Wednesday, July 24, 2007

Wednesday is Dr. Henderson’s day to do pregnancy checks and check any other cows that need looked at by the vet. The big excitement of the morning came when he checked the heifer Anna bred last time I had herd health, and she was pregnant. Then we had vet discussion, and we talked about how cows that stay in the milking herd too long because they aren’t getting pregnant cost a lot of money. We figured this out by looking at the average days in milk. If the average is 210 and the goal is 180, it costs the farmer more than $170,000. This is because the longer a cow stays in milk, the less milk she tends to make, so the income from her milk probably doesn’t pay her bills at the farm.

In the afternoon, Ev took us on a driving tour of the Quebec mucklands. These are very flat, low-lying areas of soil that was deposited when the region was underwater. They are extremely fine, rich soils and they are used only for growing a handful of vegetables: onions, carrots, celery, and lettuce. It was very interesting to see those crops growing in big fields on the side of the road the same way you see corn and soybeans in most other rural areas (at least the ones
I’ve been in).

Baby lettuce.
Harvesting green onions.
Irrigation.
Lettuce field. If you look closely you'll see a lot of lettuces heads didn't make the cut to be sold in stores.
Carrots or celery, I forget which. They look pretty similar.