Calves and more calves

Another two calves born yesterday, and three more this morning! Kris is out looking for more now.

There are a lot of studies about how colostrum is good for calves, and the earlier they have it, the better the benefit. Some research shows that if they have it within the first 12 hours of life it's the most beneficial.

Kris first feeds calves from a bottle, like this:



He feeds them two bottles a day. Like human babies, it's not always intuitive. He has to cup their mouths with his hands, stick the bottle in, and hold it there until they're done drinking. Sometimes they really need coaxing to drink and it takes a long time for them to finish a bottle.

After two bottle feedings, he teaches them to drink from a bucket. Then they have milk twice a day and free choice water all day.

A friend brought her daughters yesterday, and they were excited to pet newborn calves:



After they left, my sons had some funny questions. First of all, my sons are with Kris and on the farm all the time. They love doing farming type things. So I laughed when my son asked, "Why did the girls say 'aw' when they saw the calves?"

(Do they not hear girls say 'aw'? Are the boys so used to calves they don't see their appeal anymore? Unsure.) I answered, "They thought they were cute."

He continued, "She asked if we had chickens. She thought we had a real farm."

"We DO have a real farm!" I said. Darn those children's books. Even my kids, born and raised on a farm, think it can only be a real farm if we own every type of barnyard animal? Ha! I explained the definition of a farm and how we met it.

He thought about it and said, "But we don't have any chickens."

That's true. We don't have any chickens. But we have lots of cows, a few cats, and more and more calves by the minute.

Rain gauge

Everything's a huge, sloppy mess!

My mom mentioned something she said she didn't know about before she moved to the farm ... and it's field tile.

Most fields with crops in the Midwest are tiled, which means they have big plastic pipes underground that drain the excess water out of the field into a creek or ditch or some other waterway. This way, the field doesn't get too wet and kill the crops. If you're selling land, it's worth more tiled than not tiled.

They're strategically placed in fields for the best drainage. They're put in with giant machines called tile plows. The end result - all that you see - is a plastic pipe sticking out of the ground.

Right now, water is gushing out of all the tiles, because there's so much rain. I went out to take a picture of the tile near our creek, but it was covered by the water from the creek!



Sometimes the tile just can't keep up - many, many fields around here are little lakes today.

The grass is growing really fast, but we can't put the cattle out on pasture yet because it's so wet they'd just tear it up. Our builder is really ready to continue - he came just by himself today - but it's been too wet. Our lawn is squishy, we have puddles everywhere, and our basement has a little stream running through it. Though even field tile wouldn't help that.

First calves!

An exciting day! The first calves were born! Kris came home right after he left in the morning - I thought something was wrong - but he was coming to get towels to dry off the little calves. (Oh, it was raining. Have I mentioned the endless rain?)

This is the way it works - at least three times a day Kris walks or drives in the pasture to see if he finds any calves. If a cow is having trouble, he helps her, but most of them just give birth unassisted.

He got a blue towel and a pink towel, I noted. They were the first ones he grabbed, but really - a heifer and a bull!


He at first thought they might be twins, because not only were they close to each other in the pasture, but he could only find one mother. This wouldn't be the best scenario, because when there are male/female twins in cattle, the heifer is infertile the majority of the time. However, he found the second mother later in the day. Hooray!

One mother was a heifer (her first calf, so now she's a cow) and one was a cow (which means she's already had a calf before.) The cow had plenty of colostrum to give, so he bottlefed them and they drank well.

So, the first two! About 298 to go, all between now and August 15. Kris' schedule for the next three months is pretty set. Ready, set, calve!

Rain rain ...

Kris got a new water heater for the barn. There was so much rain today the builders didn't even come. We went to a benefit with friends - that's one positive to all the rain. No planting in this kind of weather, so the busy time is put off for one more day. Even though he'd really like it to start now ... it will eventually.

I saw Josh's video and the picture of the snake.

1) It was in his dishwasher, not his washer. His wife opened it and the snake fell from the top to the bottom.

2) He took it outside, and that's where he shot the video of it. It shook its tail like it had a rattle on it, but didn't. (Baby ones have just buttons there, I learned.)

3) Based on my memory of the picture, it's either an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake or an Eastern Milk Snake.

4) Based on Josh's job, it's probably a milk snake. Just because of the name! Besides, the other one is Michigan's only venomous snake. If you get a snake in your dishwasher, it seems too much that its bite would ALSO be full of venom, right?

Post holiday

We had a lovely Easter. Today was back to normal:

Buying - Kris got a new battery for the four wheeler. The other one was totally dead - it wouldn't even take a charge. (We use a four wheeler to herd the cattle in to the parlor from the pasture to be milked.)

Building - The builders started roofing in the morning, but it started raining. They quit and started putting in posts for the gates. When it stopped raining they started on the roof again, but ... it's supposed to rain for the next three days at least.

Stories - Kris came home with a story. Our employee Josh said his wife opened her washer and ... there was a snake inside! And not a garter snake! Josh grabbed it and killed it. He showed Kris the video on his phone. I have no idea how any of this story could happen, but it did. I can't wait to talk to Josh to hear more details and see the video.

Community - I was gone most of the day to the St Johns Community Pep Rally. We came in sixth place in Reader's Digest We Hear You America contest, so the Reader's Digest RV came into town today to award us with $10,000! I went in the RV with my friend Suzie to take pictures of the RV in front of the town elementary schools. We're using the money as seed money to build a spray park.



Let's hope the rain pauses enough to let them build the barn this week. Let's also hope that my laundry remains snake-free.

Ties

My cousin's son visited today with his wife and kids. They're from Utah.

His grandpa is my dad's oldest brother, my Uncle Dave. I won't go on and on, but man, I liked that guy. And miss him. The story I remembered is that he was really happy to leave the farm for the Air Force Academy.

So when Kris and I decided to buy the farm, I was interested in what he thought. I'd had a friend leave a voice mail message that had disturbed me - the friend expressed shock that we were going to buy the farm and, essentially, change our life path.

I emailed my Uncle Dave about it and this is, in part, what he sent back:

Farming - a "Lesser Profession!" I've never had the experience you just had - or that Kris is anticipating; i.e., having people look down their noses at farmers. At least, I should say, I've never had people say anything negative about farming/farmers to my face. Maybe one of the reasons is because I've always been so outwardly proud of my background on the farm and its positive influences on me (so much so that we sent the first three of our five sons back to the farm during their summer vacations from school). Whenever I have to give a verbal bio sketch of myself, it always starts off with: I'm a FARM kid from Michigan! And my admiration for the way your dad and uncle have conducted their businesses of dairy farming is a frequent topic of conversation when I'm in the position of having to make "small talk" with people at parties, etc. It's easy to marvel at the technological advances in farming (particularly, dairy farming) that have changed it from the "Mom & Pop" operations of just a few years ago to the highly efficient businesses that are extant with those who are making a living in that arena these days. Those who DO look down their noses at the business you're about to get into are exactly what you typed the boor who left you that message: incredibly ignorant!

He, of course, made me laugh. It turns out my friend was just making a joke anyway.

But seeing his grandson today, and his interest in the history of the farm, made me think about all of this. If we hadn't taken over the farm, I probably would rarely, if ever, come here again. My parents would have sold it and moved. But since we're still here, our relatives still come and visit! So a day in their lives might be a little different too.

Uncle Dave loved leaving for college - who doesn't? But he loved coming back to visit, too. When you introduce yourself as a farm kid, what other vacation plans could be better?

Good Friday and friends

Brad and Liz from Illinois stopped by today. We got to meet their kids for the first time and take them on ... the first farm tour of the spring!

At one point, when we were in the milking parlor, Liz said that she didn't realize that farmers still didn't milk cows by hand. The other day, someone mentioned to me that they didn't know cows had to have a calf every year to give milk. But really, why would they know? They know cows give milk - but if you don't know a farmer, don't drive by farms, never are exposed to it ... why would you think about these things until someone teaches you?


Modern day parlor

So it's always fun to have people here and to be able to answer their questions about everything - like what the feed pile is. (Liz said she'd seen them in other places and thought they were some kind of sledding hill. They do look super fun.)

While they were here the milk truck came and I met Andy, the guy who was driving today. He showed the kids how he was taking samples of the milk and then pumping the milk into the truck. He even honked the horn for them.





And kids LOVE tractors. (I remember loving them when I was little too. I distinctly remember the first time I lied. I was playing on the combine after being explicity told not to do so, because I was wearing nice clothes and we were on the way to a graduation open house. My mom came out of the house and said, "Were you playing on the combine?" And I said, "No." THAT is how powerful the allure of equipment to a kid is!)


She would never lie. Look at her!

The spring tours will continue - we have more visitors coming tomorrow! Maybe even at some point our tours will not end in the words, "Well, let's go in. I'm freezing."