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. 

It has been a while since we last updated this part of our blog. We are down to less than 40 cows left to calve out of 800, so Brittany is almost done with her maternal duties. Yesterday we herd tested, which means we took milk samples from all the cows so each cow can be analyzed on the milk they are producing. We also started the first part of mating by painting the tails of the cows to so we can see when they are cycling. That means the busy time of mating is only one month away! Tomorrow we are going to a discussion group with a bunch of area dairy farmers and going over mating plans and ideas, it should be a great time!
 
We have been making a lot of improvements to the farm over the last couple weeks. The new effluent ponds are almost finished. We had a long part of the track that we walk the cows down redone so it is much smoother now. We had a new lateral overhead irrigation system put up on part of the farm, I will take some pictures of it because it is really cool! We have also been repairing driveways and pasture entries with loads of gravel. And one job that I have been enjoying the opportunity to do is heavy rolling. What we do is go over a pasture with a giant lawn roller that is 6 or 8 feet wide and 5 feet tall. This is done on areas of the pastures that the cows might have damaged because the ground was too wet then they were grazing it.

To finish up here are some pictures of the view from our back window this past week. I love living on a farm!

I never know where to post things, under my section or here....well, these two videos are directly related to Dairying sooo....DIARY OF A DAIRY WINS!  These are just a couple of videos with the calves. Two of the oldest sheds got let outside the other day and they LOVE IT! There are 45 heifers in each shed. They are the funniest most curious creatures. They just love walking around, chasing each other (or birds), eating grass...and  trees, and attempting to eat fences...their little tongue will find it all!!!! The first video is just of them playing in the paddock and me talking to them....not that cool, but cute :) The second video is with Steph, the farm manager here, feeding them with the GIANT feeder. That thing is so cool, and they are fed in about 5 min! Crazy. She has taken over doing these two sheds which has helped me out alot! I love watching them eat with their little tails whirling around and around. It's adorable and really funny. Whats even funnier is when she has to take off and all the cows are chasing her, good thing her dogs are so smart and well trained, they (attempt) to keep them all in the fence....it doesn't always work, I'll try to catch that on video sometime.:) Enjoy the videos!!! ~Britt

I am sure most of you are wondering how or why someone would measure grass, but on a grazing dairy farm it is one of the most important daily tasks. Measuring the grass tells us how much pasture we can feed the cows everyday and if we need to give them hay so they are not under fed. There are three ways to measure the amount of grass in the pasture, otherwise known as the pasture cover. 
   1. A plate-meter - a handheld stick with a disk at the bottom, and a little computer that measures how far up the stick the disk goes when you drop it (I will take a picture to show you).
   2. A C-Dax machine - A fancy, relatively new invention that someone pulls behind a quad. It uses lasers to measure the height of the grass as you drive through the paddock. A monitor, which sits on the quad computes and stores the numbers for the amount of grass in each paddock.
   3. Eyeing it - After using the other two methods long enough your eye gets trained to tell how much grass is in a paddock. This can actually be quite accurate and it is also very quick.

I have been using the plate-meter over the past couple weeks to measure pasture covers but today I used the C-Dax machine for the first time. I measured all the grass on the whole farm, it took about two hours. It was really neat to be able to see the entire farm today, especially the areas I have rarely been in yet. So that was my big excitement for the day! I also have been working on getting my eye trained to read pasture covers and I am starting to get pretty accurate. 

We are down to about 100 cows that still need to calve out of 800 so we are on the home stretch, yay! (that's the excitement from Brittany) That's all for now! -Paul 

So last week we had the biggest snow storm since 1992 and now it has been 70 degrees with intense sun, I think I like this week better! All the staff started on a "sleep in" schedule this week, meaning that everyone gets a morning where they don't have to come into work until 8am, mine is today. We usually start at 5am. Also, my herd started calving now so I am really enjoying watching over them. I have to make sure they have the right amount of feed, make sure  all the calves are matched up with a cow; then draft the cow out of the paddock, make sure to watch and treat for any metabolic issues (health) and keep them happy. We have calved about 600 out of the 800 cows so far and my herd will probably finish calving in the next 5 days, so we are closing in on the end of the busy calving season!

From Paul: Wow! It actually can get cold and snow here in the winter! Today we got to experience a winter storm that consisted of lightning, thunder, hail, several inches of snow, and lots of wind. We moved all the cows to areas on the farm that have good tree lines that block the cold southeasterly wind. Then we gave them lots of baleage (hay) and straw which has lots of fiber in it that will help the cows to stay warmer. We are going around every hour to pick up the calves that are born and we bring them to the calf shed right away and feed them. Today was nice because I had a 3 hour long lunch time! One bummer was that the milk haulers are not picking up any milk the next two days so we had to dump 15,000 liters or 4,000 gallons of milk! Also the "bobby" truck is not picking up calves right now so Brittany has to feed a ton of calves now.We will have to take some pictures of where we have the cows and what everything else on the farm looks like.

From Britt:  Here is a picture from this morning. It has been snowing on and off very consistently throughout the day. I kept singing Christmas songs all day because it seemed so much like Christmas! Then I remembered that it was only AUGUST!!!! oh how strange!  Just yesterday Trish gave me the first daffodil that came up on the farm, and now it's snowing....hmmmmm. It was really pretty at first, then, well, it just was cold and wet, but still beautiful. It would be nice weather like the picture shows (still cold) then all of the sudden you could see this huge storm drop right on you. Then it would stop for a bit, then hail, then snow, then stop, and...you get the picture. Right now we are getting a lot more snow and wind. Our lights keep flickering... so hopefully we will continue to have power until this thing blows over!!! 

Wow, FINALLY I have a few pictures to put up of the little babies. And I figured it was about time to post on the "diary of a dairy" site, seeing as most of these posts are from Paul, I needed to put my few words in too!  These pictures were taken I think in the first week that we started getting calves, so these guys are oh-so-grown up by now and are on once a day feedings. (woo hoo!!) But they are so cute!!! We are averaging about 18 calves a day right now. Aren't these little guys so stinkin' cute!!! 

Well I am glad to inform you that we are a third of the way through calving, which seems like it has just started. We are getting about 18 to 25 cows calving a day which keeps us busy but it is not overwhelming. Yesterday Eugene had the day off so I took over his responsibilities for the day, which is taking care of the springing (calving) heifer mob. It was a good learning experience for me. It mostly consisted of going around the paddock and checking which heifers calved overnight and then trying to match up 8 calves with the 8 heifers that calved. It isn't as easy as it sounds there are 100 heifers in a paddock about 30 acres in size. After that is done we go around and pick the calves up and then we have to draft the 8 heifers out of the mob of 100 which is a fun challenge. I also had to check on any heifers that were in the process of calving to make sure that they were making progress and that the calf was presented right to come out. I am glad I had the opportunity to do this for a day, I hope it comes again soon, because it was quite enjoyable. 

Yesterday I also by myself successfully gave a cow that had Milk Fever metabolic injections, one in the vein and one under the skin over the ribs. The one in the vein takes a lot of effort because first you have to hold the cows head still, then find the vein with the needle, and next attach the bag making sure not to have any air bubbles in the line and finally had the bag up while holding its head still for about 20 minutes, which is how long it takes for the bag to empty out. I know the good Lord gave me a lot of help on this one because it can be difficult for the best stockman to do successfully. As soon as I was finished she stood up and was completely fine again. It is so amazing how fast cows can bounce back from health issues!

This is what is looks like bringing 400 cows home. This day they only went 5 miles, they had already traveled the previous 10 miles on another day. Enjoy! 

Today was such a great day! After lightly snowing on Monday today seemed so much nicer. It ended up being warm even from the very early morning and got up to 65 degrees this afternoon, with sunshine, and a nice light warm breeze. We also are getting settled into our responsibilities and routines for calving now. Today I brought the milking cows in at 7:30 to a beautiful sunrise over the snow-capped mountains. I helped with milking and then moved some calves around. I got to watch Brittany at work with the calves today. It is pretty cool to see her getting right into it on the farm and taking care of those calves. 

We had our big pre-calving meeting with the staff after lunch and went over treating sick cattle, taking care of the effluent, and walking through the typical schedule, and we also were assigned our responsibilities for calving. I am responsible for feeding out the supplements (palm kernel and baleage), minerals, and other mircros that the cows will be getting. I will also have my own small mob of cows to look after on the farm.

After that we brought ten more cows that calved today up to get milked, and separated another 40 cows from the herd that I will be looking after that need special treatment. Then there was shifting break-fences and milking again, and helping Brittany finish feeding the calves. It felt like a full day where we got a lot done. I really enjoyed it!