Saturday

It was an eventful day today. I went out for early barn check to look in on 114, who STILL hasn’t had a calf. I also checked 75 and Mento, who are due the 24th. I didn’t see any babies anywhere.
When Ralph went over about an hour later there was a little heifer calf running around the barn and she was all dried off and had obviously been there a while. She belonged to 75, whose name is Apricot.
Now, I will admit I didn’t turn on all the lights, but how the heck did I miss a whole calf? I mean the barn isn’t THAT big. Now we are looking for good "A" names for her.
Liz got up, even though it is her day off, and got baby all dried off, put into a coat, dipped her navel and gave her a bottle of colostrum. Hope she comes along all right. A heifer was real welcome after the string of huge bull calves we have been having.

On a less positive note, our milk marketing cooperative held its last annual meeting, after voting to disband last month. It was a pretty emotional time, as many of the members’ families have been shipping milk to Canajoharie Cooperative since their grandparents were farming. We have been shipping there for sixteen years. It was just another victory of the big agribusiness companies over the actual producers of our nation’s food. We still haven’t decided where we will send our milk, although we have to start pushing the pencil pretty hard next week, as we have to change by the first of April or be stuck getting the lowest price around from the new co-op. It is very hard to know what to do.

On the bright side issue we won a "Super Milk" award and an Allied Co-op Quality award, which of course makes us happy. You can’t eat them or pay bills with them, but they sure look good on the office wall.

calves
dairy