Thanks, Mom! It's November ...

The cows used to have all of the calves in the summer, which made for some long and hard days ... like when 18 calves would be born in a day.

Kris thought that this year we would space them out a little bit more, so as a result ... we're still feeding little calves after our summer help went back to college!

My mom, the best volunteer in the land, offered to do the morning calf chores, and she's been great!  Kris and I don't know what we would do - or the calves would do - without her.





While that's been happening, we've had a lot of promotion, too.  One day the United Dairy Industry of Michigan hosted their program advisor training at the Huntington Club at Michigan State.  This is my friend Karly who was a part of it - (she looks just like a college student even though she is married and has a baby!)



I went to the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance annual meeting in Kansas City to continue our mission to positively promote agriculture ...



And as a member of Team Chocolate Milk, ran a 5K in my hometown with my kids and friends.  Cole won his age group - first time! (Yes, he has been heavily influenced by watching Olympic winners bite their medals.)



The five of us hit the national dairy meeting in California that Kris went to because he's a board member at our co-op ...



and today was our Michigan Milk Producers Association Leaders' Conference.



So you can see why my mom - and our employees that we actually pay - are such a huge part of all of this!  Thank you to all of them for taking care of things while we're not here.

Though it looks like we've been gone in November, we're actually here more than we're gone.  I just hit the highlights with these pictures.  The normal schedule for Kris is farm, farm, farm, farm, farm, farm, Michigan State football game ... but we just had the last home game!

The meeting was optimistic today, but I hope that the rest of 2017 and 2018 ... and beyond is only positive for farming!  Happy Thanksgiving - we all have a lot to be thankful for. At the very least, I'm already really looking forward to stuffing myself at dinner ... and my mom is, of course, making most of it.  Calves, kids, grandchildren ... she feeds all of us!

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Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!  From our herd to yours.

A couple of weeks ago Allison from Michigan Milk Producers Association came out to take pictures of cattle in the pasture for an article, and she also suggested that my boys pose for the picture above. Believe it or not, they're used to having their picture taken ...

We have 79 heifer calves going into the holiday, including another set of heifer twins!  One side of the barn is completely filled, and now we've started on the other one.

The oldest have ear tags now, which have their number and birth dates.  Isn't she pretty?

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Technology and brackets

Yesterday Kris and I helped host the Michigan Milk Producer Association's Young Cooperator Conference.  For part of it, we went on a farm tour at Daybreak Dairy in Zeeland, where they use automatic calf feeders.

They're not new to the farming world, but I haven't seen them before.  So they're new to me!

All farmers have to decide how many times a day they're going to feed their calves, and then they have to decide how long they're going to drink out of bottles before they move to buckets.  

With an automatic feeder, you don't decide those things, because they eat all the time. 

The machine reads their ear tags, and can tell when they've eaten and how much, and when they meet their maximum in a certain amount of time.  If the calf hasn't eaten enough, it tells you that, so you go and chase it up and encourage it to drink.

So they're hanging out here:

And they walk up to the feeder:

This is a view from the top. You can see the top of the bottle sticking out.

And here's the machine indoors.  The door is open so we could see the inner workings.

This is the milk powder mixing with the water.  It smelled exactly like human formula.

It was fun seeing something new, and as always, talking farm talk with other young farmers.

I always enjoy this conference and the tours, but this marked the first time that I didn't fight sleep on the way back.  This time, thanks to my friend Alex, I was able to avoid the dreaded head jerk.

The conference featured reports from our co-op staff, Gordie Jones speaking about cow comfort, a panel on business planning, and a tailgate party!  We even had a cornhole (beanbag) tournament, with a bracket and everything.  Kris and I came in second place, even though my throw - I was horrified to see when I looked at my pictures - looks like this:

(Can you believe we beat many teams with this toss?  I even obviously step with the wrong foot!)

We had a great time with our planning committee, and we look forward to returning next year!  Who knows what will be new on the farm we visit, what I'll learn at the meeting, or what other terrible discoveries I'll make when I look back at my pictures.