Milk hauling dilemma

Did you know that dairymen pay the milk company that buys their milk to haul it to their plant. This may change depending on the results of a study that is now being done. I hope it does. We pay nearly a thousand dollars a month for hauling.

What's that bug?

Or mammal or frog! I stumbled upon this site after reading Burning Silo today and realizing that although there are katydids all over the place here I had no idea what one sounds like.

Now I do, having listened to the recorded call on the site. Sadly the site is not very comprehensive, but it is fun anyhow.

Speaking of meth

Last year the guys saw a car in the barn driveway and ran down to accost the individual.
We are on a high hill with a winding dirt drive.
His excuses for being at our barn didn't exactly jibe so we called the police.
He claimed he was looking for Argersinger Road.
However in this picture you can see an abandoned house that we think he wanted to get into. I never mentioned it here, but the guy in the car had no teeth, just tiny rotting shells and stumps sticking up out of raw, ragged gums. He couldn't have been more than thirty. I figured at the time and still do that he was looking for a place to cook meth. Just a couple weeks before some fellows got caught cooking on a farm road near some friends' place.
We were scared for a while.
Still think twice about checking the barn after dark.
Oh, and he had a kid about nine with him.
Nice, huh?

Reasearch

Liz accidentally woke me up at four this morning when she got up to go to the fair. (Frankly, it hurt.) It was not time to milk, but since I was up anyhow, I went to work at my other job.....the Farm Side. Deadline is today (not unlike every other Wednesday) and I didn't even have a rough draft. I started doing research on the new federal regulations on 7% iodine solution. I didn't find good news I'm afraid. Instead of being able to go to the farm store to buy a gallon, we will have to look elsewhere, probably a pharmacy, for this much needed medicine. The drug will now be sold only by entities registered with the DEA and records will be kept of its distribution. (I don't suppose that will make it any cheaper.) The law is changing because depraved drug dealers use iodine to cook methamphetimine to sell to their customers. They already steal anhydrous ammonia fertilizer; now they have their fingers in the farm medicine cabinet and their chicanery is taking away a much needed tool for calf, lamb, and kid health.

When baby critters are born, their navels offer a veritable highway by which nasty pathogens can enter their bodies, often causing a disease called joint ill, or navel ill. Dipping the newborn navel in strong tincture of iodine disinfects it and helps it to dry out, closing that germy autobahn into the baby body. Joint ill is a really nasty disease causing swollen, damaged joints and often death. Thanks to all those entrepreneurial drug cookers our calves will now more vulnerable to it, at least until we find an acceptable (and hopefully useless in making meth) substitute.

In the course of my pre-milking research I learned all kinds of stuff about laws, drugs (the bad kind), drugs (the medicinal kind) and public hearings. More than I had wanted to know, really.


Then after all that clicking and ticking away on the keyboard I changed my mind and wrote about this story instead.

Oh, the weather outside is....

Perfect, like a crisp fall day but longer, drier, and just enough warmer to be delightful. Beck and I ran errands this morning and didn't even mind (much). Liz is over at this fair with the cows...and her friends, which is, after all, the real point of showing cattle....being with your friends, that is. It has nothing to do with ribbons (although we like them) and everything to do with who is there to hang around hollering "phone call" every time a critter raises her tail to take care of business. (As in, "Liz, there's a phone call for YOU," when it happens to be one of hers that is doing what cows do best.) And who is there to "accidentally" "slip" with the hose on the wash rack. Who has a set of ear clippers you can borrow. Who brought that amazing summer yearling...or junior two or aged cow.

***New sign in the Fonda Dollar General Parking Lot***

Or who can get away to take a walk down to the carnival section with you and pick up a corn dog. Which serious hottie down on the end of the barn stands up and belts out, "I've got a Brand New Girl Friend", every time the song with the same title comes on the radio that somebody else has blasting loud enough to be heard over the buzz of a dozen sets of cow clippers, the calliope jangle of the rides and the shuffle of hundreds of feet of the fairgoers admiring the cows and the suntanned country kids that grace the new barn.

Fair time is not without its hassles, skimpy passes, loss of exhibitor parking and things like that, but never stops being a great place to meet your friends and have fun. I am looking forward more than I have in a long time to seeing friends at our local fair in a couple of weeks. I am entering some vegetables and such, but only so I can get in as often as I want to see the folks. I know if I go over with the boss we will be able to spend three hours, never get bored, and never make it past the Cow Palace.

***Back to school '07, college girl version 102***

Who brought that animal in the house!!!!!

Wait a minute...it's kind of blurry

Aha, all is clear now...it was the farmer boy in the kitchen with the yellow cat!

Oat shocks in an Amish field

Foot and mouth update

This story brings up what I said below about Plum Island vs inland labs for this highly contagious material. Interesting that it is running the same day as the Farm Side on that topic.

Ha, revisited

Save a cow

Ha, not in my barn you don't

Foot and Mouth disease disaster

Sarpy Sam posted this about FMD with a link to this post about what is going on over in Great Britain. (These pictures are heartbreaking.) The whole affair is generating some serious anger, even here in the USA. It is pretty much a done deal that the disease escaped from a lab that was manufacturing vaccines under government auspices.
***Update...Here is more

Here in the United States such testing is carried out at Plum Island off Long Island, NY. This research facility is being moved to one of five inland sites in the near future at a cost to tax payers of an estimated $450 million.

Plum Island has never caused an outbreak, but is controversial because it is out in the water and easily approached by folks in boats. It is, however, a long way away from hoofed animals, which Kansas, Texas, and all the other proposed sites for the new lab, simply are not. In light of what happened with the outbreak I wonder about the advisability of moving the lab inland. Here is some good news though.

More reasons to avoid National Animal ID

From Drovers Magazine,
"A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report requested by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and released today found weaknesses in USDA’s plan to implement a national animal identification system. Harkin asked GAO to examine USDA’s animal ID plan in November 2005 after concerns were raised that USDA was not effectively implementing the system and not informing producers and livestock market operators how much the system will cost their operations. Harkin is chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry."

More,

• "The USDA lacks a comprehensive cost estimate or cost-benefit analysis for the implementation and maintenance of the animal ID system. In response to GAO’s recommendation to do so, USDA has now entered into a contract to have a cost estimate conducted.
• USDA has not prioritized the implementation of the animal ID system according to economic value of the species or those most at risk for specific animal diseases.
• USDA has not developed a plan to integrate the animal ID system with preexisting animal disease eradication programs for hogs, cattle, sheep or goats, thus duplicating effort and cost to producers.
• USDA has awarded 169 animal ID cooperative agreements totaling $35 million but has failed to adequately monitor the agreements or determine if the intended outcomes, for which the funds were used, were achieved. USDA has also not consistently shared the results of the agreements with state departments of agriculture, industry groups, or other stakeholders to allow them to learn from experience under the cooperative agreements.
• The timeframe for effective animal disease traceback from where animals have been raised is not clearly defined for specific species. Some contagious diseases need to be tracked and identified in a very short amount of time to limit further spread of the animal disease.
• Tracing animals from their original origin will be problematic given that USDA is not requiring critical information, such as the type of animal species, date of birth, or approximate age of animals to be recorded in the animal ID system. This information is necessary to limit the scope of an animal disease investigation.
• USDA has no benchmarks to determine if there is sufficient participation to achieve an effective animal ID system."

Just what farmers and ranchers have been saying all along.

For washing show cows

A cleaner, (but wetter) Frieland Chilt Blink

***Update...check out this cowside art at BuckinJunction

'Tis the season

***Photo by Liz (which is the first clue)

Summer hummer

No phone, no 'Net, big news

Except for the subject of the news story that happened while we were without outside communication, that about describes the weekend. (Our phone went out Friday during a teeny, tiny storm that was barely noticeable. The phone company didn't exactly fall all over themselves getting it fixed...although I am wildly grateful to the phone man who finally came out -on Sunday no less- and got it done.)

I was able to weather the lack of access to the outside world, (other than TV, which is worse than nothing), until the big story broke in a crawl across the MSNBC news show the boss was watching. The discovery of a new case of foot and mouth disease in Great Britain is huge and sorrowful news for farmers there and for agriculture around the world. The dreaded disease of ruminants is so incredibly contagious that it is recommended that people who visit farms abroad where there are outbreaks avoid visiting farms at home for some time. This is because they can transmit the disease via clothing, footwear and even possibly carry it in their lungs. It spreads through contact. Birds cart the virus from farm to farm. It even moves on the wind. Tires. People. Wild animals, pets, almost anything can bring it to the doorstep of a previously healthy farm.


I hope this outbreak is contained before it causes the kind of economic damage and heartbreak that the one in 2001 caused. Thousands of animals were killed, even working border collies from farms that had to kill their cows and sheep. The farmers simply couldn't afford to feed dogs that no longer had jobs. That outbreak was caused by a pig farmer feeding improperly cooked food waste from an airline that had visited an infected country. Officials are hard at work tracing the source of this one. My heart goes out to British farmers who must be worried beyond belief right now.


***Update....after jumping online to write this, I started reading through my favorite blogs and found that Sarpy Sam has several detailed posts on the topic. If it turns out that the virus did indeed "escape" from a government laboratory, the story takes on an even more horrific aspect.

Hmmmm

I wonder how many of these are walking around on earth today. Not cute little Holstein heifer calves, there are millions of them. Not daughters of Alan's show cow, Bayberry, there are two of those. Not granddaughters of of sweet Balsam, two of those too.

Nope, this calf has another interesting aspect, rather an amazing one in fact. This baby is an own daughter of the Hostein bull, Whirlhill Kingpin. Alan had trouble getting Bay bred last year. She was sick when she freshened and never got as vigorous as we would have liked. I think she had hardware disease and some issues with scarring from that. Anyhow, in desperation, the last chance breeding before we had to sell her, he chose Kingpin. For some reason we have nearly always gotten a calf when we used him. This time was no exception and the heifer was a nice bonus. The unusual part of the whole affair is that Kingpin was born in 1959. He was a popular bull in the sixties and early seventies. He has been dead a very long time. However, thanks to the wonders of liquid nitrogen and artificial insemination he has a brand new daughter right here in 2007. Now if Alan will just come up with a name for her, other than Ballistic Buffalo, which is his most recent, but unacceptable to both mom and the Holstein Association choice.

***(Suggestions for good names that begin with "B" would be most appreciated at this point.)

A suitable reaction to Michael Vick

Check this out if you would rather have stinky pond scum for a neighbor than someone like Michael Vick.

Ethnol and food prices

Here is an interesting article on the effect (or non-effect, depending on where you are standing) of ethanol production on food prices. I don't pretend to know what the truth is on most parts of the issue, but I think high corn prices have to impact dairy food prices. The story is much more complicated than that though. High grain prices, along with high everything else prices, contribute to farmers leaving the industry, which leads to more competition for the milk that is left. A year ago at this time we were paying $192 a ton for grain for the cows (before discounts). Now we are paying $259 for the same amount of grain. High grain costs also lead to surviving farmers feeding less of it, which lowers production and milk supply. As we speak, two farm families from this county (good friends of ours) have either sold the cows or scheduled the sale. These are folks who want to farm but can't because they got shellacked last year by bad weather and low milk prices while costs went up, in part due to ethanol production. This year milk prices are higher, but everything from corn to cotter pins costs more too. Everyone is playing catch up and not everyone can quite make it.Of course increasing exports matter too, as does increased demand.


Last year at this time we grossed between $13 and 14 per hundredweight of milk before deductions, (farmers pay to have a truck haul their milk to the plant, pay co-op dues, lab fees, state and national check off fees and any number of other deductions out of their milk check, so what you see is very much not what you get.) This year we are grossing nearly $21 per hundredweight. However, along with the increase in grain prices, partly driven by corn, fuel has nearly doubled. It takes a lot of that to grow food for over a hundred animals. . Despite careful management of natural fertilizers in growing our crops, when the milk leaves the farm so do nutrients from the farm, decreasing what is in the soil. Commercial fertilizer helps to replace that loss and to produce food for the cows. Fertilizer has more than doubled in price. We used to think we were getting nailed when we spent three or four thousand dollars in direct crop expense, (that is fertilizer, seed, and weed control). This year we are at almost eight thousand and will end up spending more than that. How much of the increase in fertilizer cost is fueled by increased demand for increased corn acreage for ethanol and how much by increased costs for fossil fuels? I can’t prove much either way, but both no doubt contribute.

Milk at the store around here was well under three bucks a gallon last year. Now even with a frequent buyer program it is over five dollars in some markets. Farmers going out of business because of high costs certainly curtails the milk supply, increasing demand and prices. Corn for grain is only one of those costs, but it is an important one. If ethanol production is part of the reason for grain price increases, it is part of the reason for higher food costs. Here is more on the matter.

The final word

On the organic vs conventional debate. Of course it won't really be the final word, but this is the best written and most comprehensive article I have seen on the subject. It is long, but well worth the time it takes to read it, as Jackie Anver obviously knows of what she speaks. I wish I could write as well.

Here are a couple of excerpts from her column.

Organic milk certainly is not fresher than regular milk. Regular milk is pasteurized and has a shelf life of about 20 days. Organic milk is ultrapasteurized, a process that is more forgiving of poor quality milk, and that increases the shelf life of milk to about 90 days. Some of the Horizon organic milk boxes I've seen at Costco have expiration dates in 2008! There is a powerful incentive for retailers to put the ultrapasteurized organic milk on the shelf just before the expiration date, so consumers will think the organic milk is as fresh as the regular milk. After all, consumers are paying twice as much for the organic product.

Socially conscious consumers have a right to know that "organic" doesn't mean what it did 20 years ago. According to the Oct. 16, 2006, cover story in Business Week, when you eat Stonyfield Farms yogurt, you are often consuming dried organic milk flown all the way from New Zealand and reconstituted here in the U.S. The apple puree used to sweeten the yogurt sometimes comes from Turkey, and the strawberries from China. Importation of organic products raises troubling questions about food safety, labor standards, and the fossil fuels burned in the transportation of these foods.

I personally will not buy organic produce or food, because I feel that stores are deliberately misleading and overcharging me for something that is at least no different and at worst inferior, to regular, plain old, food. I have gone home without potatoes when our local Price Chopper had only organic on the shelf.