June 12, 2010

I started "rotational mowing" today. The animals tend to overgraze the pasture nearest the barn and leave the further area undergrazed. Today I mowed those nearer areas and tomorrow I will put up temporary fence to keep them off the mowed area until it regrows. The pic was taken after I used the jeep to pull the tractor out of the mud.

Porter is staying outside for the next three or four weeks until we move him in with Sugar for breeding. His little stall is a mess. We strung hose up the hill so he would have water up there and we'll take the little bit of grain he gets twice a day up to him.

Maybe I can get more pics tomorrow.

June 5, 2010

We had more heavy rain last night and today so our creek flooded again. This one is looking upstream where we get runoff from the fields and woods above us. I had a temporary fence here blocking the sheep from going under the fence. It's now gone. The bull is in this pasture now, though, and he's too tall to walk under that bottom wire.

In this one,you can just see the top of the culvert in the background. All of the debris washed up here. The temporary fence that was buried last night is in this shot.

This is closer up. The top end of the culvert is just visible.

This is looking out at the downstream side of the farm. The large wooden fence posts are my neighbor's. The creek overflowed the bank here and ran across his driveway and pasture out to the road.

Ironically, I'm waiting for the water truck to come and fill our swimming pool. Too bad I didn't have a way to channel all of the gutters on our house and outbuildings into the pool. It would be overflowing.

Broiler chicks moved to pasture

May 17, 2010

Last night at 8:30 I went out to close in the hens and found our bull
with his head stuck in the crotch of a maple tree in the pasture. I
tried to push his head up and out to no avail so I had to get the
pruning saw to cut off one side of the crotch. It was only about 4" in
diameter so I sawed through it in a couple minutes. When he was free,
he thought it would be fun to play. I had to give him a whack on the
nose with the wooden handle of the saw to settle him down.

Sugar's been giving us some problems. Now that she's nursing a calf
she doesn't think she needs to let down for us. After a few days of
hardness in the upper part of her udder, though, she finally let down
for me this afternoon. We got 3 gallons plus 2 this morning plus
whatever the calf ate. That's pretty damn impressive for a Jersey in
her 11th month of lactation, in my opinion. This is all good because
I hope to make about 30 pounds of butter in the next 7 weeks or so.
This is the best time of year to make butter because the fast-growing
grass makes for a good balance of omega-3 to omega-6 in the fat. 30
pounds should get us through the year.

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May 6, 2010

In my last post, I said I would tell the story of our new calf's arrival here at Liberty Farm. I didn't know it at the time, but T-Bone's arrival was not the real story. It turns out that Sugar was quite ill. The reasoning behind it is mostly educated conjecture so if any dairy folks are reading your comments are welcome. Anyway, here's the story.

About three weeks ago, Sugar forsook hay completely for fresh green grass. Subsequently, her milk production went from 3.5 gallons a day up to 5 gallons. Great! (we thought). About a week ago she started scouring (i.e. got diarrhea). This wasn't the typical loose manure that cows get when eating grass but pure liquid. We knew something was really wrong last weekend when she refused grain and her milk production dropped like a rock.

Here's where the conjecture comes in. The grass this time of year is high in moisture content and low in mineral content. It is also quite high in nitrogen (protein). The protein caused the spike in milk but the wet, mineral-deficient grass wasn't fibrous enough to maintain good rumen function (hence the scouring and lack of appetite for grain).

Our solution has been to keep her confined in the barn eating dry hay. She has been in there since Sunday afternoon and her appetite has returned with a vengeance. When we first brought her in we supplemented her with molasses and apple cider vinegar. I've been giving her probiotics every other day. Tuesday she was finally her usual self at the grain pan and she tried to eat the plastic tube that the probiotics come in. Her manure is still not the "cow pie" we like to see but it's definitely three dimensional. I'm confident that she will have developed a good fiber mat in her rumen by this weekend and plan to let her out on grass. If she stops eating hay altogether, though, we will confine her for part of the day.

As for milk, we really don't know what's going on because of the calf nursing. By the way, she has thoroughly adopted him and I suspect that she may be refusing to let down for us. We're getting very little milk for the house but the calf is fat and sassy. Once things are back to normal we'll begin separating the calf at night and milking in the morning. There are some training methods for cows that refuse to let down but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

April 29, 2010

Here are some photos that Jennifer took today. Man, when I look at our bull, Porter House, that long body brings to mind visions of ribeyes over charcoal! The new calf is named T-Bone. He's 1/2 Milking Devon and 1/4 Dutch Belted with a little Jersey and Holstein in there somewhere. His arrival here and Sugar's reaction warrant a blog post but I don't have time right now...

April 19, 2010

Our final lambs (I hope) were born during the night to Sonja. That makes eight total and she kept up this year's trend of having one of each sex. I penned mama and babies up together and checked both teats for milk flow. I think both lambs had already nursed. Mama was happy to get some good hay, fresh water and a little corn and oats. Next up is butchering last year's hoggets. They are both sold.

I'm sure any scientist reading this will scoff, but I think our house cow, Sugar, knows that this is the time of year she should be calving and she really wants a baby. If you've been following, you'll remember that we didn't breed her because we wanted to get her on any earlier calving schedule. (Last year she freshened at the end of June.) Anyway, she's been watching the lambs with much interest and lately we've noticed her grooming one of the rams. She licks his head and face just like she would a calf. We've got dibs on the next bull calf born at our favorite dairy. Hopefully, she'll readily adopt him.

Now that we're done lambing I've got wood to cut for next winter and garden preparation to do. Next weekend, though, another plumbing project looms. Ugh...