Red, red ...

A friend shared this picture on Facebook.  I was looking at it on my phone, so it was pretty small.  This is what I saw:

What was your immediate thought?  Mine was not rose petals and a sweet proposal.  Apparently my mind is in birthing cow mode. 

What the calves are eating

You know you can buy cat food and dog food ... you can also buy calf food.  Funny thing - the industry term for it is calf 'feed' - not calf 'food'.  But it's all the same idea.     

When the calves are little, like most animals, they need to start on solids.  First, they only have milk and water.  When they're three days old, we start filling a pail with calf feed.  Ours come in pellets.  It's called calf starter.   

It looks like this:

When we're doling out the fresh milk from the back of the calf cart, Kris also carries the calf feed to put in their pails.

We have 85 heifer calves now!   Here they are on one side of the barn, waiting expectantly for their food and milk.  It reminds me of being on an airplane when everyone watches the flight attendant coming down the aisle, gets a drink, and immediately consumes it. 

My sons were eating breakfast yesterday.  They like to get different cereals all the time, and they'd picked Fiber One.  Kris said, "That looks just like calf feed."   

And so it does:

Calf feed, kid food.  It's all the same idea.

Twins

Yesterday Kris had chased a cow into the barn because he could see she was going to have a calf ... backward.  He pulled it and it was fine - a nice little heifer!

He went back a little later to check on her and saw that the cow was having ... another calf!  Twins.  It was a bull.  He and the boys got to watch her give birth.  (The boys told me about it later.  It seems pretty commonplace to them now.  They've seen twice as many births as I have this year because they go out with Kris so much.)

There were no calves born on Friday, but there were plenty yesterday.  Of course - it was Saturday!  Amazing how these pregnant cows know what day of the week it is.  Between seeing friends and graduation open houses, Kris always goes to check for calves.  This means he drives in the pasture, finds the calves in the grass - hopefully their mother is taking care of them nearby - chases the mother up to the barn, takes the calf to the barn and feeds it colostrum.

The timing doesn't always work out perfectly.  Depending on when the cows were last milked, there's not always immediate access to fresh colostrum, so Kris freezes bottles of it as a second choice.  That way there's always some available.

So a frozen bottle of colostrum takes, Kris estimates, about two hours to thaw completely.

Luckily, we live close to the barn, so while he's thawing milk, he can come and pick up more twins - ours. 

Pure Michigan milk

My Michigan Milk Messenger magazine (that sounds like a tongue-twister) had an article today about the Jorgensen and Stuever families, whose farms were featured in this Pure Michigan ad.  They - like us - are MMPA members, and Kroger is a great MMPA customer. 

Check it out ... does it make you want to drink up?  Play baseball?  Watch more videos on YouTube?  All of the above?

Preemie calf

A cow birthed the smallest calf I've ever seen.  The little heifer is healthy and fine, but she must be premature.  It's hard to show just how small she is.  She's half the size of the other calves.  She's as tiny as a goat.

                           

Impossible to tell her size, right?  So to give some perspective, here's her head next to my phone. Oddly, this picture also serves to make my phone look giant.     

The boys got even more ready than usual to work with Kris today - i.e. they were wearing both boots and hats.  They rarely have either.  (Not just boots, but shoes at all.) 

  

Kris asked them to empty the calf buckets and they scurried off to do it.  Not only do they enjoy hanging out with Kris, but they actually seem to enjoy doing the work. 

Yeah.  That seems like a lot of buckets.

Every year, the work will be the same, but the boys will be different.  The barn helps give perspective. 

June day



The cattle are across the field from our house again. 

So if you're driving by, take a look! 

Meanwhile, inside the house ... I noticed at the last dairy communicator meeting that some of the other participants had super-nice nametags.  I asked how to order one, and they were surprised I didn't already have one.  So, in the mail today I got this:

As an added bonus, it's held toegether by magnets!  When I go to meetings I often regret pinning on my nametags because I snag my shirts.  Official-looking nametag, check.  Undamaged clothing, check.  This can only improve my communication skills.

Rainy weekend

It rained!  Hooray!  We got two inches.  What a relief.  Kris told me, "As your dad says your grandpa always said: 'That was a million dollar rain.'"  I never heard either of them say that, but I liked it.  That's even good third hand.

Kris took the afternoon off to see ... his new nephew!  Not even 24 hours old.  Plus, his sister from Texas was visiting.  It was rainy and windy the whole day but none of us complained.  All three men there are farmers for a living. 

We even got to see some friends last night - they're farmers in the Grand Rapids area.  We asked them if they could meet for dinner at 8:30 p.m. in a town 40 minutes from each of us. 

My friend texted back, "If it's raining, Jerry won't be able to spray.  I'll keep you posted." 

It rained, and we got to go out.  As we were separating, Jerry said, "Nice hanging out on these stormy nights with you guys!"

I thought that farming was always a risky endeavor because your job depends so much on the weather.  But who knew that your social life was affected by it, too?  Rainy Friday night - free time for all of us!