Remedial 4-H

Monday and Tuesday, July 16-17, 2007

We spent Monday getting ready to go to the fair, packing straw and hay and supplies and equipment into the little trailer. Then we went to the fairgrounds to set up. The place where the animals are now has a layer of sawdust followed by several layers of straw, all packed down. It seems very comfortable! There will be 7 cows. Anna is showing a young cow that the farm just purchased from UVM. Blake is showing a summer yearling, Pinky; Kristy and Katy are showing winter calves, Tweddle Dee and Tweedle Dum, I’m showing Cricket, and finally, Katharina (Wanda’s 7 year old daughter) is showing Clarabell, a Holstein spring yearling, and Starlight, a Jersey spring calf.

That pile of straw is from half a bale. It fluffs up a lot!

We had to borrow some sawdust from the show ring...

Packing the layers...

Ready for cows!

Tuesday morning was spent making the final preparations for taking the animals to the fair, like packing the tack box, making sure the trailer was clean, getting more hay, and stuff like that. there were also two calves, both heifers, FINALLY! We checked on the heifer that was calving and she was doing fine so we went to get hay and when we got back, the calf was on the ground. That one was tiny, probably less than 50 pounds. I had no problem picking it up and carrying it to the calf pen. The other calf was born backwards but alive, luckily. It was much bigger, so big that Katy and I could barely lift it off the ground to get it to the other pen.

After lunch we finally loaded all the animals onto the big stock trailer and went to the fair! First, we tied them up in the straw while we got the rest of the stuff unloaded and our little base camp set up.

Then, we had to give all of them baths. After that we got to relax a little bit. Our goal while we’re there is to make it look like none of the cows poop, ever. Later in the evening, I helped Wanda clip Cricket again, this time a special way to make her look slender and angular (the way a dairy cow is supposed to look). We clipped along her shoulder blade to emphasize the angle, and along her hind legs to make them look slender. On our way back from the clipping station to our area, we stopped to let a crowd of fair-goers pass, and Cricket greeted each and every stroller, reaching out so each toddler could pat her nose. She is the model public relations committee!

Wednesday-Sunday, July 11-15, 2007

I was on calves this week. We’ve had quite a run of bulls lately. Friday, we finally had a heifer! The last foal of the season was born Saturday, after a grueling week and a half of foal watch by the equine students. I saw Claire for about 15 minutes when I got home before she left for foal watch again. Horse people are notoriously more interested in being there for the birth of a foal than cow people are in being there for the birth of a calf, but ironically, mares are notoriously harder to catching foaling than cows are to catch calving. A mare about to calve will wait until the person watching goes to the bathroom, while a cow will lay down and look at the person to say, "Don't just stand there, PULL!"

I've been working with my show heifer every afternoon. For the show, they have to walk very slowly, and when they stop, their front feet are supposed to be square (right next to each other) and the hind leg opposity the judge is supposed to be a little farther forward so the judge can see the developing udder. She’s coming along quite well and everyone is looking forward to the fair.

Monday and Tuesday, July 9-10, 2007

We had a 2-day artificial insemination (AI) training class. AI is how all of the cows at our farm are bred. It's safer, cheaper, and allows the farm to use better quality bulls without paying for the cost of their care. However, learning the technique is not easy. It’s very frustrating. You have to palpate the cervix through the rectum and then manipulate the cervix to place it over the tip of the insemination gun. The diagrams make it look easy, but most cows haven’t read any literature on bovine reproductive anatomy. These are all the supplies. (From left to right, liquid nitrogen cooler holds deep frozen semen, heated thermos holds warm water for thawing semen, small bottles of lube for outside your glove, baby powder for inside your glove, paper towels for cleaning the vulva, blue shoulder-length gloves.)

This is the shape you make your hand when you first enter the rectum. It reminded us of sock puppets.

Hands-"in" learning!

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Roxanne and I went to Montreal today. We chose a few sights to see, bought the all-day tourist card for the metro, and had a great time. We ended up mostly looking at churches, St. Joseph’s Oratory in Mount Royal park and Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in downtown. Another church we tried to see, the Notre Dame Cathedral, was closed because someone was getting married there.

But both of the ones we saw were beautiful. St. Joseph's stands very impressively at the top of a huge hill.

The interior was surprisingly modern.

MQW was modeled after St. Peter’s in the Vatican City.

I guess we were tired when we made it to the historic district because we didn’t walk around much there. I enjoyed figuring the whole trip out by myself and being able to read French and find our way around.

This was just a very fancy hotel that I thought looked cool.

Dairy in the News

Don't Cry over rBST Milk

This is a link to an editorial that ran in the New York Times June 29, 2007. I strongly encourage everyone to read it, because it gives a sparkling clear argument in favor of milk produced with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), otherwise known as bovine growth hormone. Basically, farmers can produce more milk with fewer cows, and the author of the editorial, Henry Miller, lists a number of benefits that arise from that simple fact. What it comes down to is that fewer resources, whether they be food, water, or fuel, are used to produce the same amount of milk when rBST is used, and that makes rBST environmentally friendly. Milk that is rBST-free is indistinguishable from milk produced using rBST; when you purchase milk labeled "rBST-free" you place your trust in the farmer who produced that milk, because there is no test to tell if milk has been produced with rBST.

Coincidentally, our farm received a letter from Agri-Mark, the co-op that buys our milk, telling us that they are having a hard time marketing our milk to processors (the companies that turn raw milk into dairy products) because we use rBST.

Please do not get drawn into thinking that rBST-free milk is better because it is more expensive. Do not buy milk or dairy products labeled rBST-free. You will simply be supporting false advertising.

(Image from nytimes.com)

Don't Cry over rBST Milk

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Happy 4th of July!

Forget about "knee high by the 4th of July," we're waist high!

I milked with Neil on Saturday. He is hilarious. The cows were staring at the floor because it was buckling because of the heat, and I was saying to them, "Don't look at the floor, just walk." Neil said to Ralph, "You should see Tonie in the parlor! She says to the cows, that floor is none of your business, quit sniffing it and get your butt in the parlor so I can throw the milker on you!!" He made up all kinds of tall tales like that about our shift. He was telling Blake and Ralph all of them while we were having break and we were all dissolving in gales of laughter.

On Sunday, we drove up to Rouse's Point to see their parade and fireworks. This is the view across the lake (that's Vermont over there!). I hadn’t been to a parade in years so I was pretty excited. It was a good one, too.

Not something you see in parades back home...

You can't have a 4th of July parade without local politicians.

There were three pipe and drum bands. This was the first one.

There were more tractors than I could count, old...

And new...

Every firetruck from miles around...ever seen a blue firetruck before?

There were firetrucks from Vermont, and even one from Canada.
This is our very own Chazy, NY firetruck.

Shriners are another parade staple. There was another group after this one, driving miniature racecars. What are Shriners anyway?

This was a jazz group that called themselves the Blues Brothers.

There were 2 marching bands, both from Canada, a high school band and a middle school band. Afterwards there were fireworks, which I always enjoy no matter what. This was a small town with a proportional display but I still loved it.

I'm feeding with Ralph this week. I like riding around with him, but boy is it early (I get there at 3:30 AM). It took 10 days of getting up at 3:30 but they finally made a coffee drinker out of me. On Monday we pulled 2 calves in quick succession, one upside down and one with its leg and head tucked back. Both were bulls, which is always sort of a disappointment. Another bull was born in the afternoon. I clipped my show heifer Monday afternoon. It’s a much bigger job than you expect, but she was very good and now she looks sparkling clean. A thunderstorm went through and there was a rainbow when I was heading back to the dorm. It went all the way across the sky and there was a second one starting.

More corn pictures...my old picture-taking spot does not show off the corn to its best advantage.

Here you can really see how tall it is.

Yesterday I watched a DA surgery after lunch. DA stands for displaced abomasum. The abomasum is the part of the cow's stomach that is on the bottom, and it can sort of float up and flip over the top of the stomach. It's uncomfortable for the cow and has to be corrected. Dr. Terry was the vet. I asked her about the finances of vet school and she said, if it’s what you want, don’t worry about it. You’ll make it work somehow, even if you have to live like a student for another 5 years.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

GRAPHIC PHOTOS ALERT

Milking as usual but a very exciting morning afterwards! We had a cow that was down because she had a sore foot, and she started trying to get up yesterday and may have broken her leg. She was 3 weeks from calving and they wanted to try to save the calf, so Dr. Henderson did a C-section before they euthanized the mother. It was very cool. I got to help by cutting the uterus open and rubbing the calf’s head. Dr. Henderson said he heard somewhere that when the mother licks the calf’s head, it releases adrenalin in the calf’s body which helps get its heart and lungs going, so I had to rub its head very briskly to induce that adrenaline rush. Anna tickled its nose with a piece of straw to make it cough, and Dr. Henderson lifted its ribcage like a bellows to get air into its lungs. It sputtered and snorted and sniffled and blinked and was alive! And it was a heifer, which made all that effort very worthwhile.