Rain and Breakage

The men got some hay in the barn yesterday,.... two good sized loads. They were working on the third and hoping for the fourth when the bale kicker STB at the same time as a bolt came out of the tie rod end on the 930 Case, which Alan was driving, causing it to cease to steer. So haying came to an abrupt halt, as the parts folks were enjoying holiday weekend.

And our grain company fired our nutritionist recently and sent in a new guy. His sole effort was to leave his card in the milkhouse and go on his merry way. Didn't bother to come to the house or look behind the barn for the guys.

A salesman who can't even pull out his phone to tell you he is at the barn doesn't really want to talk to you in my opinion and isn't much use.
It was a last straw sort of thing.
Our old nutritionist was the reason we started buying from the particular company in the first place. He actually understood the whole concept of a farm needing to make money to stay in business. When grain got high and milk prices plunged he managed to formulate a bare bones dairy ration which got some milk out of the cows without costing three hundred bucks a ton. We had been feeding it for quite a while.

However, even that feed had crept up in price and our pellets were being made at a new mill and were breaking down into powder. It is hard as heck to feed uneven grain when you feed by volume, which we do....so we were getting close to changing anyhow. Liz only needs to get a computer that will run her ration software and she can formulate our feed, which would allow us to feed commodities without worrying about anything.

The firing was the last straw, so the boss went and got a pick up load of soy and corn meal, and Liz broke out a bag of top dress minerals and we are winging it. Although the cows are milking okay on the new stuff some of them don't want to come in the stall for it.

That is where the wonderful new hay comes in. Offer a stubborn one a handful of that and she can't get herself in line fast enough. Time will tell how this all works out but I am getting sick of companies that fire employees who make a real effort for farmers. This happened once before to us and the cows dropped on production like a rock...so did our bottom line. That grain company sold out to the big guys not so much later. It boggles my mind that they do that kind of thing, because I guarantee that they will lose a lot of customers over it.

And it started raining last night and rumbled and grumbled all night long. It has been dry and we needed it but I hope it gets itself over with and sunny skies and functional machinery return.