It's still summertime on the farm

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!

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

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.

Edopt-a-Cow and YouTube

In case you missed it, our Edopt-a-Cow Program is now online! This free program allows you to select one of five cows to "edopt", then download and print a certificate and a photo of the cow. Each of the cows have a profile page on our website that is updated monthly so you can keep up with her milk production and other information. We hope you'll give it a try!

Speaking of Edopt-a-Cow, two of the five available for edoption are featured on our new YouTube Channel. Make sure you check that page periodically as we add short videos to it. Some are serious, some are silly, but they're all there to help you learn more about dairy farming and agriculture.

DmB's Humpday Edition: 2/25/09

How about that Presidential Address last night, huh? I fell asleep in my chair about 8:30 (which happens almost every night) so I'm having to look up the high points on the 'net this morning. Are there people out there who can get excited about or buy into what any politician in Washington has to say about the whole economic mess? It's like believing a kid that throws a brick through a stained-glass window when he promises you he can fix it with Elmer's glue and masking tape.

But enough with the political commentary.

We received the preliminary report from our milk weighing yesterday afternoon, which indicated a herd milking average of just over 63 pounds. The thirty first-lactation cows we had grouped together averaged 63 pounds as well, so I think it's been well worth our time to feed them separately. We will mix them back into the main herd today, though, and pull out a group of lower producing cows. We believe we can give the low-enders a third less grain per day without significantly impacting their production. Lower feed cost + minimal sacrifice in milk production = profit, something that's going to be really tough to come by over these next few months considering how poor our milk price is right now.

An aside for those who have "edopted" one of our cows: Missy Moo finished with the second highest total, somewhere around 110 pounds. I should have the full results for each posted on the website after we get the final report sometime next week.

Finally, I'll be going to my county's extension service office this morning to plug into the broadband and connect to a webinar. Dairy Management, Inc., the national outfit that manages our dairy checkoff, is offering the webinar to give dairy farmers ideas about how they can use the internet to tell their stories and communicate with their customers. Provided we get the technical issues taken care of, I'll be an active participant during a segment of it talking about the blog you're reading right now.

Have a great morning, and make sure you get your three servings of milk, cheese, or yogurt in today!

Thursday's Gilmer Dairy Farm recap (late night edition)

It's been a long day. Not a bad day, mind you, just a long day.

It started at 3:00am in the milk barn. Our DHIA technician was on hand to weigh our cows milk, and that monthly event generally adds about a half-hour extra time onto the milking shift. We finished up just before 6:30. By the way, preliminary results came back this afternoon and we had a herd average just shy of 59 pounds of milk per cow. We should get the complete report sometime next week, and that's when I'll be able to post information about the cows in our "Edopt-a-Cow" program on our farm website.

After breakfast, we spent a few minutes switching a few dry cows from one pasture to another, and then we begin building cross-fencing in one of the fields we'll graze our milking herd on this spring. We finished that job about 11:3o, and then had to herd three heifers back into their pasture.

After lunch, I helped get things started in the milk barn, then went to find and fix the spot where the heifers had gotten out of their pasture. From that point on, it was a typical wintertime afternoon. We finished milking the cows and fed the calves and headed towards home a little after 4:00.

I had to drink a couple of cups of coffee to stay awake and watch Florida defeat Oklahoma in the championship game tonight, so that's why I'm posting so late this evening. But the caffiene is starting to wear off and I've got another full day tomorrow, so it's time for this dairy farmer to hit the hay.

Edopt-a-Cow!

There are now 8 cows available to "edopt" from our farm website, and 2 more will be added as soon as I can snap a good photo of them.

Our edopt-a-cow program is very simple to use. Just fill out the registration page and I'll email you a photo of your selected cow along with a "certificate of edoption". Then, all you have to do is log on to your selected cow's profile page every so often to see how she's doing.

The program is free to use, but we also offer a $5 option to personalize the photograph. Since I'm a generous guy, I'll throw in free personalization for the first 10 people who sign up and put "blog offer" in the promotional code box.

I hope you'll try our Edopt-a-Cow program...it's not going to cost you anything and you might just learn something about dairy cows.

Perfect weather

We're supposed to have near perfect weather today...on-and-off rainfall and temperatures below 80 degrees. I hope we'll continue to have days like this, because it sure beats the "normal" August day with a 110 degree heat-index.

The rain could limit some of what we do this morning, and for me that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Lamar County Farmers Federation's annual meeting is tonight, and as secretary-treasurer I have a lot of things I need to get prepared. I should have a pretty good opportunity to get it all done with plenty of breathing room before tonight.

On the cow front, I think we're going to "bottom out" today at 171 cows going through the milking line. From this point forward we should be having cows calving in faster than they dry off. Our cows' milk production has also picked up a little bit since the weather has turned off cooler over the past several days.

Also, I should have the "Edopt-a-Cow" choices ready to go by the end of the week. All I'm waiting on is an opportunity to snap some new pictures of the cows, and then everything will be set.

Hello new readers!

Traffic has picked up a little bit since the recent story about us in the FBNews. So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to quickly explain what this blog's about...

It actually came about during a redesign of our farm website. The "news" section of our website used to be narratives of our farming activities that I would post every month or two. I decided to replace that content with published news stories about us and move the self-reporting to a blog. Some of my old college friends were interested in what was going on around here, so I thought I would give it a shot. I also thought it would be a good complement to our Edopt-a-Cow program. This format has allowed me to give updates about our farm much more often and we're now communicating with a much larger audience.

I typically don't go into much detail about the technicalities of what we're doing on the farm since I suspect that most of our readers are not in agriculture. My primary goal is to give the reader a general idea of what it is like to live on a small dairy farm in Alabama. The hours are long, there are always things to be done, and our cows are only a piece of the overall picture.

Farming can be tough and it can be stressful. Knowing your livelihood depends on so many things that are out of your hands can sometimes be frustrating. But farming is also necessary, it's rewarding, and it's both the career I've gladly chosen and the path I believe God wants me to travel. I hope you enjoy The Dairyman's Blog, and you're always welcome to leave comments or shoot me an email.

Website updates

I've made a few minor updates to several of the pages on Gilmer Dairy Farm.com recently, including the "Farm History", "About our Farm", and "Teaching Resources" pages. I've also updated our Edopt-a-Cow profile pages and will be posting a new group of available cows within the next few weeks. I also hope to finally update the picture gallery a little bit, too.

As far as farming goes, it looks like it's going to be another hot, dry week. We'll probably start baling hay this evening, but I'm not sure what we'll get into before that.

Farm website redesign

I've made a small redesign to our farm website, www.gilmerdairyfarm.com . All I lack is updating some of the Edopt-a-Cow profile pages.

1.6"

The latest weather system to move through our area dropped 1.6 inches of rain on us, and more is predicted Sunday through Tuesday of next week. As badly as we need the rain to counter the drought, our pastures are starting to get pretty sloppy.

The "Edopt-a-Cow" updates should be posted on the farm website sometime between now and Monday. If you aren't participating in "Edopt-a-Cow", give it a try...it's free!

Quick Notes

• I've updated the Edopt-a-cow profiles on GilmerDairyFarm.com.
• We've been cutting broadleaf signalgrass since Monday and will continue to do so through this afternoon. We'll rake and bale it tomorrow and Friday, and then start the process over again next Monday.
• The cows, on average, are still giving around 54-55 pounds of milk.
  

Hot, Dry, & Miserable

With temperatures reaching the 90's by late morning and topping out around 100 in early afternoon, I guess you could say that the weather has been a little uncomfortable. Despite the misery, our cows are holding up pretty well, and I just hope we can get some relief before they start really feeling the heat stress.

With no rain in over a week and none on the horizon, I'd say we're definitely back in drought-mode. Some of our sudex has sprouted, though you can't really tell it when you drive by the fields. Our hay fields aren't exactly setting any records either.

I've updated our Edopt-a-Cow program on our farm website, for any of you who might be interested.

A quick, catch you up to date

A high pressure system has moved in and is keeping the rain away for the next several days while we suffer under high temperatures in the upper 90's. Luckily, we got a small shower this past Monday. It wasn't enough to do much good, but if it activated the ammonia nitrate in our hayfields and helped our sudex seed germinate we'll certainly be happy. We're now in the process of baling up the first cutting of bermudagrass on the fields we didn't work last week. The ten acre patch next to my house yielded 4o bales, so that's works out to just over 1.5 tons per acre. In other forage news, we scouted one of our two remaining corn fields this morning. It's pretty pitiful, but it's got just enough ear on it to make it too difficult to cut with a hay conditioner. We might start gearing up and run the silage chopper across it next week.

In other news, the Dairy Star, a publication out of Minnesota, will be featuring our farm in their "Dairying Across America" section in an upcoming edition. I guess good things happen when you go to church with the guy who serves as the contact person for our state's dairy industry. Also, I'm in the process of reworking our farm website's Edopt-a-Cow program and adding new cows to it. Be sure to check that out at Gilmer Dairy Farm.com!

What is "Edopt-a-Cow"?

People often ask me to explain what my farm's "Edopt-a-Cow" program is all about. It's very simple. It's a way that individuals or classrooms can "adopt" one of our cows over the internet (hence, "edopt"). Since fewer and fewer people these days know what farm life is all about, this is a way to give them their own little connection to agriculture. We hope that those who participate will learn a little about the life of a dairy cow, and will be interested enough to learn even more about dairy farms and other types of agriculture.

You can "edopt" on of our cows (#007-"Charger" for the next few days) for free by clicking here. Try it out and tell me what you think of it!