Grandma Says

Eat your greens!

Phone Call

At not quite midnight. "Why are there cows on the lawn?"


"Cows? What cows?" (The cows are all but a couple indoors).


"Well, heifers then, it's dark, I can't see what they are, but they are all over the lawn.


"Must be the heifers off the hill pasture. All right, your dad is still up and dressed and I'll be right down."


Rustle from the bed beside me. "Oh, wait, he's not up after all. I never heard him come upstairs."


Race downstairs...well, gimp and limp...as fast as we can. Throw Jade's Carhartt on over my robe and sweats. (Thanks Jade, it is really warm.) Add rubber boots, umbrella and flashlight. Good to go.


My main contribution was to tell the guys I think there are seven of them to find and hold the flashlight. Actually there are supposed to be eight, but we couldn't really count them in the dark and rain anyhow. 


Thanks to their instinct to stick in a herd, unless we missed the stupid Jerseys, any that didn't get caught in the round up will be standing by the gate waiting to be let in. The two Jerseys are the most Godawful bunch quitters I have ever seen. Whenever I do a head count, there will be the requisite number of black and white ones, two bright red milking shorthorns and no little brown cows.

Anyhow, we are not sorry the boy got laid off for a week and stopped off at his girl friend's place on his way home from Jersey and the Big City. His timing was perfect. The escapees were just heading down the driveway when he arrived and stopped them with his truck. 


***Photos are still from the Friday bird count. We sure are lucky to have such pretty territory to count over.

Shiverish but Sunny

It is. Down into the mid-twenties last night, making it a very pleasant thing to turn on the electric heater this morning. It is tiny and it labors mightily to take the edge off the cold in the kitchen. Just now it is my best friend.

Not much of great interest happening here. We milk the cows. We feed the cows. Then we milk the cows and feed the cows. Somewhere in between the boss cleans the barn and fixes a seemingly never ending string of broken water bowls.

Feeding them with wheelbarrows is getting old fast, but on the other hand it is getting the fat old lady into shape, being wheel-barrower in chief and all.

There is a big wheel barrow. There is a little wheel barrow.

The boss brings down a bucket load of haylage with the skid steer and dumps half into them. He takes the big one and I take the little one and we distribute largess to the ladies.

Then he dumps in the other half of the load and I feed out both while he gets another bucket full.. It is heavy. There are ramps. There are cow heads reaching and slamming and grabbing on all the corners and ramps as everybody wants theirs NOW.

However, I find a very positive side to me doing at least some of the feeding. I actually know all the cows, who is dry, who is milking hard, which are still growing heifers that need a little extra, and I adjust their dinners accordingly.

Scotty gets a great big pile.....

And Lemmie, and Camry, and Blitz and Mandy....Not so much Zinnia, who is almost dry and about the size of a pick up truck. I KNOW that when they get their morning feed outdoors she stomps around and grabs more than her share.

I won't say that this has increased milk production, but they were dropping really fast and now the slide has stopped and they are holding. Works for me.

Creepy

Simon, the unlikely, elderly, best hunter on the farm

Fog this morning. Couldn't see more than the vaguest outline of the heifer barn, which is right next to the house. I worry with the crew out on the roads so early; Alan off to milk a lot of cows somewhere else and Liz on the way here to milk ours.

Last night bringing the cows in by moonlight was an interesting experience. It is lovely out there in the moonglow. Even the mud turns all silver and shines. However, dear little Rosie, the milking shorthorn heifer, has turned into a lunatic, who charges anyone she sees.

Oddly her roan and white coloring blends in with the darkness much better than the stark black and white of the Holsteins so watching for her is problematic.

You kind of have to rely on the sound of hurried hoof steps in the mud to tell you when this juggernaut of naughty (and dangerous) bovine is coming at you.

However, in the dark the sounds of the cows walking echo off the horse trailer and the corn crib and the heifer barn. Sloppy, soupy, mud-song-surround sound.

I was kind of nervous about it when I got left behind, being fence while waiting for the last few cows. Everyone else went in to let cows in.

Then the last few cows surprised me as I was shutting the big gates...old lady with a broken foot, deep, sticky mud, big, heavy red gate that has to be dragged...I wasn't moving very fast.

From right behind me I heard a soft moo. Oops, the cows weren't all down yet. (Even with a good flashlight it is really hard to see them). There was Mandy...and the two Jersey heifers...and Rosie.

Who took one look at me and ran like heck...to get away from me.

Hmmmm......

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate

Milk? This is really cool. The gentleman who played Charlie in the movie, Dr. Peter Ostrum, is an upstate NY large animal veterinarian.

I did not know this before I read the article, but Liz has met him. Anyhow, this story is fascinating and the videos are great.

I watched the one about deciding whether or not to operate on a DA in an older cow and it was amazingly well done. That is JUST what a visit to a conventional dairy by a bovine practitioner is like.

Here is a YouTube channel with many more excellent large animal medicine videos.

If you watch the one on pregnancy checking you can see just what we did yesterday, ultrasound and all. Of course we have quite a lot fewer animals, but the management is about the same, just smaller scale.

Eastside Lewisdale Gold Missy

Baby pic of our Bama Breeze,

who will never go to Expo,

but she is a nice cow just the same

Supreme champion at World Dairy Expo.

Why do I always love it when a Holstein wins it? Cow partisanship I guess. Someday.....someday....maybe we will get to attend WDE. They are said to have had a record number of entries this year. Imagine all those beautiful cows all together in one place. Wow.

Here are a couple of pics of her.

Fifth Place

Junior heifer calf...Fonda Fair...Bling

No complaints. The competition is fierce at Fonda and there are a lot of nice cattle at the show this year despite the flood. Congratulations to everyone who made it possible for there to be a fair this year and to all the exhibitors who dared.

The Fog Comes In

And no little cat feet about it. More like a sensation of cold, wet, fish strapped all over your body...of breathing through a soggy, slightly moldy blanket. It seeps right into the house....Erk.

It rained hard again yesterday, not helpful in any way.

We turned the cows into a new field though, and of course they didn't really want to come back out. All that lush, delicious grass you know.

So the boss and I hiked up to call them....at least they didn't make us go into the field with them... Anyhow as we walked along, a great whirling flock of bobolinks rose up...the most I have ever seen in one place at one time. It was pretty cool.

They kept us company while we stood in the lane and hollered for cows and it was pretty nice. Even if is was a not so welcome harbinger of what is coming and soon......

This and That

Our "feral" visitor kitty

The cows did reasonably well at the fair, not too surprising since there were very few animals this year. Bling won junior heifer calf, which delighted all. She is such a sweet little girl. Rosie won grand champion milking shorthorn, but she doesn't get any kudos because she is the only shorty at the fair. She is being a very bad girl and dragging everybody all over the place, so she may not get to go to Fonda. She even took Alan for a run around the ring and the show barn and he is a pretty rugged guy.

Chrome came in second in her class. Moments was grand champion Jersey. Wish Liz had entered her at Fonda. She is out of the lesser of her two lines of Jerseys...her mama had some serious flaws, but I always liked her because she was such a powerful, big-framed cow. Moments has enough of that to be strong and correct and she is not wing shouldered and her udder is high and tight instead of almost hitting the floor. Monday did okay too and was reserve senior Holstein....although the boss just got up and told me that she stomped Alan pretty good last night too. They are big animals and there is so much commotion and noise at the show. She has never been shown before...and someone was shooting off explosives while the show was on...lots of fun.

All and all not bad. Now I can't wait until they are all home.......

Fog Light

Up way before the light today, disturbing dreams of animals that need care, and dogs gone by, calling out for me to save them. It was so real and then to wake and find that Two Bears does not need to be fed, hasn't in twenty years or more, and never will again. A grand dog of history but gone, long, long gone.....

Two Bears, taken in Colorado, many moons ago

Nick though, Nick is glad of my early morning and his hours-before-normal breakfast time. Glad too that Liz picked up some samples of fancy dog food at TS the other day and he can have a taste...and a spoon of last night's meat loaf gravy....nom, nom, nom.....

Rooster crows at 5:06. Indigo bunting tunes up at 5:32 and does not stop. At all. I want some of what he's drinking. I could use that much energy.

Fog is soggy grey right now, drooping and dingy like it needs to be bleached and hung on the line in the sun. S'okay, when the sun gets around to getting up it will light up like a pearl and glow with silver warm light. The fog muffles the sounds of trains and traffic and makes them seem mysterious and cool....rather than just noisy and annoying....

No cows; couldn't milk if I wanted to. The fog shelters them from prying eyes, sleepy out there somewhere on the hill. They will not come down any more without being pursued, not even for their tasty tithe of morning grain and the water in the big blue tub. They are not liking the mud that ALL THIS DARNED RAIN has made. It hurts their poor feet. Old Mandy cow is being kept in the temporarily vacant heifer pen so she doesn't have to make the trudge to pasture. She does not much appreciate the gesture and leans her long, black, self over the high, red gate, calling sadly and sticks her nose in the window at me....OVER the plywood that keeps heifers from ripping out the window. She is one tall cow I'll tell you!

This much water from ONE rain....there have been many others

We put the two young jerseys out with the cows a couple of weeks ago. What a pair of sixes! They travel together as if yoked like oxen, brown on brown, and always in trouble. Quick to it too; they can dart in the barn door and run around like dervish fools in less time than it takes old folks to hurry to close the door.

We are the walking wounded here, alas. After all summer of being the broken-footed, useless gimp, I am surrounded by folks in worse shape than I am. Becky is laid low by a vicious summer cold, that is dripping and gripping its way through the house. Liz sprained her ankle while feeding her horse and is having a miserable time milk inspecting, working here and trying to get ready for the fairs. Alan went out to change a tire yesterday and put his hand in a wasp nest...just as he was finishing up. His ear was stung eight times and his wrist three. Oh, my the swelling... Yow!

How I hate those nasty mixed vespids. Sting first and ask questions later. And they build their nests in the damnedest places and defend them to the death...no matter whose.

Well, as we listen to the sucking sound of our economy going down the drain, I leave you with good wishes for the day. Enjoy the indigo buntings and good dogs in your world, while the great ones in Rome fiddle to the tune of the flashing flames.

Dreaming of Cows

Cows all day....nightcows capering through all the hours of sleep and dreams (who needs mares anyhow?). I dreamed of Balsam last night; Alan's old show cow. Dreamed she was held hostage in a warehouse somewhere in the city, ready to have a calf. Unkind men were trying to put her in some kind of squeeze chute, but they kept missing and catching her in the middle instead of by the neck.

She was all riled up and panting and frightened and I was mad about it all. I walked up to her where she was hiding in the warehouse corner, put my arm around her, and led her wherever she needed to be. She was glad of me and wrapped her neck around me and stretched out her mile-long tongue to pull me closer.

And you know, I don't think anyone is ever going to kidnap the old girl and hold her in a warehouse, but she is just that lovely dovey. Whenever she is turned out of her tie stall to go to pasture she waits to be petted before she leaves. And she loves Alan and will wrap her big neck around him if he walks up to her outside to hold him there.....

I'm glad that with the coming of the dawn the dream let go of me and the bad guys let go of our poor hostage cow...... now she is back in her pasture asleep in the woods or gobbling down haylage, oblivious entirely to her adventurous affair of the night.

Cows Hate Mud

So you can just imagine how they are loving this summer. We pay extra when we buy their grain to have a special kind of zinc included to strengthen and improve their hooves and help them fight lameness. Still a few of them are getting tender feet just from walking in the godawful swamps produced by all the rain.

They also get a fancy (and expensive) mineral pack added to their grain so that every bite they eat helps them stay healthy and do the best they can. Their selenium is the best organically derived kind too. (Meanwhile their valets buy generic vitamins at Wally World).

A balanced diet is so important to them, so we shop for the best grain we can find.

I Guess

If I didn't have a heart attack yesterday I am probably not going to have one right away.

I got sick of the bull not having any water. The water tub the boss gave him was too small and I was always filling it. And he is a snorty, snotty little bugger and I don't like going around him, but I had to get right up close to fill his tub every day.. I decided to take action, by myself, as no one was home but me. Mistake. Big mistake.

I put a big water tub in with him and filled it. The whole time I was running the hose the little creep was threatening me. As soon as it was full he drank what he wanted and then started working it over with his head...thank God he doesn't have horns.

An hour later I went out to check him and he had broken out the top board of his pen (which had previously been cracked) and was only held in by boards up to his brisket. All he had to do to get out was step over...he wouldn't have even had to lift his feet very high.

I called the boss, who was taking some paper work to his aunt, and stood on the porch with a stick, hoping to not see him rambling down the driveway before help arrived.

He stayed in at least and the guys moved him over to the cow barn on a halter. It was pretty much of a rodeo. He is just a little bull, but he is not nice, no sirree.

We were going to put him in a pen with some heifers, but decided instead to put him in a stanchion and put a ring in his nose....which was done. We were kind of concerned about what he might do if he jumped out or tore up another pen.

He greeted me when I went in to milk last night with threatening bellows and snorting. I was really, really, really glad that he was locked up by his head, the stanchion was tied shut and he was sporting a little chain just in case.

Then just as I was putting the machine on Bayliner, Liz let out a yell and I saw (and heard) a wall of brown, thundering down the manger.

That is when, if I was going to have that heart attack, it would have happened.

I screamed for the boss, who milks in the back of the barn and hollered at the girls to get out of the way. And looked for a pitchfork.

Then Liz called over, "Mom, it's not the bull, it's just Shamrock."

Shamrock is about the same size as the bull and she was having a field day racing up and down the barn, but she is just a Jersey heifer. It took a while, because she was having fun, but Liz caught her and put her out in a pen with her half sister, Shameless, who was put there to make room for the bull.

Time for a sigh of relief, right?

Heck no! In all the excitement, my cow Asaki (read that out loud....Rebecca named her in a name the calf contest a while back) blew out of her stanchion and little Cinnamon jumped through a stall and in with her great big yearling older sister, Rio.

Fun, fun, fun. Asaki ran up the back manger. Cinnamon was terrified, although thankfully Rio was a real lady about the whole affair and just licked her little sister. It took a while before everybody was caught and put back where they belong.

I am too old for this. I was ALWAYS too old for this. Where do I get my (one way) ticket to some place with a beach, something cold with a little umbrella, and maybe some interesting shells and fish and birds? I think I am ready. No, scratch that. I KNOW I am ready.

Cowboy or Fool

You decide...leaning toward fool myself. Liz took the photo with her camera. The cow is the fool's old show cow, Bayberry, who seems to suffer fools gladly.

Indoor Cows..they like it that way

Let me i-i-i-i-i-n-n...it's hot out here!!!!

This study on the preferences of dairy cows showed that during summer months, when offered the choice between going out to graze or staying in a free stall barn with access to a total mixed ration, they stayed in the barn over 91% of the time.

Ours show the same preferences. When it is blazing hot and the fans are running or raining or cold or windy or anything but perfect outside they want to stay in. They look pretty on pasture and grass and exercise are good for them, but they aren't dumb. The like fans, and shelter from the weather just as much as we do. So maybe those free stall cows in their confinement housing are happier than our perceptions when we drive by might make them seem.....

You KNOW You're a Farmer If

You are flattered when you buy a new brand of hair spray and your twenty-something daughter says, "Let me know if this is any good, okay....."

"Of, course," you say, "Why?" (You know her carefree ponytail hair style doesn't usually include hair spray.)

"It's almost time for the shows and the fair. I need something good to do top lines."

Ri-i-i-i-i-ght.......and there goes that fashionista moment.

***For folks who don't show dairy cows, the top line is the ridge of hair on the backbone that is sprayed up and trimmed flat to give the cow a nice, sharp, smooth appearance.

Yeah, she wants to see if my new hairspray is good enough for her cow.

Don't I feel fancy now...

The Blitz-o-Mat

An old pic of Blitz, much in need of a bath

This morning bloomed sharp and cool, with whistling winds and bright, thin sunshine. However, for the past few days it has been blazing hot and soggy humid. We people have handled it pretty well. Lots of water and we're good to go. Been satisfying to get at least a little field work done.

However the cows hate the hot, and suffer the miseries of the damned. Many of them still have a little winter coat left on after the cold, wet, late spring we've had. When it hit ninety they stood with heads hanging, panting like bellows, and drooling. Milk production dropped by over a hundred pounds a day.

Tuesday night Liz clipped some of them, which helped a bit. Blitz was especially miserable though. She is a big old white show cow, a very spoiled baby. She got a prompt hair cut as soon as she came in the barn.

However, after milking she was still suffering, and stood alongside the milk house step, drooping like a hothouse flower. Alan had one of those light bulb moments and grabbed the milk house garden hose. Then he trained cold spray on Blitz's freshly clipped sides and back until sheets of water sluiced to the ground all around her.

She never even flinched. As a long time show cow she has had hundreds of baths and she knows what a hose is for. She stood there with a demeanor of sheer bliss for as long as he trained the spray on her. Later I gave her a rerun when he had to go scrape the alleys.

She didn't move until all the other cows were gone and the call of green grass overcame the call of the water.

Last night there she was at the end of milking, standing in virtually the same four hoof prints looking for another shower. Guess that must be the Blitz-0-Mat.

Orange Upstart

As far as the cardinal is concerned this is HIS feeder. He is picking up sunflower seeds and shelling them, before tenderly feeding them to his lady love. What's up with this orange guy hanging around slurping up oranges with his girl friend? ******Photo taken through kitchen window so not too clear...and I can't stand very close to the window or they all fly away in a huff.****

Much excitement in the barn last night. Bama Breeze (still with us, FC, and a big, sweet, pet) had a gorgeous half-shorthorn heifer calf and brought it right down to the barn. The new baby is the color of rich, dark, mahogany with lots of bright, white bling to flash on feet and flanks. Right about now I am kinda wishing I hadn't given Bama to Alan.

Of course pseudo-mom and hard-working calf thief, Zinnia, decided that it was hers and raised holy Hell. Wouldn't come in the barn, charged the boss when he brought the baby in. Thrashed around like a fool in a frenzy running around and making us crazy, while Bama calmly followed her baby into the barn and behaved herself.

Then big Z began to bellow.

And bellow.

And bellow.

She stands in my string and is one of the first two cows I milk, so I got the full force of it...and you can hear a cow calling for miles. You can hear one real well for feet too....and I have to actually lean on her flank to put the milker on, so there weren't even feet between us. Ow, my poor ears! She cocked a leg at me menacingly when I went in to milk her.

And bellowed some more. Normally she really likes me (can't stand the boss) and is gentle as a great big dog. Last night it was hard to even get her attention so she wouldn't kick me. She really wanted that stolen calf.

She bawled all through milking. We tried playing Sherry, but even that didn't help...although when Liz sends me the cell phone video of the boss dancing to it in the barn aisle you are in for something...I am not sure exactly what...but something for sure.

By the time milking was over my head felt as if it was going to explode and it seemed as if we had milked a thousand cows.

Twice.

If the federal government needs a good substitute for water boarding, all they have to do is come to the farm with a sound recorder and show Zinnia a calf. Add in Chrome, Liz's calf, who screams to be fed whenever she isn't eating (and she can eat as much as three full-grown cows I swear) and alleged terrorists would be falling all over themselves to confess..

So of Course

On day two of out to pasture the cows were just awful. Several crawled under the gate to get into the barnyard, where the gate down to the road was open as it was tanker day. Then they ran around like loons rather than go back where they belong. I think it took me a hour to hang up one load of laundry because of chasing the fools.

The day was just one interruption after another, with silly cows, phone calls, and assorted other events keeping me hopping. I did get about half the Farm Side written.....

On the bright side the Baltimore orioles are back, as are the chimney swifts. We were just talking about putting oranges out for the orioles and not half an hour later I heard one and then another. Then while I was chasing rude show cows around the barn yard I saw a couple blazing across the sky. So lovely!

Hopefully over the next few days the cows will get the idea and start staying where they belong. At least Gracie came in the barn for morning milking quite nicely and barely bothered at all at night.

Cows Out

Yesterday was the day. The girls went to pasture for the first time this year. It was peaceful compared to some years. Instead of keeping them in the barnyard while we let them all out of the barn, one by one, we opened the gate to the temporary field before we started.

At first they congregated in the barnyard, fighting off their grudges and wandering around. Then they saw that gate and all but the dumbest young ones were gone.

They didn't mess around with their usual running up and down the hill either, but just fell to grazing like it was their job....oh wait ...

When time came to put them back in the barn all that petting and fussing and calling them Boo Boo all winter paid off. Although we never did get wild and crazy Gracie back in the barn (she will probably come in on her own this morning and be glad of the opportunity), the other youngsters came in real well and let us talk them into their stalls without fuss.

Even Egypt (Boo Boo) and Carlene, who stand side by side, went right to each other's stalls and waited to be locked up. A little talking and pushing and they went back where they belonged. Lucky gets the gold star though. She ran right to her stall and started eating. I couldn't believe it.

For a few weeks it will take a crew to bring them in, as we stall train all those youngsters, but they sure did have a nice time yesterday and came in all fat with green grass and shiny with sun polish.

Here's hoping the grass in the other pastures gets going so we can start rotating and turning out yearlings...the temporary field has only single strand electric and the babies aren't fence broke. Thus we prefer to turn them out in the big heifer pasture, where there is both barbed wire and electric, for the first few weeks. Then they are sure to see the fence before they crash through.