Grateful for our Veterinarians!

Today was an unexpected rough day at our farm.  Our morning began with a great blessing: cooler weather!  We enjoyed milking, almost shivering.  We did our chores, fed our cows and calves...and noticed that one of our dry cows was acting sluggish.  Her name is Undies...(it's a long story) we acted quickly, calling the veterinarian as soon as we moved her to the milking barn for easier treatment.  Our suspicions were correct...something was wrong...our girl was definitely feeling under the weather...but it was so much more than what we thought.  Our awesome vet Dr. Nancy was on the scene, and diagnosed a Left Displaced Abomasum (she flipped her stomach to the wrong side of her body-can be painful & deadly, fixed only by surgery).  BUT....after a thorough check up, Dr. Nancy also found that our dear Undies also twisted her uterus.  It is as painful as it sounds.  Dr. Nancy called it the worse case of cramps you can possibly think of.  This completely changed that treatment that we needed to do....we now had an emergency on our hands.  We needed to do the stomach surgery as well as a c-section for the calf, thereby untwisting the uterus.  We had no idea what caused these ailments....but we needed to fix them for Undies. 

We had a couple of risks to evaluate before we started the surgeries.  If we did the c-sections, odds were not in our favor for a live calf.  It was too soon for the calf to live, the lungs would not be developed enough to breathe easily.  We wanted to save Undies...so we opted for the surgeries.  The stomach surgery went well, and then Dr. Rich arrived to help with the c-section.   Somewhat of a miracle happened though, Undies had started labor while we were working on her stomach and was able to deliver her calf normally.  We were excited to try, since this would be better for the cow, but maybe not as good for the calf.  Dr. Rich pulled out a backwards heifer calf, alive, but struggling to breathe, then Dr. Nancy yelled for help....there was a 2nd calf!!!!! Twins!!!!

Dr. Rich pulled the 2nd calf, also a heifer calf, but also struggling to breathe.  We looked like an emergency delivery room: 2 doctors, each working on separate patients, with 2 assistants (Jon and I) working to help.  With help we thought we had the calves breathing well, until the 1st born calf had a seizure of sorts and stopped breathing.  Within 30 minutes the 2nd calf did the same....all that work and time and we couldn't save the calves, no matter how hard we worked.  We had the best vets, providing the best care for our animals, but it wasn't enough.  It's with joy I can report that Undies is doing ok, BUT she's no where near out of the woods...she's got a long road ahead, but we'll be with her every step of the way.

Today, even though the results were not all great, we are grateful for the excellent veterinarians that we get to work with.  Being a large animal vet is a hard job, but we are blessed to have some very qualified vets to help us when our cows are in need.  So today...we pay tribute to some great veterinarians!  They are the BEST!

2011 Projects....Phase 1

Well I have been busy, as you can see by my absence from the blogging sphere.  There are some great reasons for this, which I will explain in the coming posts.  We expect 2011 to be a great year for our farm, we have some big plans to make our farm better for our cows (first priority) and for us (second priority).  Phase 1 of our projects was to hire a full time employee or 2 part time employees to assist with milking and clean up of the parlor.  We started our search for employees locally in mid-April.  After interviewing a couple candidates we settled on 2 men to help us.  One is responsible for coming to milk in the morning, while the other assists with milking at night.  Both have the good fortune of milking with me! (haha!)  By hiring employees, we free up Jon from the responsibility of being in the parlor...giving him the opportunity to work on other projects around the farm. 

Now that we have the "kinks" worked our of our schedules and we have a more settled routine, we can see the advantages of having additional help.  In the mornings, I am able to milk cows and do cow health checks while Jon is able to feed 2 batches of TMR (total mixed ration) to the milking cows, feed the dry cows and feed our heifers all before noon!  In the evenings, Jon is able to haul manure, fix various pieces of equipment, and work with cows that need additional care.  It's been amazing how much more efficient we have become.  Because we have feed to all of our animals, earlier in the day, we have seen an increase in milk production.  Because we are able to milk our cows faster, the cows are able to spend more of their day resting, eating and drinking.  It's been great to see the cows relax and reap the benefits of such a simple change. 

Neither one of our employees have any previous experience milking cows, but we have been working to teach and train.  They are fast learners and have a great respect for our cows.  I think that's been the best part of adding employees....teaching them about how much we respect and care for our cows.  In fact, last Saturday, our morning milker brought his 10 year old son to milk with us.  It was awesome to see Clif share with his son the importance of cleanliness in the parlor, proper cow handling, and the value of agriculture in our local economy.  So, as we continue to work out the kinks, we hope to have more good news about hiring employees.

Small Farms vs. Large Farms~Labor & Family Time

Often times I hear people talking about small farms vs. large farms, or family farms vs. corporate farms. I think it is funny that people think that there is a distinction between the two.  In fact 99% of all farms are family owned.  In the dairy indsutry a small farm is categorized as any farm with "less than 300 milking cows".  Imagine that!  Everyone of the farms in our county is a "small farm", but I would bet that if you drive by our farm or others you might think to yourselves that we operate a "large farm".  I also find it interesting that large farms are thought of as having poor management, unhealthy animals and bad milk, but I know so MANY large farms with a high standard of excellence.  But I should get back to my main point.....labor issues and family time on a "small farm".

Jonathan and I operate a "family farm" that is "small", and ALL of our labor is family labor.  We currently have no employees, but hire neighbors to help us on the weekends when they don't have to go to work, when we have a wedding or want some time off.  This puts us in a tight spot when something happens during the week, which was what I was thinking about tonight as I hosed down the milking parlor.  I wished that we had an employee or 2 tonight.  This past Saturday, Jon's grandfather from Southeast Minnesota passed away, and the funeral was planned for Tuesday.  We would have both liked to attend the funeral, but since we are the ONLY employees at our farm and those cows need to be fed and milked each day, I volunteered to stay home and "man the fort".  I am in charge of milking for tonight and tomorrow morning as well as heifer chores and feeding calves.  I am comfortable with working solo, but it's nice to have Jon around to help.  We have an awesome neighbor that is coming over to feed the cows for me~I am not a big fan of mixing TMR in the mud.  If we had a larger farm we would have employee that would be trained and dependable.  They would have been able to fill in for me in my absence.  Other times during the year, we would be able to have time off for other family events as well.  Often times, families decide to milk more cows so they can afford to hire employees or in some case install robots to milk their cows.  But in either instance, its about making sure that the care of the cows comes first, so the care of the family can be increased. 

I can honestly say that I am looking forward to have an employee or 2....making them part of our "dairy farming family".

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!