Saturday, June 2, 2007

I’m already getting better at milking. Cory is way faster than me at stripping, but I started to really get the hang of that today. Yesterday he could strip and wipe his 6 cows in the time it took me to strip my 6. Today, he was finishing his 6 as I was starting to attach the milkers; he would go to the other end of my 6 and we’d each attach 3. Watching Cory, I realized he held the bottom of the milker in his left hand and reached outside the cow’s hind legs at least to attach the first milker. If she’s kicking or dancing around it’s hard, but otherwise that technique works pretty well. Cory seems to do everything without looking, which I guess is what happens when you milk 272 cows by yourself 6 days a week for 6 months.


When I got back I took some pictures of our little campus:

Miner Center, where the computer lab and cafeteria are, as well as all the research labs.
My bed and bookshelf.

Our back window, with my and my roommate's plants (the camera was sitting on top of the bookshelf)
Kitchenette
Outside the dorms

Same window later on

Friday, June 1, 2007

Today I milked! The boy I worked with was Cory. It takes about 6 hours to milk all 272 cows. It was definitely the most physically demanding work I’ve done yet. You are on your feet the whole time. My arms got a little tired at times, because the automatic milkers are heavy and you have to hold them with one hand while you put them on the udder with the ‘udder.’ Haha I crack myself up! Okay, so the place where the cows get milked is called the parlor. There is a pit where we work and the cows’ udders are about at eye level. There are 12 stalls on each side.

First, there is a gun/wand thingy that makes iodine foam and we dip all the teats with that. Then you strip (hand milk each teat once) and then you wipe. You have to use a clean washcloth for each cow. (There are a washer and dryer just around the corner from the parlor, and we do 2 loads of washcloths for every shift!) Finally you attach the milkers. When the udder is empty, they detach automatically. I’m milking all weekend, so I hope I’ll have it down by Sunday.

Happy cows being milked:

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Today was crops with Henry. Henry is really hard to understand when he speaks but I had a nice time anyway. I drove a big tractor pulling the manure spreader. The hardest part is slowing down by downshifting rather than by using the brakes. I also couldn’t quite figure out how to back up to get under the manure “faucet” at the manure pit. Something to do with the spreader being a trailer and me turning the wheel the wrong way. I was getting pretty good at going forward by the end of the morning. After lunch, I had a break from tractor driving and power washed one of the pick up trucks. I do like power washing so that was fun.

At 2:30 we had a talk on forage by Everett, an agronomist. He talked about what makes good hay good, what factors go into deciding when to mow, what factors people use in deciding what hay to buy (facts and fiction) and the differences between different grades of hay. I took more notes than anyone and I guess we don’t need to since we’re not tested but I feel like this is valuable information that I don’t know and not that I won’t be able to find it elsewhere but why not just write it down now?

The red building is called the dry barn, cows that don't get milked live there. The tractor in the background is hooked up to the machine that pumps manure out of the manure pit to load the manure spreader. The concrete walls are part of the feed bunkers.
Some corn. I swear, that field looks greener every day.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Today was herd health. Normally it starts at 7:30 but the vet was coming today so we started around 6:15. The vet was really nice, he’s only 2 years out of vet school (Tufts). Before he got there, we had to check all the fresh cows (cows that have just calved). We look for elevated temperatures and stuff like that. Some also have mastitis so we check on them. Anna said the main cause of mastitis here is Klebsiella. (Thesis idea! What are the main causes of mastitis at Horizon Dairy Farm?) I helped take temperatures and give cows shots of Banamine (a pain reliever) and Ex-sel (A broad spectrum antibiotic). Then I helped check the list of cows that had been given shots of GNRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) to prep them for breeding, if they weren’t pregnant. These were also the cows that had to be preg checked. When Matt (the vet) got there we went into the barn and started checking. Matt talked about how he palpated cows and also explained their whole reproductive cycle. He was very good at explaining and I would like to have him for a professor (too bad he’s not one). For instance, he explained that estrogen and progesterone have names that makes sense: estrogen generates estrus, and progestoreone prolongs gestation. At one point he was talking about making decisions about whether a cow is open or not and he talked about it being a cost benefit analysis and that made me think of Chris. He is leaving in July for a small animal practice that pays better. I was sorry to hear that because it seems like no one stays in large animal and I hope I won’t have to leave for financial reasons. When we got to the heifer barn, I got to palpate a cow. That means I put on a long plastic glove and stuck my whole arm inside the cow and felt its organs through the intestinal wall. I think I found the uterus but I couldn’t feel the fetus.

Barn cats in the horse barn:

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Today was the feeding rotation, which starts at 3:30 AM. First we go and collect all the refusals (feed that didn’t get eaten the day before). They get put into the feed truck, which weighs it. The amount of feed for today is adjusted depending on the amount of refusals from yesterday. The feed truck also has a mixer in it, and a computer that knows the order in which all the cows get fed, and the ratio of ingredients in their feed. It even has a remote control! The feed is a mixture of pelleted grain, haylage, and corn silage.
These are the feed bunks where the haylage and silage are kept:
Haylage and silage are feeds that you would not give to horses because they have already started fermenting. I guess because cows have 4 stomachs and because they ferment feed in their stomachs too, it doesn’t matter. Some of the feeds also have alfalfa hay and wheat straw, some have molasses, and the feed for the cows that are within a month or so of calving has extra minerals and soy protein.
These are the smaller bunks, 4 in all, with alfalfa hay, wheat straw, and 2 types of grain:
We dropped the first batch of feed around 6 am and finished that barn around 8 am. We had a break then, which was good because I was getting really drowsy from the thrumming of the big truck and front-end loader engines plus the heat. We finished completely around 10 am. After that, I had my first lessons in the Skid-steer (baby bulldozer) and the front-end loader! I actually liked the loader better because it steers with a steering wheel and has pedals for your feet, like a car.

The cafeteria was open today (it hasn’t been since I got here because of Memorial Day). Lunch was delicious, in part because I was so hungry. After lunch I immediately went back to my room and slept for 3 hours. It’s going to be really important not to nap too much when I have feeding for the whole week, because otherwise I won’t be able to fall asleep early enough.

I don't have any pictures of the feed truck or what it's like waking up at 3 am, but here are some just of the farm:

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: