It has been a a while since I have posted what is going on, sorry! Since getting back from our holiday away things have gotten busy on the farm once again. Mating season started this past Tuesday. This means that we will be pulling out cows from the herd every morning that will be getting Artificially Inseminated for the next five weeks (six total). One person sits in the milk shed in the morning during milking and checks to see which cows are in heat that day. It is very important to catch when they are in heat because if we miss it that means next season they will calve later and won't be milked as long as they could have been, hence lost income. 

I am in charge of my own herd on the farm right now. This means that I make sure they are fed right, and that I decide which paddocks they are going to eat. I calculate how much area they get for the day and night so they get fed twice a day. I do this by knowing how much grass they need to produce the milk they should be producing per cow and then measuring how much grass is available for them to eat in the paddock. 


We have had really good weather for growing grass lately and this has given us excess grass on the farm. In order to use the grass up we cut some of it for hay this week, along with some other land that we use across the road from the farm. In all we cut about 55 acres of hay on the farm and 240 acres off the farm. This hay is what will be used for feeding in the fall, winter, and early spring. We also have killed off about 60 acres of paddocks (in grass) on the farm too. These paddocks were killed off because they were old and needed to be replanted. They should be back in production sometime in December. 

We have also been in the process of weaning all the heifer calves off milk and onto grass. Brittany did a great job rearing them so they are transitioning very well at very good weights. This has been going on over the last two weeks and the last ones should be weaned by the end of this week. 

As you can see a lot has been going on, but it is a great time of year to learn about. The weather is getting nicer and the daylight last much longer! 

Paul is back at work now after our vacation and "Mating Season" has officially begun. Paul will have to go over more of the details of what they do daily during this season. As you may have seen in our other posts, Calving is now done and most of the calves on the farm are already weaned!!!! Crazy how fast they can go from straight milk to only grass. Well, they get pellets and straw too, but still It's pretty neat.
Because we have been having some nice weather it's fun to take walks around the farm with my little sheepies in tow. Last walk, I took my camera with me so I could post some pictures of what Spring is starting to look like around here and what the Dairy Shed looks like. Finally leaves are on the trees, ducks are running around with all the millions (seriously)  of ducklings in an unbreakable line behind them and the weather is getting warmer, it's really fun.  Stay tuned for an update from Paul soon about the new season and his new responsibilities on the farm! 

The weather here is still a bit on the cold side. We had another frost on Sunday morning that took out a bunch of our tomato plants. Also the grass growth is pretty slow due to the cold days, low soil temperatures, and cloudy weather. The thing that helped our grass growth out this month though was a product sprayed on the pastures called Projib which basically is a cheap way to make the grass grow faster after it is grazed. We had a few warm days and it looks like the rest of this week is going to be really nice. We have gotten a lot of rain recently which is nice since it helped to put off irrigating on the farm for two more weeks.