Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Fall weather

It looks like we may finally be seeing some "normal" weather for this time of the year. We'll have a couple of days of damp, dreary weather followed by a few clear days. This morning, the sun is shining and it's about 35 degrees, but it will warm up to the mid-60's by early afternoon.

All the wheat, oats, and ryegrass we previously planted appear to have sprouted. We still have about 30 acres left, and might get that in the end of this week if the ground will dry alot today. If we can't get it planted this week, we may just wait until corn season to plant that field.

The cows are enjoying the cooler weather and have upped their production just a little. We weighed milk yesterday and the "unofficial" results show about a 60 pound per cow average. We're about to have to change their feed formulation a little bit, as cottonseeds have now gotten too expensive to buy. It will be interesting to see how are cows react to removing the seeds from the TMR.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

It's been awhile

Sorry for the hiatus from posting to the blog over the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty much swamped with things I needed to do, and there's really not been much of consequence to report from our farm.

We've gotten a little more rain over the last couple of days, and that'll help our our winter crop. We've still got thirty acres of wheat and oats to plant (as well as about 15-20 acres to overseed with ryegrass), but some of what we've already planted is really starting to shoot up out of the ground. The rest shouldn't be too far behind. Now that all the bermudagrass has gone dormant and turned brown, it'll be nice to look out over some green patches again.

Feed costs continue to climb higher and higher thanks in part to both commodity prices and freight. We got a good deal on some peanut hay from a farmer in a neighboring county, and we're hoping our nutritionalist will come up with a ration that will let us use less alfalfa without sacrificing too much production.

Speaking of production, we're up to 203 cows milking right now and on average they're each giving 55 pounds a day. They could be doing a little more if we fed them just a little more, but with that many cows we don't have enough trough space to increase their feed.

Well, it's time for breakfast and then back to work.