The Dairyman's Blog

FAQ: "What's the difference between conventional and organic milk?"

2012-01-26T18:40:00.000-06:00

Over the past few years, several of my friends have asked about the difference between conventional and organic milk. There is A LOT of information available onthis subject, so I won’t try to reinvent the wheel here. I’ll simply give you an overview along with my take on the issue.

To start with, the terms “conventional” and “organic” referto a farm’s method of production, not the actual milk. For a dairy to attain UDSAorganic certification, it must fully incorporate and adopt a set of productionmethods that include a variety of specified “cultural, biological, andmechanical practices.” Guidelines include provisions on how often cows grazeand have access to pasture, how their additional feed must be grown, and howtheir health is managed (read this USDA Factsheet for more info). Most dairiesinclude some of the listed practices as part of their own standard operating procedures,but are considered “conventional” because they haven’t adopted all of the USDA’sorganic guidelines.

"What do you mean we're not organic?
We're carbon-based life forms!"

A farm’s decision to use conventional or organic productionmethods is rarely as black and white as a Holstein dairy cow. Herd health, theavailability of (or capacity to grow) feed, economics, and location are just afew of the factors farmers must take into consideration. Ultimately, dairyfarms are going to use production methods that best allow them to a) raise healthy,comfortable cows that produce safe, nutritious milk, b) practice goodstewardship of the natural resources around them, and c) provide a decentliving for their family.

So what about those different jugs of milk sitting in thedairy case? The USDA, American Dietetic Association, and many other scientificstudies have affirmed that conventionally and organically produced dairyproducts are equally safe and nutritious. Organic milk is rBST-free, and so are many brands of conventional milk. All milk undergoes stringent testing toensure that it contains no trace of antibiotics or pesticides. Organic willcost more due to the farmer’s higher costs to produce it, and it may have adifferent flavor depending on the cows’ diet (true for all milk) or the pasteurizationmethod used.

My family owns and operates a conventional dairy farm, and we have nohesitation whatsoever about consuming conventional milk and dairy products. If you are equally as comfortable with ourproduct, great! If you believe organic production is a better way of farming,our industry has you covered. There are options for nearly every preference oftaste and philosophy, so make sure you and your family are getting three dailyservings of whichever dairy products you most enjoy!

Check out the following blogs to learn about other dairyfarmers’ operating methods:

Anglin Dairy's "Spotted Cow Review"

Hastings Dairy's "The Dairy Mom"

Zweber Family Farm News

FAQ: "Are there hormones in my milk?"

2012-01-25T12:38:00.002-06:00

I am using my blog to answer three frequently askedquestions in advance of this weekend’s FoodBlogSouth Conference in Birmingham. YesterdayI explained where people could buy our farm’s milk, and tomorrow I’ll touch onthe differences between “conventional” and “organic” milk. As for today, I hopeI can provide a good answer for all of you that have ever asked or wondered, “Arethere hormones in my milk?”

Cows, like all living creatures that I’m aware of, naturallyproduce hormones in their bodies. Some of these hormones are found at very low(and very safe) levels in cows’ milk. Therefore, any dairy product you buy… wholemilk, skim milk, “organic” milk, cheese, yogurt, etc…will contain traces ofthese naturally-occurring hormones. Perhaps where the issue has gottenconfusing is in the use of supplemental rBST and the labeling of rBST-freemilk.

Bovine Somatotropin is a protein hormone naturally producedin the pituitary gland of all dairy cattle. Supplemental levels of the hormone’srecombinant form (rBST) can be given to cows during certain times of theirlactation to increase milk production. Essentially, the supplement helps a cowconvert feed into milk more efficiently. The advantage to using rBST is that itcan help a dairy produce more milk without adding more cows to the herd or growing/buyingadditional feed. The level of success of the supplement often depends on otherfactors such as feed quality and environment. We used rBST for a short time inour milking herd but did not see enough of a milk increase to warrant itscontinued use. Due to that economicdecision, our herd has been “rBST-free” now for well over 10 years.

example of rBST-free labeling

Numerous scientific studies have concluded that there is nodifference in safety or nutrition between the milk and meat from cows thatreceive supplemental rBST and those that don’t. Despite this fact, manyconsumers have voiced their preference for milk from cows that have notreceived rBST supplements. As a result, several dairy processing companies haveworked with cooperatives and individual dairies to secure an “rBST-free” milksupply. Many of these companies then include information on their milkjug labels or dairy food packaging identifying the product as rBST-free or containing "no artificial growth hormones".

The next time you’re standing at the dairy case in yourlocal grocery store, please remember that ALL the milk you see before you issafe and nutritious. Ultimately, thebest dairy milk for you is whichever variety you enjoy the most, so make sure you’reincluding three servings of dairy products every day as part of your healthydiet!

FAQ: "Where can I buy your milk?"

2012-01-24T11:01:00.001-06:00

Our regional dairy check-off is one of the sponsors of this upcoming weekend's FoodBlogSouth Conference in Birmingham, and they've invited me to attend Saturday's morning session. I’ll be available to chat withattendees and answer questions they have about modern dairy farming and milkproduction. I thought it might bebeneficial ahead of the conference to blog about three of the most commonquestions I’m asked regarding milk production: 1) “Where can I buy your milk?”, 2) “Are there hormones in my milk?”,and 3) “What’s the difference between conventional and organic milk?”. I’lltackle that first question today and the other two in the coming days.

“Where can I buy your milk?” is a question I am askedfrequently. It’s a question I love getting, because it gives me the sense thatpeople really do trust my family’s farm to produce milk that is safe and nutritious. We do not process and market our ownmilk directly from our farm, though, so the answer is not as simple as tellingpeople to look for the Gilmer Dairy Farm label in their local grocery store.

We and several other Alabama dairy families are members of acooperative (Dairy Farmers of America) that markets our milk collectively todairy processors. Our milk is currently being bought by the Borden Dairy Companyof Alabama and processed/bottled in their Dothan facility (I think this is theonly in-state company currently processing “homegrown” Alabama milk). All jugsof milk that come through that processing plant will be stamped with the code “01-3801”and can be found in grocery stores listed on the Borden website.

So, there’s a good chance you are enjoying milk from Alabamacows (maybe even ours) when you purchase milk in jugs containing the abovecode. Regardless of the brand name or origin, though, you are helping dairyfarmers every single time you purchase dairy products. Make sure you and yourfamily members are each getting three servings of delicious, nutritious dairy every day, and thank you for giving family farms like mine the opportunity toserve you!

A beautiful and busy start to 2012

2012-01-03T13:56:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm sure you're probably happy indeed if you're getting the same kind of weather we're enjoying in Lamar County, Alabama. Yesterday was windy and today is cold, but it's clear and dry and the days are going to warm as the week progresses. It's the kind of weather well suited for getting things done around the farm.

Our field work this week includes a little planting and lots of fertilizing. We'll have about 60 cows and heifers pregnancy-checked on Thursday, and of course we'll be milking and feeding every day like always.

For a little more on this week's farm activities, check out my newest MooTube Minute video below.

My most popular blog posts of 2011

2011-12-27T08:06:00.004-06:00

We're just a few days from closing the book on 2011, and oh what a year it's been! Since I'm not expecting anything too exciting to happen on the farm over this next week (boy, that's a dangerous assumption!), I figured I would go ahead and take a look at my most popular blog posts from this past year.

Before I share the links, let me give credit to @farmnwife for the idea of an end-of-year round up. I'll also make the observation that most of my posts relate directly to what we're doing on the dairy farm, but my most popular posts of 2011 aren't about how many cows we milked or what crops we were harvesting. Might that be telling me something?

Without further ado, I give you The Dairyman's Blog's six most popular posts of 2011:

incident map from "Occupy Farm Lane"

Dairy cows stage brief "Occupy Farm Lane" protest (Oct.17)- What started as a silly Twitter spoof on the #Occupy movement turned into my most popular post of the year.

Looking back at 4/27/11 (May 3)- A few personal observations on the day Alabama will never forget, as well as several links to the tornadoes' effect on the state's agriculture industry.

The Dairyman versus the Family Vacation (June 21)- Spending time at the beach with my wife and kids was relaxing...until I started thinking about farm work.

My Dad: a farmer and a family man (June 19)- A short Fathers Day tribute to my dad.

How "young" should a young farmer be? (May 18)- 35? 40? Taking a look at question that pops up from time to time in agricultural organizations.

Big deer, big problems (Dec. 4)- Deer can cause plenty of problems for farmers, but sometimes the deer hunters are an even bigger issue.

Thank you all for your readership and support of The Dairyman's Blog, and have a "dairy" good new year!

Balancing Farm & Family during the Holidays

2011-12-23T08:07:00.000-06:00

I've often joked that one advantage to dairy farming is that I have a legitimate built-in excuse to avoid going to my in-laws' house over the Holidays. And while I say that lightheartedly, it really is very difficult to balance the demands of the dairy farm with all of the different family gatherings happening this time of year. Here's how my weekend schedule is shaping up:

Christmas Eve (Saturday, December 24)

3:00-7:00am: dairy chores

7:00-9:00am: breakfast, shower, spend too much time on the computer, maybe a nap

9:00-11:00am: travel to my inlaws' house (my wife & kids have been there since Thursday night)

11:00am-3:00pm: eat lots of food, exchange gifts, hope everything's running smoothly on the dairy

3:00-5:00pm: travel back to Lamar County

5:00-6:00pm: Christmas Eve Communion Service at church

6:00-9:00pm: Supper and gifts at home

9:00-who knows?pm: Ho, Ho, Ho.

Christmas Day (Sunday, December 25)

3:00-7:00am: dairy chores

7:00-10:30am: breakfast, shower, unsuccessfully try to nap while the kids play with toys

10:30-11:30am: Christmas Day Worship Service at church

11:30-1:00pm: skip my aunt's Christmas lunch so I can pass out from exhaustion

1:00-5:00pm: dairy chores

5:00-8:00pm: eat leftover dressing from Thanksgiving (ah, the miracle of deep freezers!) at my parents' house

The Day after Christmas (Monday, December 26)

5:00-6:30am: dairy chores (yes, I'm sleeping in)

6:30-8:00am: nap???

8:00am-1:00pm: family Christmas brunch and gift exchange at my parents' house

1:00-5:00pm: dairy chores, and everything's back to normal

Of course, my schedule is subject to change if we get a call that we have heifers out, a cow needs assistance delivering a calf, or some other unforeseen (but not surprising) farm issue should arise. But somehow, someway, I'm going to enjoy time with both sides of the family, eat too much, and still find time to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas without missing much time on the farm.

Please enjoy the following little bit of holiday cheer and, from my family to yours, have a "dairy" Merry Christmas!

***update, Fri., 12/23, 12:30pm:

Our two regularly scheduled weekend workers have expressed that they intend to work all four weekend shifts, so that will thankfully take a little bit of pressure off of me & Dad. Merry Christmas to us!

Rainy day dairy chores

2011-12-22T13:03:00.000-06:00

Without exception or excuse, every day is a work day on our dairy farm. We'll rack up between 7-8 hours of actual working time even on days when we cover only the basics (milking and feeding). On a cool, rainy day like today, it would be nice to get off so lightly...handle half the chores before breakfast and the other half after lunch. But when we have other things that need to be addressed, we address them regardless of the weather.

my dad inspects heifers for signs
of estrus on a rainy morning

This morning won't go down as one of our most productive, but we did get a few things taken care of. We sorted out and bred three heifers before retreating into the barn to repair a gate-opening pneumatic cylinder and two water trough floats. We also had to treat a cow for milk fever by giving her an IV of CMPK solution. We held off on making the feed rounds through the heifer pastures until the rain slowed to a drizzle, but as luck would have it the bottom fell about as soon as the guys pulled away with a truck full of feed. One they finished, we knocked off for lunch a little early so we could all have a little extra time to dry out our work clothes.

Lunchtime is over, so I guess I'd better slip back into my damp overalls and head over to the dairy barn for the afternoon milking. A dairyman's gotta do what a dairyman's gotta do!

Good clothes in the milking barn?

2011-12-20T18:12:00.000-06:00

staying clean = boring

My wife dropped my son off at the dairy after school dismissed this afternoon, but she didn't bring a change of clothes for him. So there he was, wearing good jeans, a white shirt (white!), and his tennis shoes. In an effort to keep him as clean as possible, I brought a short bucket into the parlor and told him to sit on it. We were going to be milking cows for another hour-and-a-half once he got there, and I knew there was no way he would stay on that bucket for that long. But, the longer he stayed seated the less chance he would have of returning home with a greenish-brown manure stain on his clothes.

Two mintues later he was up roaming all around the parlor. Predictably, he was sporting manure splatters on his clothes in no time. Did it bother him? Of course not...he's just a typical farm kid! He enjoyed "helping" us in the barn without a care about the foreign materials that occasionally landed on him.

Now that the day is over, one question remains: who gets to do the laundry?

This week's farm photos

2011-12-17T12:17:00.000-06:00

I'll never be mistaken for a photographer, but I enjoy snapping a few farm photos with my phone's camera every now and then. I've been playing around with the Instagram app on my phone lately and have posted some of those photos below. There's no rhyme or reason to why I used the filters I did, I just thought they looked good on my screen at the time. And since I'm a farmer and not a photographer, the accompanying descriptions are about the photo subjects instead of the photos themselves.

We bred (via artificial insemination) a group of 35 heifers over the course of the first two days of December. This was our first foray into the world of sexed semen, which we used on 80% of the group. The heifers that did not conceive after breeding should be coming back into estrus this coming week, so we'll have a second chance to AI them before pasturing them with a bull after the first of the year.

They, like all of our heifers, are getting a steady diet of bermudagrass hay and mineral blocks to supplement the pelleted feed we're giving them each day.

When I published this photo of two dry cows over my Twitter account, I captioned it "Hanging out in the maternity pasture". I got a couple of responses from people who told me they didn't realize there was such a thing. Many farmers have barns for their cows to calve in, but we have enough pasture space (and suitable weather) to allow our cows to comfortably and safely give birth outdoors.

We currently have seven dry cows and pregnant heifers in the maternity pasture and will be adding more from another pasture on Monday.

We had been enjoying a week of good weather, but that started to change on Thursday morning. Though it wasn't much, there was enough of a drizzle to derail our planned field work for the day. We found other chores to keep us busy though, and put in a fairly productive day.

By Friday morning, the light drizzle had been replaced by rain showers. We spent a half-hour after breakfast taking shelter in the tractor shed before finally deciding to knock-off until after lunch. The rain had stopped by milking time, and today is turning into a real beauty.

Big deer, big problems

2011-12-04T19:13:00.001-06:00

Our farm is situated along a two-mile stretch of the main road running from AL-Hwy 17 to Winfield. People can oftentimes see our cows as they drive by because several of our fields and pastures are visible from the road. This also means they see lots of deer on our property this time of year. Occasionally a big buck is spotted, and word spreads like wildfire.

A few family members and family friends hunt on our farm, but for the safety of ourselves and our cattle we don't want just anybody running around our farm with a high-powered rifle. "Just anybody" includes hunters whose lust for a "trophy" trumps their ethics and/or respect of others' property. These folks probably know who they are, so they never ask permission to hunt. The reward of a big set of antlers outweighs the risk of getting caught, so they hunt wherever they think they can kill a big buck. Deer season has only been in a couple of weeks and I've already had two problems with these types of outlaw deer hunters.

I was planting a seven acre field the week of Thanksgiving and noticed two tree stands along its back edge. One belonged to a friend of mine who comes to hunt 2-3 times a year. He set it up last season with the expectation of hunting out of it again this year. I'm not sure where the second stand came from, but I could see a deer feeder hanging in the woods not very far behind it. I also discovered a very big corn pile in the corner of the field not thirty feet in front of that stand. It's not illegal to feed deer in Alabama, but it is illegal to hunt where deer are actively being fed. Someone's decision to bait deer on my farm's property is costing me and my friend an opportunity to hunt there.

The other problem happened this afternoon. My last farm chore of the day is to feed the calves in the pasture behind my house. After doing so, I pulled out my binoculars and looked across into the field I usually hunt in. I didn't have any intention of going out there today, but was interested in whether or not any deer were out and about. While scanning across the landscape, I saw something moving about 600 yards away. That something was a someone who didn't have permission to be there. Instead of calling Gamewatch to report someone hunting our land without permission, I decided I would just drive over there and ask him to leave. He apparently weren't interested in a conversation and ran off through the woods, leaving behind a nice camo jacket, a deer call, a flashlight, and a bottle of "doe pee".

Deer season runs through January, so I'll probably encounter more problems between now and then. I just hope I can make it through the next two months without getting shot at by one of these idiots.

Thanksgiving Day Thankfulness

2011-11-24T06:27:00.001-06:00

I have many, many things to be thankful for and know I have been blessed beyond measure. I have a great family, make a comfortable living doing what I love, and have a strong faith in God. I don't know if there are enough hours in the day for me to fully count my blessings and name them one by one as the old hymn instructs.

Other than trying to list all the things I'm thankful for on this blog post, I'll simply give you one that's proved to be very important today. I am thankful that our farmhands (and my brother-in-law) wanted to come work on the farm this morning. Otherwise, my dad and I would still be trying to dismantle and remove this old, collapsed roof off of the cows' feed trough.

uh-oh!

We spent several hours on Wednesday tearing out the old wooden trough underneath this roof and replacing it with the concrete bunks you see in the photo. The roof's bracing was weakened in the process, but we thought it would stay in place until we could tear it down next week. We were wrong, as the photo clearly shows. Luckily (or "thankfully") none of our cows were injured when it fell last night.

It took the five of us about two hours (and two tractors, three chains, a sledgehammer, crowbars, and a chainsaw) to break the roof into pieces and clear it out of the way. I hope by this time tomorrow I can be thankful for no flat tractor or feed wagon tires due to old nails that we might not have gotten up.

Before I sign off, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one more thing I'm thankful for, and that's all of you. Thank you for being interested enough to read about what happens on my family's farm, and more importantly thank you for your overall support of American farmers.

May God bestow his richest blessings upon you and your family, today and always. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dedicated to Dairy

2011-11-23T07:07:00.001-06:00

If you follow this blog, my twitter account, or our farm's facebook page, you probably understand that it takes a lot of dedication to be a successful dairy farmer. That dedication is not just about the amount of hours spent working as it extends to how carefully we care for and manage everything about our farm. Our dedication to our cows, our milk, and our land has enabled our farm to operate for nearly sixty years, and that same dedication will allow us to continue dairying for as long as there are Gilmers who want to make their living on the farm.

All dairy farmers share the values of responsibility and good stewardship, and we all work hard to do the best we can with what we have been entrusted with. And though our dedication and values are the same, we each have our own stories to tell.

Enter "Dedicated to Dairy".

Our regional dairy check-off program recently launched the "Dedicated to Dairy" campaign to help Southeastern dairy farmers give consumers a closer look at how and why we do what we do. The D2D website has lots of good information ranging from cow nutrition to milk quality to conservation. My favorite part of the website is the "Videos" section, where you can actually see and hear dairy families from around the Southeast talking about their farms and their dedication. I highly recommend you check out the video of me and my father, as it is of much higher quality than what you're used to seeing on our YouTube channel!

I hope you'll spend some time perusing the Dedicated to Dairy website, and follow along on Facebook/Twitter so you'll know when new content is being added. And, of course, don't forget to check out our own social media accounts or GilmerDairyFarm.com to learn how my family is dedicated to dairy: our cows, our milk, and our land.

Emergency Surgery in the Cow Pasture

2011-11-22T12:34:00.001-06:00

This morning's after-breakfast "to do" list included feeding the heifers and dry cows, moving seven cows from the milking herd to the dry pasture, and replacing a small but crucial piece of equipment (a pulsator) in the milking barn.

Performing an emergency c-section wasn't on the list.

One of our dry cows didn't show up at the feed trough this morning. After searching for her for nearly an hour, we found her on the ground with rear leg paralysis. We helped her up with a front-end loader, but she could not stand under her own power. After working with her for a while, we all agreed that she had very little chance of recovery. She was in obvious distress and pain, and we decided the most humane course of action was to euthanize her.

our newly delivered calf enjoying its hay bed

The cow had been only three weeks away from her due date, so we quickly attempted a c-section. We didn't have any equipment except for a utility knife, but that would prove to be good enough. My dad made the incisions, our two farmhands and I pulled, and in a matter of minutes we were loading a living, breathing calf into the back of the pickup truck. We got it back to the dairy, cleaned it up, laid it in a bed of hay, and fed it a half-gallon of colostrum milk. By the time we finished working today, it was doing as well as we would expect any newborn calf to be doing.

There are times you have to make decisions you would rather not have to make, and this morning was a prime example of that. But this time, at least, there was a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud.

my dad looks down at the calf he delivered via c-section

A long overdue farm update

2011-11-15T21:05:00.000-06:00

A person might interpret my month-long hiatus from blogging as evidence that we've run out of things to do on the dairy farm. Well, I can assure you that is not the case. The days may be getting shorter, but we're cramming as much work into the daylight (and pre-dawn) hours as we possibly can. I'll try to catch you up on a few of the things that have been happening over the last couple of weeks.

heifers standing at their hayring

With summer pasture grasses now dormant and unavailable for grazing, our heifers and dry cows are receiving hay bales and mineral blocks in their pastures to supplement their pelleted feed. Competition for forage is much higher around a hay ring than it is in an open pasture, so we've made sure all our heifers are grouped with others their own size. This will help prevent bigger heifers from "hogging" all the hay at the smaller heifers' expense.

Our milking herd climbed as high as 194 cows last week, but we've since dried off ten pregnant milkers and sent four low producing cows to the cattle sale. We still have several cows to dry off before the end of the month, and we won't be calving in more than we're drying off until mid-December. As it stands, I expect we'll climb to and surpass 200 cows in milk by the second week of January.

In addition to milking and herd management chores, we've had plenty to keep us busy out in the fields. I spent several days the week before last applying both slurry and N-sol fertilizer to fescue pastures. I've recently planted 50 ares of oats and ryegrass into the milking herd's spring grazing paddocks, and I hope to have an additional 90 acres of cropland planted in ryegrass by the end of next week.

I'll try to do a better job of keeping this blog updated through the winter, but remember to follow my Twitter account (@gilmerdairy) or "like" our farm's facebook page to keep up with the daily happenings on our family farm. As always, thanks for your time and have a "dairy" good day!

Dairy cows stage brief "Occupy Farm Lane" protest

2011-10-17T20:20:00.000-05:00

"Heck no! We won't go!"

We moved our milking herd across the road from their normal pasture this morning so they could graze in another pasture for a few hours. After lunch we begin to bring them back across the road, and at first everything seemed normal. One of our farm hands was in the pasture herding them my way, and I was standing in the road to divert them into the lane leading to the milking barn. After about half of the 187 cows had passed, I noticed that they weren't walking into the lot and were filling up the lane. By the time the last cow had crossed the road, the lane was packed full and the herd was at a complete standstill. They finally started cooperating with a little verbal encouragement and the help of a border collie, but not until I had snapped a photo (right) of what's now known as the "Occupy Farm Lane" protest.

After studying over the chain of events, I think I have discovered the truth behind today's incident. I will list my conclusion below, but first allow me to share my tweets (tagged as #OccupyFarmLane) from the afternoon as things progressed.

(1:51pm) BREAKING: All 187 #OccupyFarmLane dairy cows have been temporarily detained in the milking barn. Officials currently processing herd.

(2:20pm) BREAKING: #OccupyFarmLane cow slaps farmer in face with tail while being milked; claims she was aiming for a fly. No reprisal from farmer.

(2:30pm) Officials confirm that milk from #OccupyFarmLane cows is being stored in this refrigerated bulk tank. twitpic.com/71ux7n

(2:34pm) Says farmer Will Gilmer of #OccupyFarmLane cows' milk, "It will leave the dairy farm on Wednesday morning for pasteurization and bottling."

(2:38pm) Gilmer adds that #milk from #OccupyFarmLane cows will prove to be "yummy and nutritious", posing nothing but health benefits to the public.

(2:45pm) Following their milking and release, these #OccupyFarmLane cows stop for water before returning to pasture. twitpic.com/71v2vm

(2:54pm) #OccupyFarmLane cow 351 stands in the milking line as 426 stages a one-cow #OccupyExitAlley protest. twitpic.com/71v631

(3:10pm) In a move being described as "typical", several #OccupyFarmLanecows have defacated, urinated in holding pen. twitpic.com/71vdad

(3:20pm) When asked to comment on #OccupyFarmLane, cow 532 offered only a single "moo" while others continued cud-chewing twitpic.com/71vgrj

(3:44pm) BREAKING: #OccupyFarmLane has ended. All involved dairy cows have voluntarily dispersed back to their pasture after being milked.

(3:57pm) Scene from behind the loafing barn as cows return to pasture following #OccupyFarmLane incident. twitpic.com/71vukb

Once we finished our normal afternoon farm duties, I launched my investigation. My first inclination was to check the maternity pasture and inquire if any dry cows' had gotten wind of the milking herd's plot. They were all eating hay and too busy to talk to me, though in all likelihood I doubt the dry cows would have said anything even if they weren't eating.

I began to wonder if my cows had been infiltrated by an outside influence. I regularly read about the hijinks of Tennessee dairy farmer Ryan Bright's secret agent cows on The Udder Side, and I thought perhaps one of them had come to stir up trouble ahead of the Tennessee/Alabama football game this weekend (I like neither team, btw. Hail State!). Maybe, just maybe, it could have been a California cow trying to make sure people won't believe happy cows also live in Alabama. Since we didn't milk any extra cows over the course of the afternoon, though, I decided it must have been an inside-job.

undated file photo of
GDF #0007, aka "Donkey"

The cloud of suspicion quickly settled on our oldest, most stubborn cow, GDF#0007. This is the same cow that can send the border collies running in the other direction with nothing more than a look, and she has a long history of trying to do whatever pleases her at the time. It would be just like her to take a whim that she didn't want to be milked and lead the rest of the herd in a protest. Just as I was ready to pin all the blame on her, however, I remembered she was one of the last cows to leave the pasture this afternoon. With her now in the clear, I was left without any other viable suspects.

And then it hit me.

Today was very sunny and a little bit warmer than the weather we've had recently. Before we started moving the cows across the road, I had stood underneath the big pecan tree next to the gate at the end of the lane along with my father and our farm hand. We all remarked at how easy it would be to take a nap in the shade the tree was providing. In addition to this inviting spot for man and cow alike, a water trough sits just a few feet inside the gate. This particular water trough is often the first stop for many cows on their way into the milk barn.

After taking everything into consideration, I think I have finally come to an accurate conclusion as to the cause of today's "Occupy Farm Lane" incident. The first 20-30 cows who came through the lane stopped to enjoy the shade and water, and did not allow the following cows to walk around them. This caused the herd to fill up the entire lane from gate to road. It wasn't a protest, it was a bovine traffic jam. There was no intention to avoiding being milked, and the integrity of the milk supply was never in danger.

In other words, it was just cows being cows.

Make a difference on World Food Day

2011-10-16T08:18:00.000-05:00

Cows have been milked on my family's dairy farm every day for over 55 years. That's over 20,000 consecutive days. We've been milking cows not just every day of my life, but of my father's as well. Over half a century worth of Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters, Independence Days...we've milked cows. And thanks to a generator, we've milked through power outages caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, and ice storms. In other words, we've been a reliable food provider for a long, long time. What my grandfather started with just a few cows has grown into what Gilmer Dairy Farm is today: a modern, family owned and operated food production company. Our seven day a week mission isn't as simple as "making milk", though. We strive to produce a high-quality, nutrient rich food products (milk and beef) that our friends and neighbors will want to include as part of their healthy diets.

There used to be dozens of small dairy farms dotted across Lamar County, but we're the only one still in operation. Our cows currently produce enough for all of our county's 14,000+ residents to enjoy a daily glass of milk, or enough to meet the "3-Every-Day" recommended servings for just over one-third of our local population. There is more than enough milk produced on other farms throughout our state and nation to serve the other 2/3s of Lamar Countians. In fact, our nation's farmers produce enough nutritious food to feed all Americans, and modern transportation and distribution systems "fill in the gaps" where the local demand exceeds the local supply.

We have an abundant, affordable food supply, yet hunger is a persistent problem. And it's a problem here in Lamar County. With unemployment over 10% and 18% of our residents living below the poverty level, many of our local families are forced to decide between paying rent or putting nutritionally balanced meals on their table. While the situation is bleak, it is far from hopeless. Why? Because we can help.

Today is World Food Day, and I want to challenge all Lamar Countians to do something to help combat our local hunger problem. Designate a few extra dollars in the offering plate this morning for your church's alter fund or food pantry. Donate canned goods to a church or other local food pantry, or volunteer your time to help distribute food to the needy. The West Alabama Food Bank's website lists a few other ways you can help, so I encourage you to check it out.

Together, we CAN make a difference in the lives of our hungry neighbors!

Harvest is finished, but there ain't no slowing down!

2011-10-08T10:43:00.000-05:00

We can finally close the book on this year's silage harvest! What started six and a half weeks ago ended Thursday with 165 acres of corn, forage sorghum, and sudex chopped, packed, and sealed into our three silage pits. I'm estimating that we harvested roughly 1400 tons of silage (it's hard to be sure w/o truck scales), which should be enough to feed our milking herd through mid-to-late spring.

dumping a load of chopped sudex

The corn in our first pit has now been sealed long enough to fully ensile, and I expect we'll begin feeding it late next week. We'll be getting a new grain mix formula from the feed mill based on the silage's forage analysis, and will add other home-grown forage in with it to make a total-mixed ration (TMR). We have about two weeks worth of spring oat baleage we'll use up first before switching to sudex baleage we harvested a few weeks ago. We're also going to look into using cotton hulls as a fiber source in the ration so as to preserve our bermudagrass hay for heifers and dry cows.

As the feed quality improves over the next few weeks, so to should our milk production. The cooler evenings and opportunities for supplemental morning grazing will also help in that regard. We are currently up to 182 cows in milk and are on pace to climb back over the 200 mark sometime before the end of the year. In other news, we AI'ed (artificially inseminated) 9 cows this week, the first we had bred since early summer.

This coming week is going to be crazy busy. In addition to the everyday dairy chores, we're going to be cleaning and putting away our harvesting equipment, applying slurry with our honeywagon, and possibly harvesting some rank pasture grass as "get-by-in-case-of-a-long-winter" hay. On top of that, some folks from our dairy checkoff will be on the farm Tuesday morning to get video footage for part of the "Dedicated to Dairy" campaign, I have a meeting at the Alabama Farmers Federation's Montgomery office on Wednesday, and then I'll be on Mississippi State's campus on Maroon Friday to give a presentation to the Ag Econ's faculty and grad students (Hail State!).

I hope y'all have a "dairy" good week!

Silage Harvest: the end is near

2011-09-23T07:49:00.000-05:00

Silage chopping has run pretty smoothly this week, and I'm happy to report that we now have one silage pit full of sorghum. We'll take some time this morning to cover and seal the pit with plastic so the chopped sorghum will ferment properly. It will be several months before our cows eat any of this feed (we'll use up the corn silage first), but we expect it will preserve nicely.

We still have approximately 20 acres of sorghum remaining, which we'll chop next week and pack into our smallest silage pit. Once we're finished, harvesting 25 acres of sudex (sorghum-sudangrass) will be next on the to-do list. We might chop it and pack it into the pit as well, but we'll most likely make baleage out of it by cutting, baling, and wrapping.

For your viewing pleasure, I've included our latest MooTube Minute which focuses on our silage harvest. I hope you enjoy and, as always, have a "dairy" good day!

Caught up, milk's up, and back to harvesting

2011-09-13T07:45:00.000-05:00

We took a break from harvesting silage last week to catch up on some other jobs around the dairy farm. Although Monday was pretty much a washout thanks to Tropical Storm Lee and its nearly 7" of rain (much needed, by the way), we did fit in a lot of work Tuesday through Friday. We spent some time moving several animals around into other pastures, fertilized a couple of fields with slurry, and performed maintenance on our harvesting equipment.

GDF #636 "Adele" shades on a sunny September day

The best thing about the past week is the upswing in our cows' milk production. On average, the cows are producing five pound of milk more than they were at the beginning of last week. Cooler nights, not-quite-as-hot days, and a change in their feed formulation are the primary reasons the cows are doing better. We are also benefiting from having more "fresh" cows in the milking herd. A fresh cow is one that has recently calved and is increasing its milk production.

We resumed our harvest yesterday with 90 acres of forage sorghum ready to be chopped. If all goes well (and it rarely does with our chopper), I would hope we could harvest 10 acres per day. I managed 5 acres Monday afternoon, so we shall see. Unlike our corn which was planted mostly in straight rows on flat land, all of our sorghum was planted in contoured, terraced fields. This means that we'll have to run a little slower and will have more in-field turning. These fields are closer to our silage pits, though, so there should be minimal downtime waiting on the dump truck to travel back and forth.

Remember, you can keep up to date with what's happening by "liking" our Facebook page or by following me on Twitter!

Smack-dab in the middle of harvest

2011-08-31T07:39:00.000-05:00

Life hasn't slowed down on the farm since our hectic "hay day" a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it's done just the opposite. We've come to the point in the year when our nerves, our patience, and our equipment is pushed to the limit. That's right...we're smack-dab in the middle of harvest.

the silage chopper in action

We started chopping corn Monday afternoon of last week on a little 2.5 acre patch near the dairy. The "warm-up" allowed us to see what equipment adjustments were needed before we moved into the creek bottom and started chopping the rest of the corn on Tuesday. We didn't get much of a run on moving day thanks to a slow start and a braking issue with our dump truck, but we successfully chopped roughly 250 tons of silage over the next two days. We should have filled our first silage bunker up on Friday, but several mechanical issues derailed us before lunchtime. We resumed harvesting this Monday, and by late afternoon we had finally chopped enough silage to fill our first bunker.

a full silage bunker or "pit"

Though there is still 9 acres of corn left to harvest, we are taking a few days off from chopping. We covered and sealed the full silage pit yesterday and cut 15 acres of sudex with the hay conditioner. We'll make baleage out of the sudex this afternoon (that is, we'll bale it at 50-60% moisture and seal each bale with plastic stretch wrap). Lessening the field work for a couple of days is also allowing us to move a few heifers and dry cows to different pastures. I expect we'll be back in the creek bottom tomorrow and should have the corn all chopped by midday on Friday.

"And he takes the tractor
another round..."

Moving forward, our tentative plan is to spend next week harvesting an additional 25 acres of sudex and applying slurry to several different hay fields. The week after that, we'll begin chopping our 90+ acres of forage sorghum. Where as the corn was planted in straight rows on flat ground, all of our sorghum fields are curvy and terraced. In other words, the sorghum harvest won't move along quite as quickly as the corn has.

With feed costs seemingly rising by the day, we're fortunate that we've harvested lots of quality forage for our cows thus far. If we can avoid any adverse weather over the next few weeks, we could be looking at one of the best harvest seasons we've had in quite some time.

Hay Day

2011-08-18T07:43:00.006-05:00

What happens when you mow down all of your hay with the hopes of baling it over two days? It either rains or you have equipment problems. Or both.

hay tedder

When we ended the day on Tuesday, we expected to start baling as soon as the dew was off mid-morning on Wednesday. By the time mid-morning rolled around, two light sprinkles had already fallen on our 65 acres of mowed hay and the clouds that remained weren't letting the sun shine through. As a result, I spent two hours using the tedder to "fluff" the hay so it would dry off more quickly. The sun finally broke through around 11am and the hay was ready to rake at 1:30pm.

After two hours, I had 14 acres of hay raked into windrows. I was only a few minutes shy of moving to another field when I was flagged down by our guy running the baler.

"A belt broke on the baler and another one is just about to."

Thus ended our plans of baling half our acreage Wednesday and half on Thursday.

windrowed hay ready to be baled

Wednesday's late start meant that we would not be able to get to the tractor place in time to get replacement belts before they closed for the day. Instead, my dad hit the road after milking this morning so he could be there when they opened. We expect to have the new belts on the baler by the time the dew dries off this morning, so hopefully we'll be baling by 10am.

When everything is working right, we can average about 20 round bales per hour. With 60 acres left to bale, we're looking at 8-12 hours in the field today depending on the yield, weather, and equipment. If we're REALLY lucky, the baler won't break down, the heat and humidity won't spawn a thunderstorm, and the evening dew won't fall until we have 200-250 bales of hay rolled up nice and tight. Whatever happens for good or for bad, this hay day is sure to be a long one!

UPDATE (12pm):
Dad returned with the belts at 9am, and I started raking an hour later. Since we had a heavy dew, we decided to let the hay sit in windrows for about two hours before we put the baler in the field. I pulled up a RADAR image on my phone around 11, and promptly called my dad to say we needed to start baling immediately. As you can tell by the picture, there is a very good chance that we will be rained out this afternoon.

UPDATE (6:30pm):

The rain system started to fizzle out and went south of the farm, missing us completely. I don't know if it was due to meteorology or miracle, but either way I owe a moment of prayerful gratitude.

By 2:30pm the baler rolled up all the hay I had raked yesterday afternoon and this morning. We both moved over to our "big" field (26ac) near Mt. Pisgah Church and went to work. We've just finished with that field and are taking a short supper break before knocking out the remaining 15 acres about a quarter mile from the dairy. Barring any equipment issues, we should be finished between sundown and dew fall.

UPDATE (10:00pm):
I finished raking at 8:30, and just got word from my dad that he had finished baling. For the day, we rolled up 200 bales of bermudagrass hay (75 tons) off of 60 acres. We've yielded more tons/acre before, but the sacrifice in quantity should be made up for in quality.

Late this morning it sure looked as if we were going to be rained out, but the weather really worked out in our favor. Time will tell if we can keep that luck on our side next week when we (hopefully) begin chopping our corn for silage.

Crops are growing and cows are calving

2011-08-11T07:31:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy past couple of weeks on the farm, both in the fields and in the maternity pasture.

rain falling on a field of forage sorghum

Plentiful rainfall has all the crops colored a nice, healthy shade of green. Our silage corn is right on track to begin harvesting in about 10 days, the forage sorghum is getting thicker by the day, our bermudagrass is ready to cut for hay, and the late-planted sudex crop is off to an impressive start. That's not to say there haven't been a few tense moments, though. Last week we spotted fall army worms in all of our hay fields, but fortunately we were able to spray and kill them before they could do any significant damage. We've also been fortunate to escape any damage from a couple of "high winds" thunderstorms that have passed through (knock on wood...another is on its way).

Ideally, we would be harvesting half of our hay this week, the remainder next week, and begin silage harvest the following week. The rain has forced us to abandon any plans for harvesting this week, so we'll attempt to do all of our haying next week so as not to delay silage chopping. We're expecting good quality and quantity from both crops, but we can't count tonnage before it's harvested.

As I mentioned, there has been lots of activity in the maternity pasture lately. We have had quite a few cows freshen 7-10 days earlier than their due dates (not uncommon in summertime), and our active milking herd size is now back up to 167 cows. More importantly, milk production is climbing as we're drying off the stale cows and replacing them with the fresh one. Heat stress will continue to be an issue for several more weeks, but at least the evenings should be a little cooler by the time we start calving our heifers in mid-to-late September.

Low on milk, but hopefully high on forage

2011-07-28T07:52:00.000-05:00

As summer creeps along and we try to prepare ourselves for the impending "dog days" of August, we're still drying off more cows than we're freshening. For those of you unfamiliar with dairy lingo, that means more cows are leaving the milking herd for "pre-calving maternity leave" than are calving and re-joining the milking herd. We did have one calf born yesterday (a heifer!), but no more cows are due until August 9. Between now and then, we have five cows to dry off this afternoon and six more next week. We're looking at the very real possibility of dropping under 150 cows in milk for the first time in several years if a few of our current dry cows don't calve a few days early. We were milking a higher-than-normal 190 cows this time last year, so I guess it goes to show that things have a way of balancing out over time.

silage corn crop

What we're currently lacking in milk production, we seem to be making up for in forage production. I know it's dangerous to count your chickens before they hatch (or your tonnage before you harvest), but right now it looks like we should have a good yield. We have a good stand of silage corn which looks to be right on schedule for a late-August/early-September harvest, and our forage sorghum has really jumped over the past week thanks to some good rains. After a slow start, our bermudagrass hay fields should provide a full three cuttings (and enough hay for winter) if we continue to get "normal" rainfall over the next two months.

Well, my breakfast break is over and it's time for me to head back over to the dairy. We'll be moving a group of heifers to a new pasture first thing this morning, and then I'll spend much of the rest of the day planting a few acres of sudex. Be sure to check out Mississippi Farmweek's July 22 feature story our farm, and y'all have a "dairy" good day!

Heat rises (and milk production drops)

2011-07-20T21:26:00.002-05:00

A reporter from WCBI-TV came to our farm this afternoon to interview my father and I about the effect of summer heat on milk production. You can read his article or watch the video (story begins at the 8:18 mark) from the station's website.

David Gilmer is interviewed by WCBI

Most of what he included from the interview served to support the story he was shooting for: summertime milk production and its impact on retail dairy prices. In reality there is much more to that relationship than simple supply and demand, but to even begin to explain the complexities of milk marketing would require more time than a reporter is going to be allotted during a half-hour local newscast.

A few more notes about the story and summertime production:

Summer is our toughest time of the year financially with less income from milk sales and higher expenses due to growing feed. It's like this every year though, so we manage our business throughout the year with that reality in mind.

We "dry off" pregnant cows nearly every week
during the summer. These will calve in mid-September .

Since production does decrease in the summer, we manage our herd to have the fewest number of cows milking in July and August. Doing so allows us to have the most cows milking when the weather is more favorable for production.
My answer about dairies facing credit availability problems dates back to the milk price crash in 2009, though I'm not sure if the situation is still as dire today as it was two years ago. Fortunately, we've always maintained a good relationship with our local bank and credit has always been available when needed.
I really do believe the long-term outlook for dairies is positive. It may take us a few more years to fully adjust our business model to the new reality of feed, fuel, and fertilizer costs being much higher than ten years ago, but we'll get there. As long as we can continue to grow demand for dairy products both domestically and worldwide, there will always be a need for dairy farmers.

If you watch the story, please leave a comment and let me know your impressions. I watch stories about my industry as a dairy farmer, so I always need to get the thoughts of consumers to help me expand my own perspective. So, what did you think?

Heat, Humidity, and Hay

2011-07-11T20:48:00.000-05:00

The past few days have left no doubt that it is indeed summertime in the Deep South. The highs have been in the upper 90's with heat indexes touching 110, and evening/early morning "lows" have been in the mid-70's with air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Our milking cows are spending most of the daylight hours trying to escape the misery by taking refuge in our barns, but even the fans and sprinklers can't keep their appetite and milk production from slipping in this kind of weather. This is not a new problem though...summertime is always tough on the cows and some weeks (like this one) are a little worse than others.

raking bermudagrass hay

The hot weather hasn't been too bad for our crops, though. Our corn, sorghum, and bermudagrass all grow well in the heat as long as we have adequate rainfall. After a dry May and first half of June, we've been getting a little rain each week so our crops are looking pretty good. In fact, our rain chances lately have been high enough to keep us out of the hayfield until this weekend. After cutting half of our hay acreage this weekend, we baled 23 acres today and will do another 10 tomorrow. The current rain forecast looks like we won't cut the rest until first of next week, and we'd be happy to wait until then if we knew we could get an inch or two of rainfall between now and then.

An update on our cows & crops

2011-07-02T18:33:00.002-05:00

Here's a quick farm update for you to enjoy on this 4th of July Weekend.

Cows: A few dry cows are finally starting to calve, but we have still been drying off milking cows at a faster rate. We currently have 163 cows in the milking herd, the lowest number we've had in quite a while. The dry-off to freshen ratio should be nearly dead even for the next six weeks, so where we are is probably where we'll be for a while.

Corn: I made the last sprayer pass through the cornfield a week ago, so we shouldn't need a tractor back in the creek bottom until it's time to harvest. I checked it yesterday and it's looking really good. The corn itself looks healthy (and is growing fast), and their doesn't appear to be much weed pressure. A few more good rains over the next couple of months will go a long way in making it a great silage crop this year.

Sorghum: I've spent most of this week spraying and planting sorghum fields, and I've only got 24 acres left to plant. Even though this crop is being planted a couple of weeks later than what I had hoped for, it's still a week earlier than our last sorghum crop in 2009. We had a good yield that year, but lots of September rain made it very difficult to get equipment in the field when it was time to harvest.

Hay: After we fertilized our bermudagrass in early May, it stopped raining. No rain = no growth. We have received a fair amount of rain over the last two weeks, though, and the bermudagrass has finally responded. If the weather forecast allows for it, we'll probably try to harvest 35 acres next week. We'll need really good growing conditions over the next couple of months to be able to make up for our slow start, but thankfully we'll go into the winter with some hay carried over from last year.

For your viewing pleasure, there's a new GDF MooTube Minute below that talks about some of what I've blogged about above. God Bless America and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend!

The Dairyman versus the Family Vacation

2011-06-21T16:33:00.001-05:00

I've gotten accustomed to spending time away from the farm over the past few years. A hectic travel schedule is part of the deal when you've had the opportunity to be involved in agricultural leadership as I have recently. I'm away from the farm this week, but it's not for a meeting or conference. Nope, I'm "relaxing" down at the beach with my family.

Now don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my family. Time away with my wife and kids is a really good thing, and they deserve my undivided attention from time to time. So here I am, sitting on a sandy beach doing nothing but sipping a cold adult beverage, listening to classic country music on Pandora, watching the kids play in the sand, and typing out this blog post (while my wife rightfully accuses me of ignoring her). Is it relaxing? Yes, but with relaxation comes a little guilt. Why? Because I know my dad and our employees are having to pick up the slack while I'm down at the beach doing nothing that improves our dairy. At least I feel like I'm indirectly helping our family business when I'm at a meeting/conference.

I was fine for the first 45 hours I was away from the farm, but I couldn't resist calling Dad at 8:00 this morning for an update. And I couldn't resist calling again after looking at a rain-filled RADAR image after lunch. Much of my thoughts from this point on until we get home will center around spraying Round-Up and planting forage sorghum.

We have one more full day down here before heading home Thursday morning, and I expect I'll fully enjoy myself and my time with my family between now and then. But I can guarantee you that we won't be back on the farm one moment too soon!

Thinking back on some of the family vacations we took when I was a kid, I guess I'm becoming more and more like my old man.

My dad: a farmer & a family man

2011-06-19T13:42:00.003-05:00

My sister and I were blessed as kids to have a father who always seemed willing and able to spend time with us. Even after a long day of farm work, he would find the energy to throw a baseball with me in the back yard or roughhouse on the den floor after supper. And there's no telling how many workdays he had to cut short to coach my ball team or attend some other activity we were involved in. Even today he takes on more than his fair share of the farming chores so I can be involved in different agricultural organizations.

Dad taught me to honor God and my family by giving my best effort in everything, fulfilling my responsibilities, and making sacrifices when necessary.

Now that I have two kids of my own, I realize how difficult it is to balance the needs of the family with the demands of the family farm. Thankfully, I have a great example in my father of how to be both a farmer and a family man.

And since we Gilmer men aren't very vocal with our emotions, I'll sum up my feelings like this: "I live across the road from the man, I've worked with him for 10 years, and I ain't got no complaints."

As the old saying goes, "anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad." Happy Fathers Day, Dad, and the same to all you other folks who have earned that noble title.

Weed Zappin'

2011-06-08T18:34:00.001-05:00

If this hot, dry weather has been good for anything, it's at least given me an opportunity to kill some weeds this week. This sounds easy enough, but it's not as simple as dumping some chemicals into a tank and taking off across a field. Each herbicide has detailed "do's and don'ts" that we must adhere to. Different rates/concentrations will have different effects in different conditions. Protective clothing must be worn when handling these herbicides, and they often have to be mixed in a certain order when used with liquid fertilizer, adjuvants, or other herbicides in the same tank mix. We use GPS assistance to minimize application skips and overlaps in the field, and keep records that include the time, temperature, and wind speed/direction while making applications.

My first herbicide applications this week were in a large 60+ acre heifer pasture. I used a selective herbicide, primarily targeting pigweed, ragweed, and dog fennel. The weeds showed signs of stress within an hour of being sprayed, and 24 hours later it was obvious they were wilting. Using a selective herbicide to kill weeds removes the competition for soil nutrients, thereby improving the quantity and nutritional quality of the pasture grass (bermuda in this case). Once I finished applying this particular herbicide, I thoroughly cleaned the tanks and sprayer lines as per the instructions on the the herbicide's label.

Today I applied a different selective herbicide on our silage corn crop down in the bottomland. This time it was in an effort to kill and control broadleaf signalgrass, cocklebur, and morning glory. Though it's hard to tell from the photo, quite a few broadleaf weeds have already popped up between the rows. The herbicide I applied should kill them and have enough residual effect to prevent more from sprouting. There are pockets of johnsongrass here and there that this herbicide won't effect, but I can control that with glyphosate in a couple of weeks since the corn is a Roundup-Ready variety.

Speaking of glyphosate, that's likely the next herbicide application on the agenda. We'll either use a minimal- or no-tilling planting technique for our sorghum crop, but first we need to kill all the grasses and weeds that have grown up in the fields. We can't begin the planting sorghum, though, until we get some rain to improve the soil moisture. With that in mind, I probably won't be in any big hurry to get the sprayer back into the field until a couple of days prior to a favorable rain forecast.

Friday farm tidbits

2011-06-03T07:42:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday and happy June Dairy Month everyone! Here are a few tidbits about what's been happening on and around Gilmer Dairy Farm:

It's HOT, Man! - The weather around here has been brutal this week as we've seen record-breaking temperatures push into the upper 90s with afternoon heat indexes well over 100. We're running 8-10 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year, and trust me when I say you can definitely feel the difference. The cows are feeling it too, despite our best efforts to keep them as cool as possible with fans & sprinklers. More on this in a moment.

the official drought is still to our south

It's DRY, too! - We aren't officially under drought conditions according to the latest US Drought Monitor, but we are eight days past our last rain and have only received a total of 0.4" over the past three weeks. The soil moisture in our bottom land is still good enough to get our corn growing thanks to a wet winter and spring, but our fertilized hayfields and pastures are basically doing nothing. We also can't begin planting our forage sorghum crop until we get enough rain to soften the soil. If there is a bright spot in the dry weather, it is that it's better for the cows. Why? Throw in lots of moisture with this kind of heat, and cows will wallow-out mud holes in the pasture and run a higher risk of mammary infections.

the milk decline is udderly depressing

Milk production is FALLING! - The cows seem to be producing less and less milk every day. The heat is a major factor, but there are a couple of other factors as well. We're entering the summer with the youngest herd (based on avg. lactation number) we've had in 5 years, so our overall potential production isn't quite as high as it would be with older cows. Also, we have the highest average days-in-milk and days-pregnant we've had in 60 months. This means that an average cow in our herd has been milking for over seven months, is 5 months pregnant, and her milk production would naturally be in decline. The heat stress and related loss of feed intake (like most of us, cows don't eat as much when they're hot) speeds up that decline. Our milking herd currently stands at 186 cows and will continue to shrink to 165-170 until we begin "freshening" more cows than we dry off sometime mid-Summer.

Nutrient & Pest Management - The dry weather has given an opportunity to spread fertilizer on hayfields and kill weeds in a few pastures earlier this week. The last couple of days we've been working on building a 3-point hitch mount for our 30-foot sprayer boom. If all goes well it will be field-ready by the end of the day, and I'll spend much of next week applying a post-emerge rate of Atrazine in our corn fields and glyphosate in our sorghum fields.

me & my boy

Tee-Ball & Graduation - In the "farm family" category, there are a few things that are coming to an end. School is now out for the summer, so my wife will enjoy being able to stay home for a couple of months. On a side note, I hope this also means that I get a better quality lunch everyday for the next couple of months! Secondly, our twice-weekly trips to the ball field will be on hold until next spring now that our 5 year old's tee-ball season is over. I had a lot of fun helping coach his team, and it was gratifying to see how much he and his friends improved over the past couple of months. Best of all (and most importantly at their age), the kids seemed to have fun from start to finish. And finally, our son will "graduate" from pre-school tonight, which just happens to be the 11th anniversary of mine & my wife's first date. I'll tell you what, time sure does fly when you're having fun!

I hope you all have a great weekend, and that the weather is agreeable to you wherever you are. Don't forget to celebrate June Dairy Month by enjoying lots and lots of nutritious, delicious dairy products! And remember...there's only one more week to enter our farm's Milk Mustache Contest. We've had some great winning photos in the past, and expect the same this year. If your kid loves milk and you think he or she has what it takes to be our Milk Mustache "poster child" for the next year, hurry up and grab your camera, pour one more cold glass of milk, and get some photos coming my way!

Spreading fertilizer and waiting for rain

2011-05-31T13:04:00.001-05:00

The local co-op delivered a fertilizer buggy full of ammonia nitrate to our farm this morning, along with 900 pounds of 0-20-20 in bags. I spent most of the morning pulling the buggy across hayfields (still 3 more acres to go) while one of our employees spread a mix of the bulk and bagged fertilizer on a few acres of our bottomland that was too wet for the spreader truck to cross last week.

We aren't really hurting for moisture down in the bottomland. The corn we planted last Wednesday has already emerged, and it looks as if we'll have a good stand down there. The land around our dairy is a different story though. Our hayfields are green, but the bermudagrass isn't growing as quickly as it needs to due to a lack of water. The current forecast calls for a slight chance of thunderstorms Saturday through Monday, so hopefully three days of 30% equal a 90% chance we'll get at least one shower.

Regardless of if we use a no-till or minimal-till method to plant our forage sorghum, that job is also on hold until we get some rainfall. Our target date for planting had been mid-June, and that's still a possibility if we get any substantial rain within the next 10 days. We do have a fairly forgiving planting window on the sorghum, though, as we've planted it successfully as late as early July.

So until it rains, we'll tinker around in the shop, maybe spray a few pastures, and keep the cows as cool and comfortable as we possibly can as the heat creeps towards 100 degrees later this week.

Wordless Wednesday: planting corn

2011-05-25T12:23:00.000-05:00

It's finally time to plant some corn!

2011-05-25T08:05:00.000-05:00

It's taken a while, but we're finally making some progress in the corn fields. We're only planting 45 acres of silage corn this year, but all of it will be in my great-uncle's fields in the Yellow Creek Bottom. Even though there hasn't been much rain in May, the land is just now dry enough to begin working. As my great-uncle said to me yesterday, "It's as dry as it has been since last fall...and it still ain't that dry."

making the "1st cut" with the disk in the bottom

We moved two disks down there on Monday morning and spent the day turning the soil and cutting up the weeds and grass. This paved the way for the local co-op to spread fertilizer on it yesterday, save for one 2-acre spot that was too wet for the spreader truck to drive over. One of our employees started "cutting in" the fertilizer and smoothing the ground with the disk (we attached a heavy drag behind it) mid-afternoon. I decided to run the disk for a couple of hours following my son's tee-ball game last night, and was able to operate until well-past dark thanks to GPS and some fairly good working lights on the tractor.

disking at night by GPS & worklights

So that brings us to today. I'm about to head back to the field and resume the disking, which hopefully will be finished by early afternoon. Dad will be in the field with the planter by mid-morning, and I'll probably take over that job around lunchtime and run while he milks this afternoon. We expect planting to take 12 hours, so we'll probably each take an evening shift until we finish the job. With rain in the forecast tomorrow, it's imperative that we finish sometime tonight. If all goes well today (knock on wood), we'll be able to start turning our attention to something else tomorrow.

How young should a "young" farmer be?

2011-05-18T13:00:00.001-05:00

Towards the end of my tenure as Chairman of the AFBF's Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee, a few people started talking to me about the possibility of raising the program's age limit from 35 to 40 years old. And even though I've been off that committee since early February, I'm still asked about it occasionally (had a conversation Monday, in fact). For those of you not familiar with the program, eligibility to participate in national YF&R contests or hold a position on the national committee is capped at age 35. Most (if not all) state Farm Bureaus follow this same eligibility requirement, though other program participation (conferences, projects, etc.) may not have a mandatory "cut-off" age.

There are several merits to having a "young _______" program within an agricultural organization that is fully inclusive of members up to age 40. It obviously allows for more participants and gives the program an opportunity to select more "experienced" leadership, both of which strengthen the program. It also helps keep members engaged and "paying their dues" within the organization while they may still be seen as too young or inexperienced for upper-level leadership positions. A higher age-limit also gives people who may not join the organization until their 30s an opportunity to receive the full benefit of the program. My dairy co-op's Young Cooperator program is available for members through the age of 40, and it seems to work perfectly for our organization.

On the flip side, some counter that the role of a "young _____" program is to train and prepare its members to make an impact on the organization sooner than later, and that our best young leaders should be pushed to challenge for those higher leadership positions based on their ability and regardless of their age. Also, there is generally a fairly significant difference in maturity and life experience between people who are in their early 20's and late-30's, and having a program that spans a twenty year age difference between members could create two distinct internal sub-groups. Another argument is that participation among younger members may decline if they believe their climb up through the pecking order will take several more years.

All things considered, I think the overall goal of any organization (agricultural or otherwise) offering a program for its younger members is to get them personally invested and prepare them for future leadership. As far as agricultural programs, there has been and will continue to be lots of conversation about where the 35-40 year olds fit within the hierarchy. As for the ones I'm involved with, I think the age range for DFA's Young Cooperator Program and Farm Bureau's YF&R Program, though different, are right where they need to be.

So that's my opinion, one which I feel I can share more openly now that I am no longer part of the decision making process on this issue. I'd love to get the perspective of y'all out in the blogoshere and internetland to see if your opinions vary as widely as they have in my conversations. What are your thoughts? How young should a "young" farmer be, or at least within the context of being labeled "young" by an agricultural organization?

Photo Friday: Recapping Spring Harvest 2011

2011-05-13T13:02:00.000-05:00

We started harvesting our cool-season forages the second week of April. Now that we're finally finished, I thought I would give you a pictorial recap of what we've been doing over the past few weeks.

We harvested four varieties of cool-season forages this spring: rye, ryegrass, oats, and triticale (pictured).

During the first few days, we would mow down the crops in the late afternoon/early evening before chopping the following day.

They say old equipment is the best equipment. I don't know about that, but at least our old equipment has long since been paid for. Our old John Deere forage harvester and its modified Gehl pick-up reel allowed us to chop over 70 acres of forage into silage.

The chopped forage was dumped into our silage pits where most of it was packed and covered. A couple of dump truck loads were fed to the milking herd each day as greenchop.

We made it through the harvest with only one significant breakdown, though we had to adjust/repair/replace several chains on the chopper throughout the process.

In addition to chopping the forage, we also harvested several acres of it as baleage.

Once we had finished harvesting the "good stuff" we planted in the Fall, we turned our attention to our hayfields where quite a bit of "volunteer" ryegrass has sprouted. We mowed and dry baled it so the bermudagrass could start growing like it needed to.

With harvest completed, it was time to clean the equipment and park it under the sheds until we need it again.

Wordless Wednesday: Gimme some rubbin'!

2011-05-11T10:05:00.000-05:00

In the hayfield

2011-05-10T12:54:00.000-05:00

Now that we have finished harvesting all of the cool-season forage crops we planted back in the fall, it's time to remove the volunteer ryegrass that sprouted this spring in our bermudagrass hayfields. I started mowing the the fields on Friday, and I expect we will have covered all 60 acres by mid-afternoon. We'll hook up the rake and baler tomorrow morning and should be able to roll up a third of it before trying to knock out the rest on Thursday and Friday.

We're really not expecting a big yield or high nutritional quality out of the ryegrass, but it has to come off before we can fertilize our bermudagrass. If all goes well, we'll get the bales hauled out quickly and have fertilizer spread next week. Depending on the weather, we'll hopefully be looking at harvesting good bermudagrass hay in mid-to-late June.

Happy Mothers Day!

2011-05-08T09:02:00.001-05:00

Happy Mothers Day to all of you ladies out there, and especially to all you farm moms. Whether or not you have a direct role in "day-to-day" farm responsibilities, farms couldn't function without the love and support you provide. Our farm is no different, so I'd like to say a big "thank you" and recognize the moms who have and continue to keep Gilmer Dairy Farm rolling right along:

Mama G

Mom

Joni

Thank you and Happy Mothers Day to Mama G, Grandmama (my mom's farm mom), Mom, & Joni...I love you all!!!

And, of course, I'd also like to wish a Happy Mothers Day as well to the 200+ milking mama cows on the farm!

the herd enjoys their Mothers Day brunch at the Ryegrass Buffet.

Have a "dairy" good Mothers Day!

Wordless Wednesday: gettin' good groceries

2011-05-04T08:56:00.000-05:00

Looking back at 4/27/11

2011-05-03T20:36:00.003-05:00

the last wave passed over us at 4pm

Wednesday, April 27, 2011, is a day that I and most every other Alabamian will always remember. Multiple tornadoes ripped across the state, killing hundreds of people and destroying entire communities. Thankfully, my farm was spared any damage as most of the severe storms bypassed Lamar County. Other than a few wind-bent pieces of tin roof on a tractor shed, the inconvenience of a 30 hour power outage at home (we have a generator at our dairy barn) was the only direct effect we experienced.

tornado damage in Phil Campbell

Thousands of others were not as lucky, including many not too terribly far from us. Tuscaloosa (55 miles to our southeast) sustained a direct hit and suffered the loss of many lives, homes, and businesses. Even closer than that, the small towns of Smithville, MS (25mi NW), Hackleburg (35mi NE), and Phil Campbell (45mi NE) were virtually destroyed. I helped deliver supplies to Phil Campbell as part of a mission team from my church on Sunday evening, but the photos and news coverage I had seen didn't really prepare me for sheer scope of destruction left in the wake of these storms. There wasn't much left standing where the tornadoes touched down, just a wide swath of downed trees, demolished vehicles, and collapsed houses.

farmer Dan Smalley's chicken houses
were all destroyed or damaged

Alabama's agriculture industry was particularly hard hit. The last reports I have seen report over 3 million chickens were killed as 200 poultry houses were destroyed and over 500 others were significantly damaged. I also received a text Wednesday afternoon stating that a dairy farm in Morgan County had taken a direct hit. Friends and acquaintances of mine lost barns, sheds, and even homes. Thankfully, I have yet to hear of anyone I know being counted among the dead or seriously injured, and I pray that remains the case.

A week has passed since the deadly storms, and relief work continues in every effected community across the state. As I remarked after leaving Phil Campbell Sunday evening, it's hard to see destruction like that and not be awed by the power of nature. But more importantly, it's impossible to see the volunteer-ism and support given in the relief effort thus far and not be awed by the love and power of God. We Alabamians know how to pull together and help each other out, and we will continue to do so all throughout the process of recovery and rebuilding.

We are weakened yet still strong. We are bruised but more resilient than ever. We are Alabama.

In closing, I'd like to thank all of you who called, texted, tweeted, etc., to check on my family during and after the storms. I appreciate your thoughts and concerns, and ask for you to continue to keep the people of Alabama in your prayers. Below I've included a few other ways you can help, as well as links to a few related storm stories and coverage.

Text "FOOD" to 27722 to donate $10 to the West Alabama Food Bank in Tuscaloosa
Text "REDCROSS" to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross's relief efforts
Use this online form to donate $ through UMCOR (as a Methodist, I highly recommend!)
Keep up with real time supply needs and delivery information by following #wearealabama #ALhaves and #ALneeds hashtags on Twitter
"Alabama agriculture leaders meet with USDA Secretary about storm losses" - ALFA Farmers News
"Alabama Tornado Outbreak 2011" - from Stephanie Millier's blog, The Life of a Farmer's Wife
"Storms Impact on Alabama Agriculture" [video] - WFSA-TV
Governor Bentley's address to the State (5/3/11) [video] - WFSA-TV
AlabamaWx.com - comprehensive coverage from ABC-33/40's weather team
"Miraculous Story of Tornado Survival" [video] - Kenneth Neal, Cullman Co. Farmers Federation president
Alabama tornadoes: Storm survey teams find a total of 28 tornadoes touched down statewide - AL.com
Storm survivors turn to faith and feds - MSNBC

Spring harvest is nearly finished

2011-05-02T12:45:00.000-05:00

Despite 10 days worth of mechanical and weather delays, our spring harvest is nearly finished. In fact, we just finished chopping forage for our silage pit a few minutes ago, and all that remains is 6-8 acres of oats that we will cut, bale, and wrap later this week. Our rye and oat yields were about what we had expected, and we were impressed with how well the triticale did. I'm not sure if we'll have enough silage to feed the cows until our summer crops are harvested and ready to feed, but it should be close.

Weather will play a key role in determining what our next move is. There are quite a few issues that need to be addressed ASAP:

plant silage corn in the bottomland
spray weeks in pastures
cut and bale the volunteer ryegrass in the bermudagrass hay fields
apply dairy slurry and fertilizer to hay fields & pastures

Regardless of what order we tackle these issues, we expect to be very busy with field work during the month of May.

As for our milking herd, we are now down to 205 cows in milk with quite a few scheduled to "dry off" over the next few weeks. Their milk production has slipped a little, but they're still hanging in there. We're still grazing them every morning and will continue to do so for at least a couple more weeks.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has asked about my family and farm following the severe storms and tornadoes that devastated parts of the Southeast last week. We made it through with no damage and only minor inconvenience, but I would ask you to keep the hundreds who weren't as fortunate in your thoughts and prayers.

Bad Monday, Better Tuesday (so far)

2011-04-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

Monday wasn't the best day for our farm, at least as far as the spring forage harvest is concerned. We were able to chop, haul, and pack 16 loads of oat silage yesterday with no problems save a couple of minor chain issues and a flat tire on the dump truck. But then, with several acres of oats on the ground ready to be harvested, the chopper's day was ended when a universal-joint cross broke on the drive shaft.

We hitched up the hay baler and bale wrapper a couple of hours later to finish the day's job. Dad and I were making pretty good progress when one of the baler's roller chains broke after 29 bales. We didn't have the parts we needed in our shop to fix it, so we parked the equipment for the night with 3-4 acres of oats still on the ground.

Things started to improve for us this morning, though. The rain we were expecting this morning never fell, so Dad repaired the baler and sent one of our employees back to finish the job. Meanwhile, a Select Sires rep came to the dairy to evaluate nearly 50 of our young cows for their Select Mating Service. He told us this was one of the best groups top-to-bottom that we've had and we should expect big things from them over the next few years.

So here we sit at lunchtime on Tuesday feeling pretty good about the day. The cows are getting their last hour of grazing in and I'm about to head to the field and wrap the 40+ bales that were rolled up this morning. Milking will start up around 1pm and should be about finished by the time the next predicted rain gets here mid-afternoon. The weather could get pretty rough over the next 36 hours, but hopefully we'll get through it without any damage. And with over 30 acres still left to harvest, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed that the coming storms don't keep us out of the field for several days like last week's storms did.

Happy Earth Day

2011-04-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

Today is Earth Day, the day when presumably more people give thought to what they can do to improve the natural splendor and conserve the precious resources of our planet. Do farmers and ranchers celebrate Earth Day? For me and probably lots of others, it' s just another day. After all, our way of life demands that we take our stewardship responsibilities very seriously EVERY day, not just when the calendar says April 22.

Yes, farmers and ranchers are working hard to save the planet every day of the year. We are doing our part to sustain our planet's resources while producing the crops and livestock needed to achieve and sustain a healthy, happy human existence. A combination of new technology, old fashioned work ethic, and a strong sense of duty allow us to do so more effectively and efficiently year after year.

Do we all agree on the technologies and methods that are needed to best protect our planet while producing for its population? Nope...we all have our own opinions, viewpoints, and strongly-held convictions. We are all human, and none of us are perfect (that's why "Good Friday" happened). But our humanity compels each of us to do the best we can with what we have and strive to improve our operations at every opportunity. Why? Because we live here too, and clean air, clean water, fertile soil, and abundant resources are just as important to us and our families as they are to you and yours.

So as you marvel at the beautiful, complex, magnificent, fragile, unpredictable planet we call home, please remember the positive contributions farmers and ranchers are making to ensure that future generations will enjoy the same beauty and bounty we enjoy today!

I'll leave you with a video message I made on Earth Day 2010. It may be a year old, but the message is still (and always will be) the same...WE CARE!

Spring Harvest Update

2011-04-15T07:57:00.000-05:00

the hay conditioner (foreground) cuts and crushes the rye before it is
chopped by the forage harvester (background)

We started harvesting our spring forages this week. Harvesting is pretty labor-intensive, as it involves cutting the crop with a hay conditioner, chopping it with a forage harvester, hauling it from the field to the silage pit in a dump truck, then packing it into the pit with the loader. Plus there's the small issue of having to work around cow milking, feeding, and other everyday dairy responsibilities.

So far, we've been able to manage and have been lucky to escape with no equipment issues more serious than chains jumping off their sprockets. After two full days of chopping, we have all 22 acres of our rye packed in the silage pit. I'll have a more accurate gauge on the yield after a forage test, but I'm estimating the 42.5 wagon loads we harvested totaled around 140 tons (just over 6 tons/ac).

mowing down the next day's chop
as the darkness falls

Rain showers and thunderstorms are expected to pass over the farm today, so instead of harvesting we'll work on the equipment (sharper knives, tighten chains, etc.) and take care of some other tasks around the dairy. We'll get back in the field as soon as we can, though, which may mean we'll be doing more than the normal milking and feeding this weekend. We have between 45-50 more acres to harvest (with an additional 10 we may harvest or graze), and I figure we would need four full days of good running to get all of it in. At some point we'll transition from silage to baleage and use the hay baler and bale wrapper instead of the chopper. We'll make that switch once our silage pit is full (best case scenario), we have a major breakdown on the chopper (worst case scenario), or we have to shut down the harvest again on account of rain.

Wordless Wednesday: chopping rye

2011-04-13T17:20:00.000-05:00

Wordless Wednesday: what I did all afternoon

2011-04-06T19:09:00.000-05:00

Forage Thinking

2011-04-05T07:54:00.000-05:00

My dad and I made a quick swing around the farm yesterday to check the progress of our various spring forages. The result: time to get the harvesting equipment ready. It would be ideal if we could start the harvest this week, but that's unlikely to happen. We already have our monthly DHIA test scheduled for tomorrow morning, and our local large-animal veterinarian is coming by the farm tomorrow to pregnancy check 80-100 cows and heifers. With all that going on, it would be nearly impossible to get our chopping equipment in the field this week, but we hope to be hard at it by this time next week.

Our 20+ acres of rye will be the first crop to harvest. And even though we won't be able to harvest any this week as silage, we may be able to go ahead and harvest about half of it as baleage. That would involve mowing it down with our cutter/conditioner and then baling it green and plastic wrapping it the next day. Once we finish with the rye, we will move on to about 6 acres of triticale and just over 40 acres of oats. Our cows recently grazed a 10 acre field that was split between those two crops, and hopefully it will have enough re-growth to cut and chop by the time we finish harvesting the other fields.

Beyond the harvest, the cows are continuing to strip graze rye and ryegrass and should be able to continue doing so for several more weeks. We've made it through the winter with a fair amount of bermudagrass hay to spare, so we'll probably use a lot of it in the cows' TMR feed over the next couple of months (though we'll likely carry a number of bales over into next season in case we don't produce enough new hay this summer). We will probably plant our corn silage crop in the Yellow Creek bottom towards the end of this month or the first of May. We expect to follow our spring forages with a BMR variety of forage sorghum, which we'll plant in late May or early June. Sudex for grazing/baleage and teff grass for grazing/hay are other crop options we are also considering for this summer.

Cows, grass, old tractors, etc.

2011-03-28T21:51:00.001-05:00

As March draws to a close, the grass continues to grow, and my father and I have less out-of-town meetings to attend, the activity on our farm should really start picking up. That's not to say we've just been sitting around the last few weeks, because there's always something to be doing on a dairy farm.

We've continued to have good springtime weather over these past few weeks, and as a result our cows have been grazing nearly every morning. We're still working on cross-fencing one of the pastures that they will begin to access later this week, and I've already applied a light dose of nitrogen fertilizer to some of the grazed ground. The cows' milk production has leveled off after the initial increase that came along with the start of their grazing, and they should be able to maintain that production until late morning heat becomes an issue.

In other farm news, our spring harvest will probably begin in two weeks. Weather will certainly play a role in whether or not it's fully ready by then, but we wouldn't mind starting even if it's a tad bit early since it will likely take us two weeks to complete the harvest. Our plan is to chop the majority of it, but we will likely try to bale and wrap a few acres worth as well.

Finally, we said goodbye to an old friend this past week. My grandfather's old IH 1456 tractor was traded off along with our Case 5230 for a '97 model John Deere 7810. Ol' Red had served us since my grandfather gave her to us about 12 years ago, but she was just one heavy load away from needing to have the engine rebuilt for the second time in three years. With neither it nor the Case able to reliably handle our feeding wagon, we decided we should swap them out in favor of a larger tractor with more horsepower. Even though we needed to make a change, I'll certainly miss Ol' Red.

Happy Mardi Gras

2011-03-08T18:03:00.002-06:00

We milk our cows twice a day, every day on our dairy farm. Today being Mardi Gras, though, I decided to have a little fun with it and asked our cows to "show me your teats!" And they did...all 210 of them. Twice! (and it didn't even cost me any beads)

Some were big...

some were small...

but by 4pm we had twice milked them all!

Have a festive Marti Gras everyone, but please don't give up delicious, nutritious dairy products for Lent!

Looking pretty green around here!

2011-03-06T18:37:00.000-06:00

We couldn't hardly have asked for more favorable weather over the past three weeks, and most of our farm is turning a nice deep shade of green. Generally mild temperatures and well-timed rains have helped our fescue pastures and our fields of spring forages (triticale, oats, rye, and ryegrass) start growing up (stem) and out (leaf). Even the the bermudagrass hayfields are turning green due to a healthy stand of spring weeds, a situation I hope to address within the next couple of weeks.

I spent the first half of this past week applying additional nutrients to one of our grazing areas in the form of 100,000 gallons of dairy slurry. Meanwhile, we started grazing our cows for 4-5 hours each morning on the adjacent field of rye and ryegrass. Not only has grazing allowed us to "cut out" 1 ton of corn silage, 1.5 tons of baleage, and 4 pounds/cow of dairy feed from their TMR, it has also resulted in a 4 pound/cow increase in milk production over the course of the week.

I won't be able to resume my slurry application this week thanks to nearly 3 inches of rain this weekend and another rain system predicted for Wednesday. Despite the rain, though, our ground is still in good enough condition to allow our cows to go out on the fields and graze. Look for them if you happen to drive by the farm one morning this week! If you're not going to have that opportunity, you can do the next best thing by watching the cows graze in the video below.

Rock Pickin'

2011-02-22T12:33:00.001-06:00

I've spent about four hours over the past two mornings picking sandstone rocks out of one of our fields. For years we only planted corn or sorghum there, and the rocks weren't an issue since the harvester cut the stalks several inches off the ground. Now that we're planting cool-season forages in this field, we either have to get rid of the rocks or be prepared to constantly bend/break/dull the blades on our cutter-condition (which cuts only 1-2" from the ground).

We did a good job of removing most of the rocks from the real trouble spots about three years ago and have had minimal trouble ever since then. The main reason for that, though, was that we have been no-till planing the rye/oats and minimal-till planting the corn/sorghum since then. We needed to break the ground before planting this time, though, and the disking process unearthed lots of buried rocks.

Even though there are rocks throughout the 40 acre field, we can get the worst places cleaned out after another hour or two of picking. By then we out to have enough rocks to fill in a hole, serve as the foundational base for a small "heavy use" area, or build a decorative driveway entrance leading to our milking barn.

Just kidding about that last one.

Spring Preview

2011-02-17T07:58:00.000-06:00

This has been one of the snowiest winters I can ever remember around these parts. Some years me might get two separate accumulating snowfalls, but I think we've had four this year. We've even had snowfall as recently as last week.

I don't think we're going to see any snow this week, though.

This is the second straight morning I've been able to go to the farm without wearing anything heavier than a fleece pullover, and I've spent the afternoon wearing short-sleeves all week. The 7 day forecast is saying that we'll have a full week of this great weather. Even though I doubt we've seen the last of cold, damp winter weather this year, I'm certainly going to enjoy this spring preview and take advantage of the the best I can.

Part of that includes fertilizing our spring forages. Our local farmer's co-op is supposed to start spreading ammonia nitrate and potash over some of our fields today and tomorrow, and I expect to be applying liquid nitrogen fertilizer on a few others. And as soon as we can find some replacement lugbolts for one of our honeywagon's tires, we'll be applying our "water 'n poo" fertilizer to several spots as well.

Where ever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope you have an enjoyable day. I'm certainly planning on it!

What's the next step?

2011-02-15T23:12:00.002-06:00

Serving as the chairman of the AFBF's Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee this past year was a great honor and a tremendous experience. It gave me the opportunity to travel around the country and speak to folks about our organization and industry, as well as to spend time with some of our nation's most influential agricultural leaders. The experience has given me a more informed perspective on both the opportunities and challenges that face American agriculture, and I like to think that I'm leaving the position as a more effective leader than when I first began.

As my time on the committee and service as its chairman was coming to a close, I started getting lots of questions from friends and Farm Bureau acquaintances like "What are you going to do now?" and "What's the next step?". Even though I thought these folks were asking more about what would be the next position I would seek or opportunity I would pursue, my answer was always something to the effect of going back home and re-learning how to milk cows. After all, I am fully engaged in my family's 365 day-a-year farming business, but I've spent a fairly significant amount of time away from it over the past several months.

While at the AFBF Annual Meeting in Atlanta last month, a gentleman I had never met before thanked me for the job I and the YF&R Committee had done and then asked me what my own next step was. I gave him my standard answer, but his response wasn't to smile or chuckle like most. Instead, he said just as seriously as he could be, "God puts things in our path for a reason. Don't ever forget that."

So, what's the next step? For me, it really is to focus on being a successful farmer and a good family man. I can't think of anything else that could be more important or satisfying. But whenever and however God puts something additional in my path, I just pray for the wisdom to recognize it and the ability to do a good job with it while still fulfilling my commitment to my family and farm.

Busy Monday, Wet Tuesday

2011-01-25T20:15:00.001-06:00

Monday always seems to be pretty busy on the farm, and yesterday was no exception.

Our local large animal vet arrived on the dairy around 8:30am to pregnancy-check 60 cows from our milking herd. Most of the cows he checked were pregnant, and it now looks like we're going to be calving heavily in the month of August. We didn't have an opportunity to bring in the last group of heifers we bred, so they'll have to wait another few weeks before we can get an official pregnancy confirmation on them.

Following lunch, our local DHIA technician joined us for the afternoon milking so he could record each cow's production and take quality samples. We've since gotten the weights back and should have the quality report by the end of the week. Combined with the pregnancy results, the DHIA report will help us make a determination on which cows should be culled from the herd and which ones might need an extended dry period.

Today wasn't quite as busy, and the weather certainly could have been better. We tried to keep a roof over our heads as much as possible due to the never-ceasing rain, and our morning tasks included vaccinating a group of 20 calves we'll wean later this week and repairing a cable on one of our front-end loaders. Fun, fun stuff.

Along with weaning the calves I just mentioned, one of the bigger jobs still on the week's agenda will be to select our next group of heifers to breed. Other than that, it'll pretty much be the same-old, same-old.

Man, I cannot wait for springtime to get here!

Typical Wintertime on the Dairy Farm

2011-01-20T09:54:00.001-06:00

GDF #457 gets a pedicure

It seems we're right in the middle of our wintertime "slow" period here on the dairy. That's not to say we haven't been busy, we just don't have any major projects going on outside of our daily herd management. We seem to be finding a little something different to do every day, whether it's trimming hooves, fixing fences, or servicing equipment.

As far as our cows go, we're currently down to 202 in milk. We had peaked at 213 last week but decided to send a group of open (not pregnant), low-producing cows to the stockyard. Next Monday will be a busy day for the girls as we have a pregnancy-check scheduled for the morning and our monthly DHIA test for the afternoon milking. Beyond that, we'll put together our next group of breeding-ready heifers and also sort and move other heifers to new pastures.

heifers waiting to be fed
on a cool, foggy morning

The weather certainly hasn't been the best in the world lately, but about what we should expect for this time of year. The temperature has risen since last week's snow and ice, but the past several days have been cool, damp, and overcast. For the most past, though, it hasn't caused us any problems and the cows don't seem to mind.

I'll be traveling to Lincoln, Nebraska, this evening and will be speaking at the NEFB's Young Farmers & Ranchers Conference tomorrow night. While the temperature is going to be colder than I'm accustomed to, I've been promised a warm reception and would expect nothing less from my Farm Bureau family.

Have a "dairy" good weekend, everyone!

Photos from Farm Bureau's Annual Meeting in Atlanta

2011-01-15T10:40:00.000-06:00

If you've been paying attention to my Twitter feed lately, I'm sure you know that I was recently in Atlanta for several days attending the American Farm Bureau Federation's 2011 Annual Meeting. Here are a few photos to help explain what was going on:

Accurate Ag Books project

On Friday morning our YF&R Committee traveled to Covington for an Accurate Ag Books project.

We read the story Senses on the Farm to a classroom & followed up with learning activities.

"Extreme Stihl!"

Even though we were very busy Saturday with committee business and preparing for our national competitive events, we still managed to have a little fun with one of our promotional sponsors.

YF&R Cmte members Scott Sink & Will Gilmer with eventual
Achievement Award winners Paul & Monica Minzenmayer of Texas

Sunday morning before devotions, we kicked the day off with a networking breakfast for competitors in the Achievement Award and Excellence in Agriculture Award. We announced the Top 10 finalists in each at the Opening Session, and then spent the afternoon managing the round robin and Sweet 16 rounds of our Discussion Meet event.

icy Atlanta

A winter storm passed through Sunday evening and coated Atlanta in a layer of ice. It didn't slow down the meeting, but it did ultimately effect lots of people's travel home.

The 2010-2011 AFBF Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee

With out committee business and competitive events in the books, we took a few moments to have our photo taken in front of the stage before Monday afternoon's closing session.

retiring YF&R Chairman Will Gilmer & AFBF President Bob Stallman

Monday's closing session began with a recognition of retiring members of AFBF's Board of Directors, which included me and three retiring state farm bureau presidents.

US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack

One of the guest speakers for the closing session was none other than US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The USDA boss shared his thoughts on a number of issues with our membership.

Following Sec.Vilsack's address, it was time for the YF&R segment of the program. The crowd was treated to this video featuring our committee's members and activities.

Will Gilmer addresses the crowd at AFBF's Annual Meeting

It was my honor to address the membership from the podium during the YF&R segment. I helped announce the winners and runners-up for our three national competitive events and recognized our three promotional sponsors, Ram Trucks, Case IH, and Stihl. My last act before leaving the stage was to introduce Ben LaCross, my successor as YF&R Committee chairman.

Mike Rowe gestures to the crowd during his Keynote Address.

The final and keynote speaker for the session was Mike Rowe. He spoke of his respect for farmers and ranchers and reminded us that we are the best spokespeople for agriculture.

"Hit the Virginian"

Whenever our YF&R Committee is together, we always retreat to our suite at the end of the day to debrief and enjoy each other's company. Occasionally, though, a few may slip out for unsanctioned activity. I cannot confirm if these photos are real, much less who is involved or where it was taken. But it appears as if this activity involves throwing bean bags at a volunteer seated some 10 floors below.

AFBF's voting delegate session in progress (full size)

My last "official" act as YF&R Chairman was to represent the program in the voting delegate session, the meeting in which our organization adopts its policies for the coming year. I had a front-row, center aisle seat for the proceedings. I also addressed the floor concerning two different issues: temporary supply management for the dairy industry and the YF&R Program's age limit.

And that pretty well sums it up. We worked hard, got lots accomplished, and had a great time with one another. I can't wait to get back together with everyone for one last hurrah at our National Leadership Conference next month in Orlando!

We're still here and busy as ever

2010-12-27T06:38:00.005-06:00

After a six week hiatus, I'm finally back on the blog to let you know what's been happening around here.

It's been busy, of course, but we really haven't worked on what I would call any "major" projects on the farm. We didn't finish drilling seed into all of the acreage that we planned to, but we will still be able to plant that ground (probably in February) and have it available for spring grazing. I've applied a couple of light doses of slurry to some of the ground we've planted, and it's looking pretty good. That has been the extent of our field work, but we've spent time working on maintenance and several other odd jobs around the farm.

This time of year, though, almost all of our time and focus is spent on our animals. We've been breeding a group of 14-15 month old heifers lately, and have only a handful left to go. Most of the heifers we bred last spring have now calved and it looks like they are going to make a pretty good group of milk cows. We're currently sitting at 199 cows in milk with roughly 30 more cows and heifers due to calve over the next few weeks.

All of our heifers and dry cows are getting bales of bermudagrass hay in their pastures along with the dairy pellets we feed them. Right now I think we'll have plenty of hay to get through the winter, but of course that could change is spring arrives later than normal. Our milking herd continues to eat a TMR consisting of corn silage, sudex and wheat/ryegrass baleage, and dairy feed. We have fed almost all of our "early" corn and should be fully into our pit of "late" corn by the end of the week. We haven't had it sampled yet, but we suspect its quality will be higher and in return should help the cows produce more milk.

Perhaps the biggest change on the farm is that our milkhand of 10.5 year decided to retire in mid-November, and I'm spending a lot more time in the milking barn because of it. We have since hired someone on a part-time basis to help us milk on the weekends and on T-W-Th mornings. Right now that labor arrangement is working great, but it remains to be seen how we'll handle things once spring rolls around and the fields and crops begin demanding some of our time.

The last several weeks have also been very busy for me off of the farm. In addition to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I've had quite a few meetings to prepare for an attend. That schedule isn't about to slow down either, as I'll be off the farm all or part of 20 days during a 46-day stretch from early January through mid-February.

Between working more hours on the farm and spending more time on the road, my blogging frequency may continue to be sub-par for a few more weeks. Just remember you can always keep up with what's going on with me and my family farm by following me on Twitter or becoming a "fan" of our farm on Facebook. And just in case I don't talk to you again before the end of the year, I want to thank all of you for your readership and support! I hope each and every one of you has a "dairy" prosperous New Year!

Busy times on and off the farm

2010-11-12T05:51:00.008-06:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I've blogged, so here is a quick entry to catch you up to speed with what's been happening.

I took a little break from farming a few days ago to spend a long weekend in St. Louis with other members of the AFBF YF&R Committee. We toured Monsanto's research facility, listened to very informative presentation on the GIPSA proposal and what effect the recent election would have on drafting the 2012 Farm Bill, and of course handled a fair amount of committee business. Several committee members also uploaded farm videos to YouTube, which you can view here. Hopefully there will be a few more added in the coming weeks.

Once I got home, it was back to business. I begin no-till drilling rye and ryegrass on Monday, and by lunchtime Wednesday I had planted 48.5 acres worth of grazing land. Before planting any more, we decided that I should go ahead and fertilize some of this acreage before the weekend. So, I spent yesterday pulling the honeywagon through the fields and plan on doing it again today. If all goes well, I will have covered about 30 acres by the time I shut down this afternoon.

I expect to plant at least 20 more acres within the next couple of weeks, maybe even as much as 40 if we buy some more seed. All in all, we have just shy of 130 acres planted right now. Most of what I had planted prior to this week has sprouted, and the stand looks to be pretty good. The cool nights and warm days have made for great weather to get the crop up and established.

I'm going to sound like a broken record on our cows, but it's pretty much the same story. The milking herd is still hovering around 170 head and production is slowly increasing. We have switched to a newer, less expensive dairy feed formulation, and I think the cows are actually doing better on it than they were on the previous feed. We're breeding several cows a week now, and our conception rate should be getting back to normal now that we're past the heat of summer. We'll also start breeding our next group of heifers in about 3-4 weeks.

Rain and a temperature change is in the forecast for the first part of next week, so I'm not sure how that will effect our farming agenda. I'll also be pretty busy with off-the-farm activities. I'm emceeing our county's Farm-City Banquet on Tuesday night before flying to DC for an America's Heartland advisory board meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.

I hope you all have a "dairy" good weekend!

Making progress

2010-10-29T12:34:00.003-05:00

It's been a good week on the dairy farm, and we've made some progress on several fronts.

We are finally having more cows freshen than the are drying off, so our milking herd size is beginning to increase. Milk production (per cow) is also continuing to improve, albeit slower than what we would like. More of our cows are showing stronger "heats" in the cooler weather, and our conception rates are probably on the rise.

The rainfall we received during the first half of the week has really got the first rye and triticale we planted jumping out of the ground. We've also been able to no-till triticale and oats into one field, and I'm currently about halfway through planting oats into 45 acres of prepared ground. I doubt I'll plant over the weekend, and should finish with that job on Monday. We'll still have quite a few acres of grazing land to no-till drill rye and ryegrass into, but we're not any any big hurry about it.

And while this has been a good week, we are still facing some very real challenges. with our feeding program. Our purchased feed costs have continued to rise, offsetting the gains we've made on our milk price. We're currently looking at different nutritional options for both our heifers and our cows, and it might be more profitable to sacrifice some milk production as long as we don't sacrifice overall animal health.

Whatever happens, we'll do our best to just roll with the punches and make the best of the situation. My family has been able to do that successfully on our dairy farm for nearly 60 years, and I don't see a reason to change that now!

Got fetus?

2010-10-19T06:15:00.006-05:00

"Got fetus?"

That's the question our local large-animal veterinarian will be answering when he comes to our farm this morning to check about 80 cows and heifers for pregnancy.

Many of the cows he'll examine were artificially inseminated with Angus semen during the summer. We decided to use Angus from mid-June through August because it was best economical option during what is historically our lowest conception-rate season. We suspect most of the cows are pregnant because we haven't seen them come back into estrus (heat), but we want a professional opinion just in case there are any problems with the cows' reproductive systems.

We AIed the group of heifers in question at the beginning of summer, and they've had a bull roaming the pasture with them ever since. After examining each heifer, the veterinarian will be able to tell us if the size of her fetus matches up with her AI date or if she was likely bred by our herd bull. Any heifers that he calls "open" (not pregnant) or suspects of being short bred (<30 days) will either remain with the bull or will be sent to pasture with the next group of heifers we'll breed in early December.

In other farm news, we dried off 15 pregnant milkers yesterday, dropping our total number of cows in milk to 169. This is our lowest point of the year, but we'll be rebounding shortly as we'll be calving-in many more than we'll be drying off over the next few months. On the forage planting front, I planted rye and triticale on 30 acres of prepared ground last week (see the MooTube Minute below). We can possibly finish planting oats on the prepared ground this week if we get an overnight rain. I don't expect we'll be in any hurry about no-tilling our grazing land, so it will probably be the first of November before we start planting the rye/ryegrass mixture.

If you happen to be in Indianapolis this week for the National FFA Convention, make sure you swing by the AFBF YF&R booth at the Career Show and say hello!

Time to get busy!

2010-10-13T17:34:00.002-05:00

I guess the dairy farming life is always busy, but the past couple of weeks have seemed a little slow since we've not had any field work or extra herd work to attend to. That's about to change, though.

Yesterday evening we received about an inch of long prayed for, hoped for, and awaited for rain. With moisture in the ground and 275+ bags of seed in our shed, it's time to get busy planting our cool-season forages. I'll begin drilling rye (AFC 20-20) into prepared ground tomorrow morning, and will also plant a few acres of triticale (Trical 2700) before I finish sometime on Friday. Depending on the field conditions and the timing of the next rain chances, I may begin drilling our oats (Coker 227) over the weekend.

That will take care of all the forage we intend to harvest as silage next spring, but will still leave all of our grazing land yet to be planted. We'll no-till drill in a mixture of rye (Elbon) and ryegrass (Marshall) for our cows to rotationally strip-graze next spring. It's doubtful at this point that we would get any significant grazing out of it before then, so we probably won't plant that acreage for another week or two.

Of course, there's more work to do on our dairy farm than just planting forages for our cows. Our local veterinarian is coming next Tuesday morning to pregnancy check about 40 cows and 40 bred heifers. About a dozen of our pregnant milking cows are due to dry off early next week, and at least half that many dry cows should calve before the end of next week. We'll also be re-grouping our heifers (by size) and moving them to different pastures over the next couple of weeks.

I've also got a very busy off-the-farm schedule lined up. I was in Montgomery this past Monday for an ADA of Alabama board meeting (dairy check-off) and a dairy show at the Alabama National Fair. Next Wednesday I'll be traveling to the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis to serve as a judge at the Extemporaneous Public Speaking CDE Finals, as well as to promote Farm Bureau's Young Farmers & Ranchers Program with a few fellow YF&R Committee members.

Yep, it's gonna be a busy few weeks, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

Still waiting on the wet stuff

2010-10-08T05:49:00.002-05:00

We're still facing dry conditions here on the farm, and our fall forage planting will continued to be delayed until a fair amount of rain can fall. The US Drought Monitor currently has us designated as D0, or "abnormally dry". I expect that we'll be bumped up to the moderate drought category next week unless the weather makes a big change.

In the meantime, we're still finding plenty of things around the farm to keep us busy. For one thing, the drier weather has allowed us to do some much needed brush cutting in a few spots. It has certainly improved the looks of the place, and it will give our heifers a few more acres of "clean" ground to pasture on this winter.

And, of course, our cows still demand a lot of our attention. We are currently up to 182 milking, but we'll cut that down this afternoon as we have a few to dry off. Their milk production continues to climb, thanks in part to the improving quality of their corn silage as we get deeper into the bunker. We're also letting our animals graze down the remaining sudex on the farm, with the milking herd spending late mornings in one large paddock and our dry cows picking through a 10 acre field.

It's cooler, but still too dry

2010-09-28T06:50:00.005-05:00

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!

It's still summertime on the farm

2010-09-23T17:11:00.004-05:00

Even though it is now technically "Fall", the continued dry weather and heat would certainly make a person think it's still summertime. Our milking cows are still coming to cool in the barns by mid-morning, the bermudagrass in our pastures is starting to fade away, and our tall fescue has yet to begin its autumn growth-spurt.

We've decided to move some of our larger animals off of some heavily grazed and drought-stressed land and onto greener pastures...literally. We consolidated a group of pregnant heifers and dry cows (all due to calve after the first half of November) this morning into a pasture that includes a 20 acre hay field that was attacked by armyworms a couple of weeks ago. That bermudagrass won't grow back enough to justify cutting it for hay, but it has thickened up enough to make for some good grazing. There is a 10 acre field of sudex regrowth adjacent to the pasture that will also available for grazing for another 2-3 weeks.

Speaking of sudex, the weather has been ideal for curing it into hay. I mowed six acres of regrowth in a grazing paddock (that hasn't been grazed lately) on Monday and flipped it today with the hay rake. It should be ready to bale early tomorrow afternoon and will be fed to heifers or dry cows this winter.

If the current weather forecast holds we should be getting a break from the heat and maybe a little rain early next week. If so, it will be good for our cows and certainly for our pastures, and it will move us a little closer to planting our cool-season forages like rye, oats, and ryegrass.

Don't forget our Edopt-a-Cow program, and have a "dairy" good day!

The Baler Rolls - a song about baling hay

2010-09-17T06:46:00.004-05:00

Yesterday afternoon we baled what will probably be the last of our bermudagrass hay of the summer. With that in mind, I decided I should try to get a few minutes of video before the baler finished it's duty for the season. As I filmed my father harvesting the last few acres, I was trying to decide whether or not to piece the clips together and make another "MooTube Minute", a "Vocowbulary" video, or just store it away as archived footage.

Then, out of nowhere, the old Garth Brooks song "The Thunder Rolls" popped into my head. By now you can probably see where this is going. It didn't take very long for the song title to morph into something else, and by the time I shut off the camera I pretty much knew what I wanted to do with the video clips.

By the end of the evening I had thought up and recorded a full set of lyrics and pieced them together with video clips and still photos related to growing and harvesting bermudagrass hay. The end result is an off-key, amateurishly edited music video called "The Baler Rolls: a song about baling hay."

I've posted a few songs on our YouTube account before. Some are more educational than others, some are sillier than others, but they're all done in an attempt to entertain you. You may not learn much from this or any of my farm songs, but I hope you get a chuckle and will keep coming back to watch all of our farm videos.

Lyrics:

Three thirty in the evening, the sun is shining bright. The hayfield’s ready for a baling, the windrows are raked up tight. Veil of dust on the windshield from the hay that’s going in. The tractor runs across the field then turns and comes again.

And the baler rolls. And the baler rolls.

It was only three days ago we mowed the Bermuda down. It dried out just perfectly as the sunlight beat down. It’d probably be a miracle if the equipment keeps working right. But if we can keep it running we’ll be done before tonight.

And the baler rolls. And the baler rolls.

The baler rolls the hay up tight. There won’t be no mold, ‘cause we cured it right. As the year goes on and the days turn cold, our cows’ll eat the hay the baler rolls.

We raise hybrid bermudas: Russell & Tifton 44, two varieties that grow well on our well-drained Southern soil. When they get enough sun and rain through the summer they’ll really grow. We can usually harvest three times and if we’re lucky maybe four.

And the baler rolls. And the baler rolls.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!

The baler rolls the hay up tight. There won’t be no mold, ‘cause we cured it right. As the year goes on and the days turn cold, our cows’ll eat the hay the baler rolls. Our cows’ll eat the hay the baler rolls.

Summer hay season is winding down

2010-09-13T19:01:00.005-05:00

This afternoon we mowed the last 13 acres of bermudagrass we'll harvest this summer. Ideally it would have been harvested about 10 days ago, but silage chopping ALWAYS takes precedence above any other field work on the farm. The hay will be a little on the mature side and therefore the quality will suffer a little bit, but our heifers and dry cows will be happy to eat it this winter. Even without the 50+ acres we lost to fall armyworms a couple of weeks ago, we've had a productive forage season with both hay/baleage and chopped silage.

We still have a little fixing to do before we actually bale this hay. The tractor we generally rake hay with, a Ford 6600 (as made infamous here), will need its radiator repaired if we expect to use it. We also have a torn belt on our baler that will have to be patched or replaced within the next couple of days.

The only other haying I foresee the season is a few acres of sudex we'll probably cut and harvest as baleage next week. After that, all of our field work will probably be focused on our fall-planted, spring-harvested cool season forage crops.

If you would like to watch me talk about this week's haying instead of just reading it above, click "play" on our latest MooTube Minute below.

Our free, fun, & educational Edopt-a-Cow Program is online

2010-09-11T06:07:00.004-05:00

Our farm's 2010 Edopt-a-Cow Program is now online with five cows available to choose from. Simply follow this link to the program's page on our website for a listing of the cows and links to their profile pages. Once you've decided which cow to "edopt", sumbit the registration form and we'll email an 8"x 10" photo of your selected cow along with a "Certificate of Edoption".

Edopt-a-Cow is free, fun, and educational. Kids really enjoy the program, and many teachers have found it to be a great program to use in their classroom. I hope you'll all consider "edopting" a cow for your kids (or yourself), and please encourage your friends to do the same.

What's been happening...from harvesting to invasions to football

2010-09-09T06:22:00.004-05:00

Things have been busy, busy, busy lately, and when I've had time to blog I've been too worn out to do so. But, the coffee's flowing this morning and it's a few more minutes before I'll be throwing my bacon in the frying pan, so sit back as I give you a quick recap of what's been happening 'round here.

I was in Chicago on Monday and Tuesday of last week for the first ever AgChat Training Conference. I was a co-presenter with Tim Zweber and Patty Leonard in a workshop entitled "Real Life Show & Tell" in which we each talked about some of the things we do (both online and "offline") to promote our farms and industry.

Last Wednesday we began harvesting our bottomland corn. We made pretty good progress through the week, and the only major issue we had was with a flat tire on the dump truck. We weren't the only ones harvesting, though, as fall armyworms invaded the farm and ate up 52 acres worth of hayfield regrowth. We could have sprayed them, but decided it wasn't worth the time or expense considering we hadn't yet fertilized the fields.

Instead of keeping up the momentum and continuing the harvest on Saturday like many farmers would do, we opted to park the tractors so we could go enjoy the opening of football season at Mississippi State. Dad and I took care of the morning milking duties and left the afternoon in the hands of our employees. We enjoyed over 6 hours of tailgating with other family members and friends before moving into the stadium for the 'Dawgs 49-7 romp over Memphis.

Sunday was a Sunday. Milk, feed, church, milk, feed, done.

Things got interesting on Labor Day. While everyone else has been harvesting, I've been taking care of all the other chores around the dairy. By the end of the day, I had two cows and two heifers to calve, I had to throw lots of refused feed out of the cows' trough (front-end of the silage pit stuff...not the best quality), and a cow stepped on my big toe and slammed me against the rails of our catch-pen when I tried to load her into our breeding chute. And to add insult to injury, I returned home to learn that my baby daughter had hidden the remote control for the satellite!

Tuesday was much better. Harvest continued to run smoothly, dairy chores were much easier, and my wife found the remote.

Things slowed down a bit yesterday. We should have finished harvesting, but our dump truck's transmission got stuck in 5th gear on just the second load. We had to tow it back to the shop (loaded, of course), and after attempts to locate a truck-for-hire failed we managed to get it to where it would shift between 2nd and 3rd. They limped along and managed to finish the day with 11 of the approximately 15 loads that remained in the field.

So that brings us to today. Morning milking is obviously already over, and we'll soon be getting back to work. We have to catch one of the heifers that calved Monday, as she decided to break out of the milking herd's pasture and return to where she came from. After that, hopefully dad and the others can get the harvesting finished before lunch while I take care of feeding heifers and doing whatever else needs doing. With any luck, dad and I will leave things with the employees early this afternoon so we can get a jump on ballgame traffic. That's right, BIG game in Starkville tonight...Mississippi State vs. Auburn. Go 'Dawgs!

A couple of links for your reading pleasure:

An article from the AgriBank Advocate newsletter about our farm's use of social media.
A blog I posted to Farm Bureau's FBlog last night about the most memorable question I've ever been asked about a cow.

Y'all have a "dairy" good day!

Manure in the Moonlight

2010-09-01T17:53:00.008-05:00

I pulled my first "all nighter" on my farm last Friday night, spending eight hours applying manure in the moonlight.

Knowing in advance that I would be attempting something I had never tried, I smartly took a little time off from my regular work schedule and caught a couple of naps during the day. I started churning up the contents of our SlurryStore a few minutes after 6pm and was discharging my first load from the honeywagon by 6:30. Eight hours and twenty loads later, I called it a night at 2:30 am. I actually pulled into my driveway as my father was leaving his to go start milking our cows.

There were several reasons I needed and wanted to spread this way. First of all, one of our recently harvested hay fields needed the fertilizer. Also, our SlurryStore was nearing its storage capacity and needed to be drawn down before we dedicated all of our "non-cow" time and equipment to corn harvest. The only access we have to and from our manure storage involves driving through our loafing barn, so by waiting until evening I gave the cows a chance to clear out and return to the pasture once the temperature had cooled. Finally, I really wanted to test out the demo GPS unit the Alabama Precision Ag team had sent me, and what better way than to use it in the dark?

It worked great! I hit my target of one load (3000-3200 gallons) per acre, and completely covered the area of the field I was attempting to apply on. And, of course, I couldn't have effectively (or safely) applied manure in the dark if not for the unit's lightbar guidance and coverage mapping.

So as of right now, the hay field's bermudagrass is green, the SlurryStore is half-emptied, and I'm buying into the thought that GPS technology is a viable tool for even small dairy farms like mine.

More forage, and GPS-guided fertilizing

2010-08-25T19:36:00.008-05:00

We're still building up our forage inventory, and have recently harvested 22 acres of sudex (sorghum-sudangrass). We started Monday of last week by mowing the 10 acre patch across the road from my house. Three straight days of rain showers meant that it took us that long to get all of it baled and silage wrapped, but in the end we were left with 114 bales of "baleage". They will be on the high end of the moisture scale thanks to rain and very little sunshine between mowing and baling, and I'm estimating that they'll average somewhere between 1600-1750 pounds each. We cut an additional 12 acres this week, but the stand wasn't nearly as good. We yielded 68 bales on that acreage, but the moisture level was much closer to the 55% we prefer. You can check out this video from last year to see a bale of sudex being silage wrapped.

We've also cut 25 acres of crabgrass this week. That's right, crabgrass can make a pretty good forage! This is a "volunteer" crop that has established in one of our fields over the last few years. We typically plant this acreage in cool-season crops and use it for grazing in late fall and spring, and we opted not to plant sudex on it this summer. We've had some great drying weather this week, and we'll begin baling it tomorrow afternoon.

I'm also fertilizing our harvested fields, and I'm doing so with the aid of a demo GPS unit thanks to the Extension Service's Amy Winstead and the Alabama Precision Ag team. I applied 16 loads of dairy slurry ("Water 'n Poo") today on the first sudex field we harvested, and the GPS was a big help in making sure I got full coverage with the right overlap widths. The real test of the system's guidance (or my reliance upon it) was going to be tonight when I intended on spreading in a bermudagrass hay field after dark. Alas, a slow leak on a rear tractor tire progressively got worse this afternoon and forced me to postpone any further fertilization until the tire has been patched.

In other news, the weather has been great this week considering it's still August: low humidity, low temperatures in the 60s, and highs only in the low 90s with a nice breeze. The cows are much more comfortable, are eating more, and hopefully will be producing more milk than what they have been lately! Our intentions are to begin harvesting the last of our corn silage next week, and I'll be off the farm Monday and Tuesday attending a conference in Chicago.

Have a "dairy" good week, everyone, and don't forget to raise your hand for chocolate milk!!!

Hay & Grazing Update

2010-08-15T07:45:00.003-05:00

We finished baling our hay early Friday afternoon without any further mechanical or weather issues. We had a light yield this time, thanks mostly to the lack of July rainfall. Taking our superb first cutting into account, though, our hay inventory is about where it usually is in mid-August. We'll get our bermudagrass fertilized soon and will hope to be cutting it again in late-September.

Our next little bit of field work will involve harvesting a 10 acre field of sudex as baleage. We'll mow it, "green" bale it the next day, and then silage wrap the bales.

Speaking of sudex, we planted this crop in a few grazing paddocks and turned our milking herd into one for the first time this summer. It gets too hot too early for our cows to both graze and eat TMR, and so far we've opted to keep feeding their TMR twice a day. At their current low level of milk production, though, we're going to try to give them a heavier evening feeding and graze them from 5:30-7:30am. We may still see a further drop in production, but grazing may still be a more economical choice with the price of feed increasing lately. Time will tell.

The Hayfield Follies

2010-08-12T17:34:00.003-05:00

Harvesting our "second cutting" of hay isn't exactly working out as planned.

Over the weekend, the local extended weather forecast was calling for hot, dry weather, with only about a 20% chance of a passing shower Monday and Tuesday. With that in mind, we figured we could mow, rake, and bale all of the 60 acres that was ready to harvest by the time the week was over.

Mowing went by without incident. We finished cutting the bermudagrass on Tuesday, and planned to begin raking and baling mid-morning the next day as soon as the dew dried off.

Then the rain clouds came. A little better than a quarter-inch fell Tuesday evening, and I was not feeling too great about our plan.

Thankfully though, there wasn't a cloud in the sky Wednesday morning. I started running the hay tedder through the first field we had cut around 11am, and by 1pm the hay had dried out enough to rake and bale. We were 2-3 hours behind due to the previous day's rain, but no big deal. Everything was working great...I had moved into another field with the tedder while one of our employees raked and another quickly rolled up 25 bales.

Then our luck started to turn sour.

As I finished tedding the second hay field, I noticed that one of the implement's tires was on the verge of blowing out. I called my dad at the milk barn to tell him I could ease it into the next field, but it couldn't make the trip back "home" until the tire was changed. That's when he told me we had bigger issues; namely, a belt had broken on the baler.

Dad headed to Columbus to get it repaired, and about three hours later he and I were back in the hayfield. Everything ran smoothly for a while until the dew started falling around sunset. The ground was still a little moist underneath the windrows, and the dew dampened the hay just enough to make us shut down for the evening.

This morning we got an early jump on it, sending the rake out at 10am with the baler following a half-hour behind. Once again the job started off good, but an hour into baling we had a minor problem with a sprocket. I took over the baling duties once that problem was fixed, but twenty minutes later a chain jumped off and caused another chain to break. After an hour spent at the shop, the baler was once again ready for action. One bale later, a small chain on the other side of the baler slipped off it's idler sprocket. That would have been easy enough to correct in the field if not for the fact that the idler came apart while getting the chain back in place. Back to the shop!

Dad and one of our employees repaired the problem while I went to help our milk hand finish milking duties. The baler was back in the field by the time I finished milking duties, and luckily there have been no mechanical problems since then. We shut down for a while to rest and eat supper, then I raked for a while until dad returned to bale just about sunset. With the ground now dry, the dew shouldn't be much of an issue until later tonight.

I'm back home now, and as far as I know dad must not be having much trouble with the baler. We should have 15-20 acres remaining tomorrow if he can bale tonight all of the hay that's already been raked. Barring any major breakdowns or rain (there's a chance tomorrow afternoon), we SHOULD be finished with our "second cutting" by this time tomorrow evening.

I'm not going to count my hay bales before they're rolled, though!

GDF Vocowbulary - TMR

2010-08-11T20:24:00.003-05:00

I posted a new GDF Vocowbulary video to our YouTube channel tonight. This one focuses on TMR, which stands for "Total Mixed Ration".

As I mentioned in the video, our cows are currently getting 40 pounds of rye silage daily, half in the morning and half in the afternoon. They are also getting 15 pounds of dairy feed in each TMR batch, bumping their total daily intake up to 70 pounds of TMR. While this is certainly more than you or I would eat in a days time, this is actually a little bit on the light side for our cows.

The heat and humidity takes a toll on our cows' appetites during the summer, so they don't eat as much as they do during most other times in the year. As we get into the milder temperatures of mid-Autumn, their consumption will increase and by wintertime they will be eating between 90 and 100 pounds each. Most of the 20-30 pound increase will be made up of extra forage fed as part of the TMR or grazed.

The rye silage and pre-formulated dairy feed will continue to be our main ingredients for a few more weeks. Before long, though, we'll replace the rye silage with two other forage ingredients: rye baleage and corn silage. Between now and next summer, dry bermudagrass hay and sorghum-sudangrass baleage may also make their way into the TMR.

It's hot, but we're still farming!

2010-08-03T06:17:00.003-05:00

As you can see by Accuweather.com's forecast on the left, it's going to be another HOT one here on our dairy farm. Looking at the extended forecast, we're not going to get much of a break, either. We should cool down to the mid-90's (yeah, BIG change) by the end of the week, and right now we have small window in which we might get some rain either Friday or Saturday.

Regardless of the terrible heat, dairy farming is a 365 day a year job so we'll be right out there in it doing the best we can. Our cows, fortunately, have been getting enough relief from the fans and sprinklers in our barns to keep from showing too many ill-effects of the heat. Sure, their milk production has dropped, but we have yet to see any health problems we can attribute directly to the heat. We are sending a half-dozen cows to the stockyard this morning (dairy cows provide beef, too!) and should be milking 194 this afternoon.

Our corn silage harvest continues and is hopefully nearing completion. We'll be servicing our harvesting equipment first thing this morning before moving it to the final 22-acre field remaining to be cut. A field that size could be harvested in just a few hours with the right equipment, but it'll take our 2-row chopper close to two full days to harvest the terraced, contoured field. Hopefully the old thing will hold together so we can be finish sometime tomorrow afternoon. Once we've finished with the corn we'll jump right into 50+ acres of bermudagrass that's ready to be made into hay.

If you would like to see our silage chopper in action, check out our latest MooTube Minute. Try to stay cool, and prayers for rain would be greatly appreciated!

Corn silage harvest is underway

2010-07-27T06:25:00.003-05:00

We started harvesting our "early" corn for silage yesterday, chopping about 8 of the roughly 75 acres we intend on harvesting over the next few days. July has been very hot and dry, and as a result our corn started drying up faster than what we had hoped for. The yield and quality look to be adequate after one day of cutting, but I can't help but wonder "what might have been" if the weather had been more favorable over the last few weeks.

And though it may be too late to help our early corn, the good soaking rain that finally fell last night will really help out our "late" corn in Yellow Creek Bottom. It hasn't tasseled yet, so it still has the potential to grow a little more. Our pastures and hay fields will certainly benefit from the moisture as well, and the latter should be ready to harvest for the second time as soon as we finish chopping silage.

Our cows have backed off on their milk production but are still performing better than what they typically do this time of year. Our milking herd is down to 196 cows, and I don't expect that we'll make it back to 200 for at least a month. We'll be weighing and sampling our cows' milk tomorrow morning.

Finally, I had the pleasure of having an old high school classmate stop by with his family for a quick visit yesterday (I strongly encourage you to check out Zac's blog). His daughter really seemed to enjoy the cows and calves, but the best part for me was that I got to do a little educating when he and his wife asked questions about organic milk, hormones, and antibiotics. It just goes to show that there's always an opportunity to share your story and help others understand what you do.

Cows, crops, and links for 7/8/10

2010-07-08T06:53:00.009-05:00

Summertime in the Deep South can be mighty tough on farmers and dairy cows alike due to the heat and humidity, but the first few days of this month weren't quite so bad. The air was drier and the nights were a little cooler, and our cows responded with their highest average daily milk production since mid-May. Now that the heat index is starting to creep back up, I'm sure our production will come down a little bit. Even so, the combination of keeping the cows cool (they have access to fans and sprinklers most days from 9am-6pm) and providing quality feed will help them make it through the summer without too much heat stress.

Speaking of quality feed, our forages are looking pretty good. They could use some rain, of course, but we've gotten enough timely showers over the last few weeks to keep anything from "hurting" for water. Our bermudagrass hay fields have all been fertilized and are growing nicely. Our early corn is pollinating and will probably be ready to chop for silage by the end of the month. Our bottom land corn is knee-to-thigh high and looks really good. And the sorghum-sudangrass (sudex) that I planted last week looks to be nice and thick. I've got a few photos below for your viewing pleasure.

And finally, here are few links for you:

Our farm was currently featured on WCBI-TV's "A Day in the Life" series. You can learn more and find links to the video segments via our website's News section.
I've posted a new GDF Vocowbulary video explaining what a dairy's "parlor" is.
I also posted an opinion piece, "Don't put all your eggs in the social media basket", Farm Bureau's YF&R Blog.

Have a "dairy" good day, folks!

GDF "Vocowbulary"

2010-06-29T07:21:00.002-05:00

I often forget that some people may not fully understand some of the words or phrases I use when talking about my family's dairy farm. With that in mind, I've decided to start a new video feature on our farm's YouTube channel: GDF Vocowbulary. I plan on making this a weekly series, and I hope it will help explain some of the terminology we use when talking about our farm or industry.

For the first lesson, I chose to explain what "dry cows" are. I've got a whole list of words and phrases I can focus on in upcoming lessons, but I really want to choose the terms that you are most interested in learning more about. If there is something that you would like to have defined or explained, please let me know via this blog, my Twitter account, or our Facebook page and I'll make sure to prioritize it for a future video.

So sit back, hit the "play" button, and learn a little bit more about dry cows. I hope it's helpful, and please share it with your friends!

a hay update

2010-06-21T21:34:00.006-05:00

We've spent several hours in the hay field lately, so I thought I would give you a quick update on our progress.

Our first bermudagrass hay was cut two weeks ago, and at the time it looked like the weather forecast would be favorable to bale it two days later. Well, things changed, and what started out as a "30% chance of isolated showers late Wednesday" became a half inch of rain at 8:00 that Wednesday morning. That was followed by another 3.5 inches that evening. We did get the hay dried out and raked at the end of the week, but my dad didn't get halfway through baling it on that Saturday before a belt broke on the baler. We got it fixed the following Monday, and wound up with 96 bales off of 17 acres. Not bad considering the conditions.

We put the mowers back on the tractors last Thursday and set out to cut another 18 acres. The hay would have been ready to rake and bale Saturday afternoon. But again, dry hay on the ground is a great magnet for rain. We dodged the big rains and didn't get much more than a sprinkle, but it was enough to keep us out of the field that day. So, while I spend Fathers' Day afternoon in the milking barn, my dad spent it in the hayfield with the rake and baler. By the time he was finished, he had rolled 147 bales (nearly 3 tons per acre). I haven't gone back into my files, but I think that's the most that field has ever yielded on one cutting.

So, coming into this morning we had 243 bales from 35 acres, with 40 more acres to go. We got the hay mowers rolling about 10:30 this morning and covered all the ground by 5pm. The three fields we cut today have some spots of invasive crabgrass which won't dry out nearly as quickly as the bermudagrass, so we'll have to "fluff" it with our hay tedder tomorrow or Wednesday before we rake it. Hopefully for once we can avoid the rain until we have it baled later this week.

And THEN maybe we'll get some rain to get it all green and growing again!

Become a "Friend of Elsie"

2010-06-17T21:30:00.002-05:00

June is Dairy Month, and becoming a "Friend of Elsie" is a great way to help us celebrate!

When you visit www.friendsofelsie.com, you'll find lots of good stuff, including a Father's Day-themed bl0g post I wrote as well as lots of recipes.

I'm partial to the Fast Fiesta Cheeseburger...great for tailgating!

At the Youth Leadership Conference

2010-06-12T09:13:00.005-05:00

I'm at the 4-H Center in Columbiana this weekend attending the annual ALFA Youth Leadership Conference. The state's Young Farmers Committee is responsible for facilitating two of the workshops: Ag Jeopardy (pictured) and Addressing Misconceptions About Agriculture.

Many of the delegates do not come from an agricultural background, and most will go into careers outside of agriculture. We hope that our conference will help them develop into stronger leaders in whatever fields they choose to enter, but we also recognize we have an opportunity to foster a greater understanding and appreciation of agriculture.

The continued success of American agriculture doesn't just depend on production and profitability, it depends on the public allowing us to continue farming in a way that's productive and profitable.

Building relationships and sharing information about our industry with future leaders is one more step we can take today to make sure we'll still be farming tomorrow.

Multiple-task Monday

2010-06-07T21:48:00.002-05:00

We were all over the farm today. After we finished with a few basic duties (milking, feeding, cleaning, etc.) we started gearing up to attack the day on multiple fronts. With no morning dew and no rain in the forecast for the next several days, I was able to get an early start in the hayfield to mow our first bermudagrass of the summer. I cut about 16 acres today, and might have cut a few more if not for a nagging hydraulic problem that was slowing me down. I'll fluff the cut hay tomorrow and it will probably be ready to bale on Wednesday afternoon, Thursday at the latest.

Meanwhile, the local co-op delivered a fertilizer buggy for us to pull across our creek bottom fields. Our thought was to have one of our employees spread while a second followed behind with a disk to incorporate it into the soil. Unfortunately the fertilizer kept bridging up and wouldn't spread consistently, so they lost a good bit of time trying to fix that problem. They ultimately worked between 18-19 acres, leaving roughly another 25 to go. My dad moved the planter down to the bottom and planted 7 acres after all of the afternoon milking and feeding chores were finished. We'll have the co-op send in a spreader truck to finish the fertilizing tomorrow morning, and barring any problems the disking should be completed by early afternoon and all of the corn should be in the ground by the end of the day.

We may not have covered as much ground or moved as quickly as we would have liked today, but we made progress towards harvesting hay and planting corn. All-in-all, I guess I'd have to say it was a pretty good day.

Mustache Time

2010-06-07T05:53:00.002-05:00

Ever year in celebration of June Dairy Month we hold a Milk Mustache contest. We'll take entries throughout the spring then select three finalists in early June. We named this year's finalists yesterday.

Making the selection was very tough due to the many quality entries, but, just like good cream, these three rose to the top. Anyone who "likes" our farm's Facebook page can help us pick a winner by simply clicking "like" under the photo you think is the best. Fan voting is open through Sunday, June 13, and we'll announce our 2010 winner on the 14th.

Click here to vote!

Heifers...always getting into trouble!

2010-06-05T22:11:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I walked out into the pasture behind our tractor sheds to herd some heifers towards our working pen. As I was getting behind them I started hearing a strange banging noise coming from the lean-to they often use for shade. Upon further investigation, one of the heifers had somehow managed to get herself upside-down in an empty water trough. After snapping a quick picture, one of our employees and I pushed the trough over so she could roll out of it.

Luckily we found her pretty quickly. She was trying to get out but could not, and in that position she would have began bloating before very long. She definitely got herself into an emergency situation, but we got her back on her feet before any damage was done.

By the way, her id number is 911. I think we'll have to keep a close eye on her over the next few years!

Scattered thoughts on a foggy Wednesday

2010-06-02T06:40:00.005-05:00

The fog started rolling in a few minutes before 6:00 this morning, a sure sign that it's going to be another muggy day here in northwest Alabama. Though it won't be terribly comfortable, we already have three hours of work under our belts this morning and might as well go for 8 or so more!

We'll have one tractor back in the cornfields this morning trying to clean up the weed problems while I "burn-down" a couple of other fields in preparation to no-till plant some late season silage corn. We have enough seed to plant 45 acres, which is how much acreage we have in Yellow Creek bottom. However, it looks like we'll never get all of that acreage dried out before our corn planting window closes. So, we'll plant as much as we can in the bottom then finish out in a couple of our upland fields (17 acres worth). Hopefully we'll be able to use most of that seed in the bottom and can go back to our original plan of planting sudex on those two other fields.

Speaking of sudex, we'll probably be drilling that into our milking herd's grazing pastures next week. The ryegrass has just about played out and the cows are making their final pass through each of the paddocks.

So last week was mostly focused on herd health, this week is on weed control, next week should be planting, and the week after that? Harvesting bermudagrass hay, hopefully!

Quickly, a couple of words about Alabama politics. John McMillan and Dorman Grace, the two most qualified GOP candidates for Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, are headed towards the Republican Party's July run-off ballot. The winner of that election will go on to face unchallenged Democrat Glen Zorn in the November general election. Also, congrats to fellow young farmer Clay Scofield for pulling in the most votes for the GOP's nomination for State Senate District 9's seat. Best of luck in the run-off, Clay!

Have a "dairy" good Wednesday, everyone!

Cleaning up the Cornfields

2010-06-01T19:02:00.005-05:00

This morning I took a tractor for a spin through a cornfield, driving down the rows while spraying glyphosate (RoundUp) to kill weeds. We have broadleaf signalgrass pretty much everywhere, with spots of johnsongrass, cucklebur, and morning glory scattered here and there. All of these weeds compete for the same moisture and nutrients that our corn needs, so by killing them we expect our corn to be more productive and ultimately provide more nutrition for our cows.

Our method of spraying our corn isn't terribly fast or efficient. We're using a three-point hitch sprayer assembly with a 200 gallon tank and a 12 foot (4 row) boom. We have a spray wagon with a 300 gallon tank and 30 foot-wide coverage that we typically use for all other applications, but its tires are likely to down an unacceptable amount of corn as we pull it across our curvy, terraced fields. It sure would be nice to have a high-boy sprayer, but I don't our less-than-200 acres of cropland is quite enough to justify buying one of those babies!

If you'd like to take a look at our fields and see the contrast between where we got partial and no control with our pre-emerge application, you can do so in our latest MooTube Minute.

Saturday morning breakfast bites

2010-05-29T07:18:00.006-05:00

Good morning, everyone! I've been in from the dairy farm just long enough to eat a bowl of cereal (w/ milk, of course) and think I'll be able to catch you up on the latest happenings before I fall asleep in my office chair. So here we go...

The big news in the dairy industry this past week related to the release an undercover video filmed at a dairy in Ohio. Over the course of about a month from what I understand, one of the employees filmed another engaging in numerous acts of animal cruelty towards the cows and calves on the farm. Many of my fellow farm bloggers have expressed their disgust and outrage about the malicious treatment of the animals seen in the video. Many of them also point out that the person filming should have reported the employee in question sooner or at least stepped in to stop the abuse. Considering the video was released by a veganist animal rights group, I guess the videographer wanted to gather as much footage as possible to advance their agenda. The cows on that farm must have been considered "collateral damage" in their wider war against animal agriculture. I won't go much more into this because, as I said, several other like-minded folks have done an excellent job expressing their emotions on this issue. There's simply no excuse nor room for animal abuse. None. Period.

On a more positive note, it's been a fairly productive week on our farm. We've finished giving annual vaccination boosters to all of our animals, and we had the veterinarian over yesterday to determine pregnancies on about 100 head. Among the cows, 42 of 60 were pregnant which isn't bad considering several within the group have been historically hard to breed. We didn't fare as well with the heifers though, as only 19 of 36 were pregnant by AI breeding. These percentages are much lower than our last herd check, but if you average the two together I guess we'd be coming out about normal.

Finally, I had a neat opportunity this past Thursday evening as I was invited to deliver the commencement address at Lamar County High School's graduation ceremony. I was amazed at how many people were there for a class of only 45 graduates. I shouldn't have been though, because people in small communities really feel connected to events such as this, even if they don't have a friend or family member directly involved. I don't think it was the best speech I've ever written and my delivery had its share of flubs and flat spots, but it was well received and that's what matters. If you have 11 minutes to kill or need a cure for insomnia, you can download an mp4 audio file of the speech here.

Don't forget...there's only one week left for you to enter our annual Milk Mustache Contest!

Gilmer Dairy Farm in the FNS Newsletter

2010-05-24T16:39:00.002-05:00

Every month, a Food, Nutrition, & Science Newsletter is published by The Lempert Report. One of their monthly features is a Q&A with a farmer, which I was fortunate enough to be the subject of last month.

This month they have added a video feature in which a farmer walks the audience through a typical day on his or her farm. And, you guessed it, I'm the lucky guy this month.

I hope you'll check out my Q&A and video, and I encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter so you can learn about new farmers every month!