Lows crept down to about 17 degrees this past Wednesday morning. Other than the general misery of working in weather that cold, our pneumatic system in our milking parlor was frozen and we had to milk without some of the automation that we're used to. It only really cost us a little over an hour worth of time though. After the sunrise and through day, the temperatures never got much above freezing, and Thursday morning lows were around 20 degrees. Since then, though, we've warmed up enough in the afternoons for everything to thaw out and will stay completely above 32 degrees today. In fact, we're climbing and expecting highs on Monday to possible hit 70 degrees. Welcome to wintertime in Alabama!
Our cows are still producing very good with a bulk-tank herd average of 64.5 pounds of milk per cow per day. Our butterfat content has dropped over the last six weeks from the 3.6-3.7% range to 3.3-3.4%, and that's probably an effect of the overall increase in production volume.
We're making a change in our cow's feed as well. We've replaced half of the wheat/oat baleage this past week with corn silage, and will be fully replacing it with silage when we run out of the baleage during the weekend.
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