"Pet" in the pit

We had a momentary visitor in the milking parlor's pit this morning. I had been walking back-to-front prepping a new line of cows when I turned around and saw cow #923 standing in the middle of the floor. "Pet", as she has come to be known, either didn't want to be crowded in the holding pen or simply wanted some attention. This isn't the first time she's walked down the ramp into the pit, and she's the kind of cow that always tries to go where she's not supposed to...the kind that would walk a mile just to take three steps out of an open gate.

I managed to get her to turn around and walk back up to the holding pen after giving her a good head rub. No harm, no foul, and thankfully no manure left on the pit floor!

Gettin' busy

With a much milder than normal March now nearly behind us, our long "busy" season is beginning. We actually had three tractors operating yesterday afternoon, the first time that's happened in quite a while. I was busy applying nitrogen fertilizer and pre-emergent weed control to a vacant bermudagrass pasture while one of our farmhands bush-hogged a newly-leased field. Meanwhile, another one of our farmhands was mowing our first ryegrass of the season, which we'll bale and plastic-wrap this afternoon.

Within the next couple of weeks we expect to plant our silage corn and begin our full-fledged ryegrass harvest. The weather of course will dictate when (and in what order) we start, and it will take us 2-3 weeks to complete those tasks assuming the usual amount of weather delays and equipment problems. We'll likely be looking at cutting bermudagrass hay in the first half of May and planting forage sorghum in the later part of that month.

Wordless Wednesday: black & white cows on green grass

the milking herd spending the morning in a ryegrass field