Tuesday, September 28, 2010

It's cooler, but still too dry

The temperature finally started to make a downward turn over the weekend, and it looks like the 90-100 degree days of summer may finally be behind us. The cooler days and night and low humidity should made our cows much more comfortable, which in turn should lead to more grazing and milk production. But the weather isn't all good news for us. Even after this Sunday's quarter-inch, we are about 10 inches year-to-date below our typical rainfall. Right now the weather forecast is calling for 0% chance of rain over the next 10 days. Our summer grasses have slowed/stopped their growth a couple of weeks earlier than normal due to the lack of moisture, and we won't plant our cool-season forages until we get enough rainfall to soften the ground. I've been busy fertilizing some of our cropland, though, and by the end of the day we should have 75 acres needing nothing more than seeds and rain.

Back to the milking herd for a minute. Over the weekend we dipped down to 172 cows in milk, which was probably our lowest point in over a year. We've had a few heifers calve over the past couple of days though and will be up to at least 176 this afternoon. We also have 3 pregnant cows to dry off, but our calvings should begin to outnumber our dry-offs over the next several weeks.

Have a "dairy" good day, everyone!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry to hear you are still dry. We are too, which means: GOOD NEWS: harvest may be done by late next week BAD NEWS: Both corn and beans are very dry! Like below the desired %! Last year we had more wet weather than we knew what to do with; one of these years it will be the elusive average year!

Iris Joe Kelley said...

Nice to find a fellow dairyman blogging. I have been dairying in the Ozarks for 36 years and have a blog that is four years old. I borrowed your Baler Rolls video and posted and provided a link back to yours. You should get a lot of hits today. My blog is at www.musecrafters.com/kelleysdairy if you are interested. I have written some poetry but havent tried singing but have videos about baling hay and pulling calves. Leter.
Cheerily
IJK

Farmchick said...

Hi~
I enjoyed my visit here. I really liked the Baler Rolls...too funny and very clever too! :)

Sorry to hear that you are dry there--

We just got done with our wheat harvest here and will now be moving on to flax, beans and then sunflowers.

Hope you can stop by for a visit.