Covered in ice

When we woke up this morning, it was 1 degree.  By noon, it was 27 degrees.

 

It's so funny when it goes from really cold to not really cold around here.  I had to go pick up some parts at the lumber mill for Kris - and not one guy coming in or out was wearing a coat!  Same with the grocery store and gas station ... once it goes above 20 degrees, it doesn't seem that bad.

 

And it looks so inviting ... 

 

 

 

As for the farm, repairs and modifications are going on as usual.  A gate broke in the parlor, and that's now fixed.  We took sliding metal sheets (sort of like sliding doors) from one barn and are moving them to modify the old calf barn. 

 

When we wanted more ventilation in the old barn for the calves, we took opened it up as much as we could.  Now that we want it closed up for hay storage, we're putting the sliders back on. 

 

Not surprisingly, it never works as easily as that sounds.  It takes a lot of time and labor in the cold - of course, coats are optional.

Fresh air

The barn looks like a geometric puzzle!  Our latest addition is a tube fan. 

This is the way it works.  The fan on the outside of the barn is attached to a plastic tube.  It blows air through the tube.

The entire length of the tube has little holes in it.  The air blows through these holes and pumps fresh air into the barn.  According to the experience of other farmers, the fresh air helps the calves not get pneumonia, be more comfortable, and as a result, grow better. 

The first calves - now that they're older - are no longer in individual pens.  Now they're in small group pens of eight.  You can see that we've removed the dividers between the pens and swung out the gates.  Now they're able to drink from the same waterer and eat the feed that we give them in the alley.

Fresh air for them, fresh air for my kids.  We're building up immunities left and right.

Planning

We seasonally calve, which means all calves are born within about three months. So to build a barn to raise calves, it has to be bigger than a normal dairy our size would build, since they’re all going to be babies at the same time. Imagine all the baby stuff you have for one baby … multiplied by 150 … spread all over your house …

So we want to build a barn that can convert from a calf barn into a transition barn, which means it’ll work for both new calves and older calves their first year of life.

The barn will have custom made gates. The calves will have individual housing, then when they’re about eight weeks old, we’re going to group them into groups of four.

They’re alone in the beginning so you can pay close attention to their eating, they don’t have to compete for food, and hopefully if one gets sick they won’t all catch it. (This doesn’t work in preschool for kids, but we try.)

Their pens have two buckets in the front – one for feed, and one for milk and water. Once they get to the age they don’t drink milk anymore is when we’ll pull the panels out and turn it into a group pen. They eat out of a feeder after that.

We’re looking to build it this year. Currently, Kris raises calves in a barn that is over 100 years old. It used to be where my grandpa milked the cows. So it’s not exactly set up for raising calves.

But it is set up for pictures. We’ll miss the old calf barn … but I’m pretty sure the calves won’t.