Icy today, gone tomorrow

This was Friday morning - 2 degrees, and icily beautiful:

Later, I was marveling at the heifers.  They have access to the barn, where they're bedded down with dry, soft straw.  But some of them prefer to lie right in the snow:

I think even the other heifers were admiring her.  Or questioning her comfort choices.

I've been doing a couple interviews for the Faces of Farming & Ranching award, and one of the interviewers asked me about how our farm is 'different' than a lot of dairy farms.  I don't really think about it much, but, here are the ways our farm is different than a lot of others.

- We pasture our cattle.

Not every farm has fields right next to their barns, and not everyone had a parent who built an irrigation pivot.  Barns are built for cow comfort ... sand beds, mattresses, even misters in their barn to keep the cows cool in warm weather.  

- We use natural bull breeding.

Many farms use artificial insemination, which is called AI.  We buy bulls from different farms, let them in with the cows, and let nature take its course.  Why the difference?  When people breed cows with AI, they impregnate them with like, the Harvard grads, NFL bodies of bulls.  Also, it takes bull meanness out of the equation.  We rarely have a mean bull, since we have young ones with only one thing on their minds, but it has happened.  We just have to sell them.

- Our cows calve in the pasture.  

Since the cows are in barns, the calves are usually born in maternity pens.  Other farms, due to AI, also know exactly when the calves are due.  Ours are born within a few months, but the exact time is a surprise.  Usually during the night.

- We don't record each cow's milk production.

On some farms, people have monitors on each cow telling how much milk she gives.  Some farms show the milk coming out of the milker so you can check right away:  

We check this just when we're milking them.

But like when I talked to the interviewer, I told him what I think:  there's no 'right way.'  It's like any business - you do what works for you.  What works for our land or operation might not work for another.  So we're all different, and that's what keeps dairy farms - and dairy tours! - endlessly interesting.  If you're a dairy farmer, anyway.

That, and the weather.  The ice is gone and the mud is here.  Wonder what the heifers will be lying in tomorrow?

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Get ready, get set

Yesterday Kris and the guys dried up the cows.  This means we're not going to milk them for a bit before they have calves.  So drying up means - you check if they're pregnant, give them an antibiotic so they don't get an infection by halting their milking, and put a sealant on their teats.  (For more detail, check on my post here.) 

It takes all day to do it.  Then we let them out onto the pasture for the first time this year!  It's so nice to see them out there again.  Kris said they were excited to get out there too. 

The vet came today to check the ones that didn't seem pregnant.  While yesterday they checked from the outside, by feeling the cow's side, today the vet checks from the inside. Yes!  Just the way you're imagining!

He also used an ultrasound machine, which was a first for us here.  He put the wand inside the cow, then he had a headset.  One of the eyes of the headset was a screen that showed the ultrasound.  Kris and the guys all put it on, and Kris said it was just like looking at a human ultrasound.  There's a grid on the screen, so you could gauge exactly how big the calf was.

So we're only milking the non-pregnant or recently-pregnant ones.  (Once the pregnant cows have calves, we start milking them again.  They have to have a calf every year to continue giving milk.)

Now, you may be wondering, doesn't that mean that we don't send much milk, and that our milk check is really small?  Answer again - yes!  But it's the same every year, so we plan for it.  It's not like it's a surprise, just like we won't be surprised when the calves are all born on a Saturday when we're having people over.  It's so predictable!

Moving day

Today was a big day - we moved the heifers to their winter pasture. 

This means we have to move them a long way - including under the bridge.  In past years, this has proven to be quite an undertaking.  Why?  The bridge is different.  It worries them.  They have no desire to walk under it.  Sometimes you think they're going to go ... they look like they're going to go ... and then they all turn around and run like mad in the wrong direction.

One benefit of rotating pastures is that we move them pretty often, so they're more used to being moved in general.  (When we first got here we didn't do that as much, and this big move really threw them off.)  That's not to say today was easy - but it did take two hours as opposed to half a day. 

Kris and two of the employees did it by splitting them up.  There were 115 cattle total, but they would take 10 at a time.  Two guys would push the 10 from behind until finally they would walk under the bridge.  Then they'd go back and do 10 more.

Of course, the ones they already led through broke through some fence tape.  They're just wild, wondering where to go, and all excited that they're moving.  But it was expected and not a big deal.

Eventually, Kris and the guys led/pushed them all across, and got them in their new pasture.  Now they're in a pasture next to the dairy barn.  All winter long - since obviously the pasture won't be growing - they'll get silage.  So tomorrow, they'll be having their own Thanksgiving feast, too.