, that will shortly fall off...and mainly itches, which means those darn calves come back from extra head scratching.

Dehorning is not a "large dairy" or "factory farm" practice, it is a universal practice amongst ALL dairymen. Dehorning is not cruel, but it is a practice which allows the animal to live a long healthy life-safe from being hurt by other herd mates. I believe that ABC should have done more homework before airing this story. The vast majority of American dairy cattle live the good life-comfortable environments, clean environments, excellent medical care, balanced nutrition, and care beyond their needs. A few isolated incidents do NOT paint an accurate picture of the dairy industry, don't believe me, see my YouTube Channel, my blog, see the blogs of those that I follow-all show dairymen caring for their animals EVERYDAY, 365 days a year.

If you have questions, don't be afraid to ask....I will answer them the best that I can.

Frosty Pics from the Farm

Purple cone flowers that made it through the winter.

Pretty vines on the trees in the grove.

Frosted round bales of grass hay.

Winter view of the heifer lot.

Dry cows, relaxing in the dry cow lot on this frosty winter day.

Meet AC/DC, our heifer who is 16 months old and expecting her first calf this fall.

Yevette!!! (our preemie calf from this summer) She's doing so well! She loves it outside, even if it's frosty. She's almost as tall as the other calves her age, but has so much more attitude.

Kittens like to snuggle up with the bulls calves in the calf barn.

Frosty trees in the yard.

Silver Bells, checking out the frost covered shrubs in front of her calf hut.

Our Dairy Barn, almost 5 years old already. View from the road.

Komanche, our heifer, checking out the birds in the tree out in the yard.

It's so cold, but we have such a pretty view outside!

Which one of these doesn't belong? Yep, it's Glencoe, she was our "day care" calf this summer, who visited area day cares. She thinks she needs to be spoiled and is completely immune to electric fences-she goes where she wants to and we just let her.

What a great view from the dairy barn!

Cows eating in a very foggy barn. Yummy! TMR! (total mixed ration-containing alfalfa, corn silage and so many other great feeds!)

Frozen

FROZEN: that pretty much describes our day today. Everything is FROZEN. Last night we had temperatures at -31. Today's high temperature was -11. Yep, we didn't even get close to going above zero! The milking cow barn was pretty frozen this morning. The cold air almost instantly froze the humid breath coming from our cows. Frost covered the entire inside of our barn and even dusted the cows. The parlor floor, which is heated, couldn't keep up with the cold air and started to form ice in the back of the parlor. Warm piles of cow manure even froze to the ground.

We had to work extra hard to remove frozen cow pies from the barn. The silage that we feed the cows with is even frozen now! The silage was 70 degrees going into the silage bag but now it's frozen. Each "ball" of frozen silage needs to be broken with the skid loader before being mixed with in the TMR and fed to the cows. We also dried off the teat dip (iodine and skin conditioners) from the cows this morning before the cows could leave the milking parlor. This makes sure that the dip doesn't freeze and cause the skin on the teats to crack. We use a dip with a higher level of skin conditioners to make sure the skin stays soft and smooth. We also moved a couple heifers that are close to calving (any minute now) into the old dairy barn-keeping them warm and dry so they also are free of frost bite. In temperatures like this it is critical that we make sure that we prevent any frost bite: good homes, dry bedding, heating where needed, dry teats and ears.....yet another day on a Minnesota Dairy Farm!

The calves are doing well though! Those calf huts do a great job of keeping the calves cozy and warm. Even though it's cold outside, the wind isn't blowing-thank goodness! As a result, the heifers came out this afternoon for an exciting romp in the snow. It was so fun to watch-I wish I would have had my camera close by to record their silliness.

Above zero is looking like a heat wave right now!

Snow storm coming!

Looks like we have a monster of a snow storm coming our way. Sounds like we will receive snow between 12-20 inches over Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. While I love a good snow storm, it gets to be a lot of work on the farm. Today Jonathan and I were "battening down the hatches" trying to prep for the storm, so hopefully we can enjoy a little bit of Christmas with family if possible or with each other. On our list was:

• Bedding in all of the cows
• Bedding all of the calves
• Sealing up the calf huts
• Storing extra bedding for the heifers so we don't have to dig it out of the snow banks
• Feeding all of the cows and heifers extra feed for extra energy to get through the snow
• Fixing and sealing curtains on the milking barn
• Hooking up the snow blower so we can make sure the milk truck can make it to our barn
• Plugging in tractors so we can start them in the morning-to move snow just to milk cows
• Moving cows that are close to calving, so we can watch them more closely and don't have to move them to the milking barn in a blizzard
• Making snow fences to stop blowing snow from drifting in our feed bags

PLANNING, PLANNING, PLANNING....it's going to be a crazy couple of days at the farm! Wishing you and yours a Very Merry Christmas....and a safe one at that....here's hoping we can make it home from the farm to enjoy Christmas here instead of sleeping with the cows.

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 =)

Another Saturday Night at the Farm

It's Sunday, and I am recovering from another Saturday night at the farm. It was a good day yesterday. We had nice weather, temperatures in the 30's and sunny. The snow melted, and the heifers played. We had 2 heifers calves born in the afternoon, and I had some time to head to town to start my Christmas shopping. I came home to do evening chores. On the last group of cows in the parlor I had a "bad event". I was prepping or cleaning the teats of a new fresh heifer in our barn. She's a little feisty and started to kick at me. But instead of hitting me she hit the mature cow next to her. The mature cow tolerated this kicking for a little while and then she couldn't take it any more, she fired back. The mature cow tried to hit the heifer but misfired and hit me, when I wasn't even looking.

I am fine, but as a result I have a very nice "hoof" shaped bruise on my forehead as well as 2, 4 inch long abrasions on my forehead and eye brow. I was a little shaken up. I did not fight back. Why would I? Contrary to some beliefs, we do not abuse our animals. It was not the cow's fault that she hit me, she was just trying to settle down the heifer next to her that still wasn't used to getting milked in the parlor. Sometime I think a helmet should be mandatory issue for milking cows, but most times the cows hardly ever fuss. We pride ourselves on having nice, calm cows. I work hard to play with the calves and heifers. Some night I can even play a game of "tag"---yes, tag with the cows. When they have to try something new, like milking, well they go back to their basic instincts-fight back as an animal-kick. It happens, very seldom do they hit us, but sometimes they do hit, BUT we NEVER hit back. The moment we hit back we teach them that we will hit them, teaching them pain. Peaceful cows are happy cows!-and they make a lot of milk too =)

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 =)