What Now?

We've had it very good for calving over the years with only one real mishap where we lost a cow and a calf.  Last year was tough with a new heifer calving for the first time and having twins.  That heifer, now a cow was #51.  She never nursed the calves properly and we ended up losing both of her calves after bottle feeding them for months.  This year she gave us a problem again.  She had her water bag hanging out for much longer than normal.  This was during my second cutting of hay which turned out to be a bad turn also, but I'll write about that later.  Anyway Sara came out to the hayfield to tell me that the water bag shouldn't hang more than a couple of hours.  So I called the vet and he said he'd want to know what was going on in there.  Look for a breach or a head back etc.  George and I setup the corral panel, chute and headgate.  Luckily #51 is our most gentle cow and she allowed us to walk her up to the corral and she went easily into the chute and headgate.  While she was walking I put my hand in her and could feel feet so I knew the calf was very close.  When she was in the headgate I was able to reach in further and could feel that everything felt normal, and was right and ready to go but she wasn't pushing.  I decided that I should help things along and find out if this calf was alive.  I reached in and grabbed both of the calf's front legs and pulled until my hands ached.  After my hands had stopped cramping I pulled some more.  Eventually George started helping and it wasn't long until the head was just about out.  A little pulling down rather than back and the calf slid out.  We carried the calf around to the front of the chute and let the cow out.  She took to the calf right away and all was good except we noticed that she had what appeared to be another water sack hanging at one point.  Maybe twins again, but then later I saw placenta so I didn't think much of it again.  Everything was good until after about a day we never seemed to catch the calf nursing.  Sara and I decided to try to strip some milk from the cow and so back to the corral the cow went, this time with calf in tow.  We put the calf on the cow at first but the cow kicked her back.  Then Sara tried to milk the cow but she was dry.  At that point we figured that the cow had been nursed dry so we let them go back to what they were doing.  Another 24 hours later and the calf was looking bad so we started bottle feeding.  Things went down hill quickly for the calf and eventually we lost the calf.  In the mean time it was suggested that #51 might have another twin in there that wasn't alive that could be life threatening, so back to the chute again.  This time I had to go shoulder deep to look for another calf.  No calf so we let her go again.  Once she has closed back up she'll go to the sale barn.  Too bad too because she is so gentle it would be great to have a herd of cows with her disposition.

4-H Dickinson County Fair

Last week was the Dickinson County Fair.  As usual it was a lot of fun and work for the kids.  Sara had her milk goats and Tom and George had their goat kids that were Sara's goat's kids.  They tried making them meat goats, and the rate of gain was good, but compared to a meet goat breed they were very small.  Sara also road her horse at the fair, so with all of the animals at the fair grounds, that meant lots of time at the fair grounds to keep everyone fed, watered and pens clean.  Everyone did really well, and Tom got outstanding junior for his robot arm that grabs and object and dropped it in another location.  All in all a fun and rewarding week.

Sara Running Flag

Tom's Robot

We sure can't complain about the lack of rain this year, unless you are a hay farmer.  Then you can ask when it's going to be dry enough to cut, rake and bale.  We've had more than our share of bad weather too.  Last week we had 96mph winds.  This week we had several inches of rain in a few hours.  Next week the weather according to NOAA says dry.  But they change the forecast every other day, so that hasn't been much of a help either.  My brother's cow had a heifer calf.  She looks great and appears to be doing great too.  I don't understand though why my cows are so spread out on calving.  We have 4 calves out of 10 and it's almost August.  It wouldn't be so bad if I had wanted them spread out over the year, but I'd much rather have them all dropped at one time so that I can market them all at one time.  I don't want to have to hold them all open a year just to get in cycle.  That would be crazy.  I'm sure there is some way to get things back in line but you can't change time...

Time on the farm passes pretty quickly but not so quickly that I feel like we're missing much.  We're always busy but because the family is always working together, or at least working or playing near each other, it never really feels like we're too busy for each other or to notice the little things.  Not sure if I put that exactly right, but I guess that I'd say that it's a very special opportunity to be together and to enjoy the time together.  Like the other morning when I was moving the cows with my youngest son Dan.  As we walked across the pasture we were looking at the different plants that are in the pasture.  We spent time looking at the different grasses and some of the few forbs (flowering/non-grasses) growing there.  We noticed how the insects really populate and eat the forbs/flowers and discussed how the forbs are special in the landscape.  How they add complexity to the plant community and give insects food that they wouldn't get in just a monoculture of grass and this in turn gives bird chicks concentrated access to the insects that would be far more spread out in grass if they are there at all.  I'm sure that some kids would learn about that in school some day and probably see a picture of it in a biology text book, but actually taking the time to teach by watching little black insects crawling all over and munching a black eyed susan and seeing nature working the way it was designed to work with your family as part of your everyday life is nothing short of magic.

Chicken Processing

Our first batch of chickens have been completed.  The birds looked great and except for our scalder breaking down again... we stayed ahead of schedule.  We had the Boernsen's over to help for a couple of days and it was a huge help in keeping things moving.  Sharon had been asking for some type of drying rack for the chickens so I made a new drying rack to put the chickens on to drain while the bag is placed over them.  Sharon said it worked really well so we'll keep that around and keep that in our process.  We ate one of the chickens that we just processed this weekend last night for dinner and as usual it was fantastic.  The next set of chickens will be processed in late August. 

Some Days Are Harder Than Others

What more could go wrong?  I have never damaged so much on the farm in such a short period of time than I did this past week.  It seemed like the more that went wrong, the more that kept going wrong.  I broke fence posts off, bent my tractor cab door, ran up over boulders, caught tomato cages in the bush-hog mower.  It seemed it would never end until I stopped doing farm work.  I even lost a steer from last year.  I had let the steers out into the pasture earlier in the week and I guess one got into some clover or some other legume because I found him down with what appeared to be bloat.  By the time I found him it was too late.  Hopefully those days are behind me for a while.  Today is chicken processing day!  We have about 70 to process today, and about the same tomorrow and Saturday.  If all goes well... we should move though them without issue and do what we really enjoy.  Seeing our customers and providing our customers with some fantastic tasting and healthy food.

The 10ac cover crop field finally went in.  George and I took turns planting it yesterday evening.  If it gets enough rain it should be ready to graze around the first part of September.  That should give me a little while to graze into the fall and give the wildlife something to graze as well.  We'll probably try to bale my brother's hay today.  I went over yesterday and raked it into windrows after checking to see if it was dry.  It has so much clover in it that the clover stems were still really green.  I'm hoping that a day of dry weather and a nice stiff breeze took the moisture out of it but only time will tell.  George will run the cultipacker over the 10ac field while I run the hay rack and baler over to my brothers.  Then if we're lucky will be able to bale this afternoon.