New Hay, smells so good!

I wish my camera and computer had smell-o-vision, then I could do this photo justice.  This is a picture of the feed that my brother’s cows eat every day.  This is called TMR (total mixed ration).  It’s like a big salad or hotdish.   My brother mixes all of the feed that his cows need for their daily nutrient requirements.  Just like humans, cows need energy (calories), protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber.  Dairy farmers build their diets on a solid base of forage.  Forage is plant material that is harvested from the field, it is the complete plant that is chopped into bite sized pieces for the cows to eat and chew.  My brother feeds a combination of chopped up corn, alfalfa and oat plants.  May is the beginning of hay season so fresh alfalfa is on the menu for the cows.  If you look closely at this picture you can see the bright green stems.  Fresh alfalfa is very aromatic.  The smell is hard to describe; it’s like fresh cut grass but better.  This TMR smells so delicious I might even consider eating it and the cows just eat it up!  Milk production is increasing a little too because the cows are eating a little extra feed.  Fresh feed is such a treat for the cows!  Eat up girls!

Drought 2012: How it's affecting US Dairy Farmers

I'm hoping to share a more personal reflection of the Drought of 2012 on this blog in the coming weeks, but for now I have a great resource for you to check out!  Please check out www.dairygood.org for their latest article featuring perspectives from some great dairy farmers across the US.  The article Dairy Farmers Endure highlights a lot of the very same issues that we're facing on our own dairy farm.  Rising feed costs, the risk of not having enough forages on hand, and the stress of financial issues are all hot topics on our farm.  So, please take some time to read this great article!

Update: Cows are back on track!

It's been a little bit since I blogged about our cows and how they have been doing, so I thought I would take this chance to post an update.  Well as you read in CSI: Dairy Farm Investigation, we had a little bump in the road.  After that post we had all of our forages tested.  We test our silage, haylage, hay and straw about once a month to make sure that we know exactly how much protein, energy, minerals, and vitamins are in each.  We build our diets around those forages, and supplement with grains to fill out the rest of our cows' nutrient needs.  The tests came back in a couple of days and we learned that not only had our corn silage increased in energy, but our haylage was more digestible, and our alfalfa hay had more protein in it.  All 3 factors caused our cows to get upset stomachs.  Too many treats for them, and their diet was out of balance.  So we fine tuned the diet once again, and after about 2 weeks on the new diets, we can say the the cows are back on track!  They haven't gained back all of the milk they once had, but that's ok with us, their health is far more important!  It's great to walk into the barn in the morning and see them all chewing their cuds so diligently! (we know we made the right choices then!)

Other than working with the new feed changes, we have also been busy welcoming a number of new calves to the farm.  Be sure to stop by our Facebook Page to see new pictures of our new baby calves!  The mother cows are doing great, and the baby calves are thriving.  I checked the calving list tonight, and we have 14 more to be born this month, including 2 sets of possible twins!!  I can't wait to meet them all!

Minnesota's Winter Weather has also been a challenge for us.  We have been constantly bedding in our cows....to keep them warm and insulated from the cold.  We have also been working move and remove as much snow as we can, since it snows here almost twice a week.   Needless to say, we are experiencing a traditional Minnesota Winter, and all the joys it brings with.  The forecast for the coming week doesn't sound too much more promising, but we can look forward to March....and thawing! 

Got it DONE!!! Making Hay when the Sun Doesn't Shine!!

We have successfully finished out 2nd cutting of alfalfa!  It was a challenge and if I ever meet a weatherman in person I might have to ask him the following: "How can you still have a job after being wrong so many times?"  Our weather forecast for Thursday was for rain, which we missed, thank goodness as those storms were filled with wind, hail, and tornadoes.  We pray for those who were hurt by these storms.  On Friday it was supposed to be about 80 degrees and light breezes, but we had mid-80's and a strong dry wind....which accelerated the drying of our alfalfa, much faster than we anticipated.  As a result our hay was dry sooner than expected, and we had to move faster.  At midnight on Friday, Jon, I and my brother in law Marcus decided that we were going to keep on chopping alfalfa until we saw dew, which would make the alfalfa too wet to chop.  But as long as there was no dew we were able to keep on chopping.....and we kept on chopping alfalfa until 9 am Saturday morning. Yes, you just read correctly, we chopped through the night and finished right before morning chores.  That means that Jon and I worked about 35 hours straight without any sleep.  We finished chopping and jumped right over to milking, feeding and our morning chores.  At 2pm we made it home, and took a well deserved nap for 5 hours!  We were very happy that we finished our 130 acres of alfalfa even if we had to work that hard to get it done.  Unfortunately since we worked so hard and in the dark, I don't have any pictures of 2nd cutting alfalfa, but if you saw the 1st cutting, it's pretty much the same thing all over again.

It's great to be able to work with my brother in law as well.  He's an excellent worker and never stops until he finishes a job~which is great for chopping alfalfa!  We worked that hard to chop our alfalfa because we know from years of experience that high quality feeds make healthy cows which in turn make healthy nutritious milk.  Focusing on quality has helped us gain so much in milk production, but more so in cow health.  As cows are ruminants, forages and forage quality make a huge impact on health. 

We also had a successful morning on Friday taking our 6 day old calf Fuji to New Ulm for the KNUJ Dairy Day at the Glock.  Fuji visited with many adults and kids, celebrating June Dairy Month for a good cause: area Food Shelves.  Now that she's home, Fuji is spoiled and looking for a head scratch almost every hour!  She's so darn cute though, neither Jon nor I can say no to her...so we give in and she's getting even more spoiled.  I have some pictures of her that I hope to post soon!

2010 Alfalfa Season-1st Cutting Video

I took some time tonight to do what I wanted to do last night, but instead had to respond to yet another attack on America's good dairy farmers.  Tonight, I finally got to put together my video clips from hay making last week, into a nice "collage" of videos.  Please check out how we at Orange Patch Dairy work to make high quality forage to feed our cows during the year.  The best part is that we get to do this 3-4 more times this growing season....I like this video and I hope you do too!!!

1st cutting Alfalfa Video! FINALLY!!!!

Seifert Farms making 1st cutting hay (alfalfa) on May 20th, 2009 in Southern MN. We cut 100 acres of hay and chopped it as alfalfa haylage in less than 36 hours, at about 355 tons in a 250 ft. silage bag. Definitely a little windy though, up to 50 mph winds, amazingly the moisture, which is critical, never got any lower than 55%, most averaging 60%. Alfalfa was about 175 RFV (Relative Feed Value) a measure of the quality of a forage.

Busy Farm Update!

Oh life on the farm never slows down! Good news from the milk inspector...we passed! All of the hard work paid off, but we didn't expect not to pass, so that was good. I had a nice chat with the inspector while he was cleaning his boots before leaving. He complemented us on our upcoming preschool tours, noting that more than a handful of local dairies also host grade school kids in the spring for tours. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HOSTING! Those kids will have memories that will last a lifetime!

Another bit of exciting news comes from the local FFA Chapter. The Sleepy Eye FFA Chapter participated in the 80th Minnesota FFA Convention this past weekend. My brother in law and youngest sister were members of the Dairy Judging Team, and we are PROUD to announce that after much hard work, they won 1st place! And a trip to the National FFA Convention this fall! Congratulations to Chris, Angela, Laura and Shawn for a job WELL DONE! FFA does an excellent job of teaching agriculture to students rural and urban, and we proudly support their work!

Jonathan (my husband) and Steve (my father in law) are leaving tomorrow for another road trip, machinery shopping. This means that I will be solely in charge of the chores and cows tomorrow! I am excited, because driving 10+ hours to Southeast Minnesota and Wisconsin to look at choppers didn't sound like a lot of fun to me. I willingly volunteered to stay home. I will be in charge of morning and evening milking and calf chores as well as feeding the cows and heifers. I am also hoping to get a head start on my dairy princess' schedule for the coming summer promotion season, that is if nothing goes wrong-God willing! I wish the guys the best tomorrow as they pursue a good deal and a new addition to our forage processing fleet. Hopefully I will have pictures of a new harvester soon!

Our tank overfloweth....

As were milking cows tonight we discovered something exciting...we filled our bulk tank (the stainless steel tank we store our milk in) was filled to the TOP!!! In fact we spilled a little milk out the sides of the tank and on to the floor. We have a tank that holds about 1650 gallons of milk. Each of our 84 milking cows make over 10 gallons on milk each day!!!! We are VERY excited about this good news....as you can tell! Our milk flows into this tank and is cooled to about 38-40 degrees. We hold the milk for 2 days and then it is picked up by a tanker truck from our local creamery. Now, as a result we will need to have the tanker truck pick up our milk every day to ensure that we will not have to lose anymore milk to the floor. Needless to say it was a good night tonight. This increase in milk production can be attributed to a variety of things. The first thing is a change in haylage (chopped fermented alfalfa stored in a silage bag) and an increase in the number of fresh cows.

The change in feed has been awesome! The cows LOVE the new bag of haylage! We opened the bag that contains alfalfa cut last May 2008. It is our best feed and we were saving it for the best cows to calve this winter/spring. Our goal is to produce the BEST quality feed possible. Better feed means that we can feed a higher percentage of our total diet as forage. Right now we average about 62% of the cows' diet as forage. The remainder of the diet is concentrates (corn, soybean meal, vitamins, minerals, and other "goodies"). With a higher forage diet we also keep our costs down. We have to purchase less concentrates if we can feed better quality forages. The other advantage to feeding more forage is that we can also increase rumen and cow health. More forage helps to make rumen microbes happy! Forage helps stimulate cud chewing, which helps the cows make buffer in their saliva-helping their overall health.

The addition of more fresh (recently calved) cows has also increased our total milk pounds. We have calved in about 25 cows in the last 2.5 months. These cows are all producing the most milk that they will produce in their 305-365 day lactations. A cow typically peaks at about 60 days into their lactations....our cows average about 67 days in milk. That peak is the highest amount of milk that they will produce, then they will decline until they are dried off (vacation time) and calve in with their next calf. Many of our cows are between 1-60 days in milk. These cows perform well and make lots of milk if they are taken care of post-calving. We do our darnest to make sure that they are off to a great start after calving. Every day for 10-14 days post calving we take our cows temperatures. We watch them eat, making sure they eat. We also monitor their personalities...making sure they are "bright eyed and busy tailed" every day. Cows should be eager to eat when they get fresh feed, so we always check them at feeding time. Overall cow health has been awesome this spring!

Our milk production is the result of all of the cows' hard work. We do not "push" our cows or force them to milk. We respect dairymen who use rBST, but we do not. We have always felt that we can manage cows to milk better, but we do see a place for rBST in the industry. Our cows milk naturally...we provide them the BEST feed possible, the BEST care possible, and the BEST love possible and in return the cows pay us in the bulk tank!