Keeping busy on the farm

We've been very busy on the farm lately, and that's going to continue on into this week.

Our maternity pasture has been very active these past two weeks. In fact, we've had 26 cows and heifers freshen in the last 17 days, 15 of those in the last week alone. While the calving frequency is going to slow down a little bit, I still expect to have several calves born this week.

For the first time in quite a while, our milking herd is increasing in size. This is because we are having more cows calve and rejoin the herd than we are "drying off" and removing from the herd. And not only are our numbers increasing, but our milk production per cow is also improving. And so is the milk price...just not enough to suit us!

Now that our silage harvest is over, we've turned our attention to planting our cool season crops. We will be planting just over 200 acres of rye, ryegrass, and wheat over the next few weeks. We will graze our milk cows on the acreage closest to our milking barn, and we will harvest the rest next spring as silage or baleage. After our poor total yield on this year's sorghum, we desperately need a good spring crop! We did have a good harvest this past spring, so we're hoping for more of the same in 2010.

Don't forget you can also keep up with what's happening on our farm by following my Twitter account, becoming a fan of our farm's Facebook page, or watching the videos we post to our YouTube channel.

Y'all have a dairy good day!

Showdown

Around the middle of yesterday morning, just as I was finishing up some county Farm Bureau paperwork in my farm office, my phone rang. "Someone stopped by and said we have cows in the road on the other side of the creek," said my father on the other end. "We're heading that way, meet us over there."

So I hopped into my truck and made the quarter-mile westward journey. I went down one hill and as I climbed the next (the "creek" runs between them) I saw a group of dry cows standing in and along the road. Dad and our employees were only about a minute ahead of me but already had the situation under control. I helped them get the cows back into the pasture and reattach the latch to the gatepost.

I know this isn't much of a story...it's not like we had to chase after them in the dark or the rain. No, putting them back in their pasture wasn't the interesting part, but how they got out in the first place.

We currently are pasturing dry cows north of the road and heifers on the southern side, with nothing but a two-lane blacktop and right-of-way separating the two. My theory is that an animal in one pasture started mooing at another across the road. This probably went on for a few minutes until one of the two mooed across something that must have been interpreted as an insult or a taunt. At that point, it became group warfare. More and more animals from each pasture began lining up at their gate and along the fence line, getting as close as they could to hurl their moos at the other group across the road. At some point the dry cows finally had enough of these upstart heifers and decided it was time for a little less moo and a lot more action. They used their weight advantage to put enough pressure on the gate that the latch pulled loose from the post. Once the gate swung open, they "bull rushed" the heifers in the pasture on the other side of the road.

Luckily a passing motorist came through immediately after the cows broke free and was able to inform us before the cows forced open the heifers gate and invaded their pasture. Had that happened, I expect the heifers would have taken a pretty good whoopin'. It also would have meant we would have had to drive them all to our working pen and sort them back out. As luck would have it though, we were able to step in and stop the showdown between the dry cows and heifers before it went to far.

Is this the real reason the dry cows were out? I dunno, like I said it's just my theory. But it's a good one, don't you think?

Wednesday Tidbits, 10/28/09

My wife and I left the farm early last Thursday morning (after I fed the milk cows, of course) bound for Indianapolis. The AFBF's Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee was holding it's fall meeting in conjunction with the National FFA Convention. It was my first time to visit Indy and to take part in the FFA Convention, and I was very impressed with both the city and the blue-jacketed youth who were seemingly everywhere. It was great to see all the enthusiasm the FFA members have for agriculture, and I know our industry's future will be in good hands.

As I mentioned, our YF&R Committee met during the trip. We worked together staffing a booth at the FFA Convention's trade show, boxed up food for the needy at a local food bank, and had a great time visiting with each other over the course of four days. I always come home feeling refreshed and recharged after spending time with my Farm Bureau family, and I'm already looking forward to seeing them all again in January.

While we were gone, the farm kept chugging right along, of course. Dad and our employees were able to chop 25 loads of sorghum on Thursday before rain moved in that night and shut harvest for a few days. They "dried off" quite a few of our pregnant milk cows Friday afternoon, and didn't have much to do other than milk and feed through the weekend.

Monday morning we moved into another field and cut 17 loads by the end of the day. It began raining late that night so yesterday was a no-go. We tried to resume the harvest this morning, but the ground is still too slick to operate. We'll let it air out this afternoon and hope we can cut some tomorrow morning before the next round of rain moves in.

On the cow front, we're now down to 181 in milk with 11 more due to dry off this week. We also have a few that should be calving in the next few days, but we'll hit this year's lowest number of cows in-milk sometime within the next 2.5 weeks. We'll start freshening cows and heifers faster than we dry them off once mid-November rolls around, and from there it should be a slow, steady climb back to 200+ cows milking sometime after the first of the year.

Finally, we had our monthly DHIA test this morning. Each of our cows' had their milk production measured, and we also pulled milk samples from each cow to have them analyzed for butterfat and protein composition. We should get a preliminary report back on their production amount this afternoon and the official report with the sample results next week. You can learn a little more about this in our newest MooTube Minute.

The 2009 Fall Harvest has begun!

We had to wait a lot longer than we wanted to, but our fall harvest is finally underway. I cut 13 acres of bermudagrass on Sunday afternoon, most of which was run through our silage chopper and packed into a pit yesterday. It should take us about an hour this morning to finish harvesting that bermuda, then we'll be swapping the head on our chopper to start harvesting sorghum.

Here's hoping for a breakdown-free day!

Thursday Morning Tidbits

Just a few quick notes on a Thursday morning:

• It's probably going to rain for a couple of hours today, but after it's out of here it won't be coming back for a week. Hallelujah!
• We're going to move several concrete feed troughs out of two different pastures and place them in our milking herd's feeding area. We'll be out of silage within the next couple of weeks and will have to feed more baleage. It's much bulkier and we'll need the additional trough space to handle it.
• I've uploaded two new "MooTube Minutes" since the beginning of the week. #003 deals with the rain delaying our harvest and #004 is about a cow that calved on Wednesday. Check them out on our YouTube Channel.
• Did I mention the monsoon is about to end? Again, Hallelujah!

Have a great Thursday everyone, and make sure you enjoy some delicious, nutritious dairy products today!