Monday, November 24, 2008

A wet start to the week

The forecast calls for rain on and off all day, but with a "short" week labor-wise we'll just have to work in between the raindrops the best we can. Priority number one for this morning will be fence construction now that we've finished drilling in all of our initial stockpile of forage seeds.

On the cow side, we're still not getting the milk production we want, but as I mentioned earlier that will probably be turning around with a change from a baleage-based to silage based TMR in a couple of weeks. We also had to treat a case of milk fever this morning. Milk fever is a condition in which a cow's blood-calcium level gets out of whack and results in muscle weakness and low body temperature within the first hours after calving. It typically happens in older cows, and is pretty simple to treat. We slowly administer a bottle of calcium solution intraveneously to the sick cow and typically she's back on her feet within minutes and back to normal within a couple of hours. Occasionaly a second treatment is required, but usually the first one does the trick. We'll keep this cow in our "sick pen" for a day or two just to make sure she doesn't have a relapse, and also to ensure that she regains her appetite.

Well, I'm off to check in on our patient. Have a good morning!

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