Monday May 28, 2007

Today was calves rotation. I got up at 5:30 and was at the dairy by 6. Fed calf milk replacer in buckets to about 10 calves. Helped bucket train one by placing my fingers in her mouth so she would start sucking, then placing my hand in the bucket of formula so she would drink it. Got formula all over and it is sticky. Walked through a barn with cows close to calving to check for signs of impending labor and delivery. Signs include bagging up (udder swelling, teats swelling), relaxation of muscles around tail, “perching” (front legs in stall, hind legs in aisle), and tail held up in the air (labor has begun). Cleaned some cow barns today. Pushed a lot of cow manure around with a snow shovel. Beth Ann (the woman I was helping today) drives the little bulldozer and it has an aisle-scraper attachment made out of old tractor tires. All the manure gets scraped out of the aisles into this “pond” behind the barn. There are signs up that say “DROWNING HAZARD.” Definitely don’t want to drown in manure. There is another small barn called the green house that is for calves older than 8 weeks or so. After they’ve been weaned off the milk replacer (“up on the hill,” i.e. in the hutches) they get moved to the green house. Young heifers get hay and grain, older heifers get TMR (don’t know what that stands for yet, but it’s a damp, chopped grass/hay stuff, that smells sweet) and grain. The babies on the hill get sweet feed mixed with pellets; the heifers in the green house get pellets only. The pellets are a custom mix. We had a break around 9:30, which was nice, and I met another student name Katy. After the break, Beth Ann and I bottle fed colostrum to twin calves that were born yesterday. Both are heifers, one is very small and the other is quite large.
Large:Small:

After that we moved them up on the hill. Neither are very steady on their legs yet and I don’t think they’ve figured out how to go inside the hutches, so I hope they stay warm tonight. There are three calves up there that have just been weaned and I think I might choose one for my project calf. There is one that is very dark brown rather than black, and her whole head is solid except for a comma-shaped patch of white over one of her eyes.
Another of the weanlings:

After we moved them we fed the heifers in the green house and cleaned their barn. Then we drove out to a back field and picked up some gates that were on fields that weren’t being used anymore. The gates will be used to make pens for the show heifers. I came back to my room for lunch, and after lunch, we gave rabies vaccines and 2 mixed vaccines. I got to give all 3, which was cool. I also got kicked by a calf today, not too hard, but hard enough to leave a bruise.

Later in the afternoon I went with Claire and Eric to play with the new foals. The bay is called Newt and he’s about a month old. (Bay is the name for the color of a horse that is brown with a black mane and tail.) The black one is called Charlie and he’s only 4 days old!

Newt:

Charlie:

Newt's favorite game: chase Charlie!
One of the stallions in the barn: