Saturday, January 3, 2009

A heck of a half-day

It seems that whenever I think I'm going to have an easy day, things change.

Everything started well enough on the farm this afternoon, but about half-way through milking the cows I got word that we had heifers out. It turns out that we had 12 out of a group of 52 out of their pasture. They really weren't much trouble, as they had already moved along the fence of another pasture.

I hadn't been back in the barn 20 minutes when I found out that we had "a whole bunch of cows in the road". Well, I was expecting the other 40 heifers, but it was only 9 of them. They too were easy to manage, but I decided once we finished milking to drive around the pasture and spot the others. I did eventually see them, and to this moment no one has called to say they're out.

Once I had finished dealing with those heifers, one of our workers and I went to look for a cow that had come up missing. We found her in a very bad place. Apparently, she had been walking alongside a gully and the ground caved off from under her. We got her pulled out, sat her upright, and fenced out the area where she had fallen.

Finally, I had a heifer in the maternity pasture that needed me to help her deliver her calf. It was some tough pulling, but we got the little joker on the ground and when I left both the heifer and her calf were doing ok.

Instead of having an easy afternoon and finishing up about 3:30 like I thought I would, I walked in the door about a quarter 'til 6:00. Such is the life of a dairy farmer I guess.

No comments: