Rainy day dairy chores

Without exception or excuse, every day is a work day on our dairy farm. We'll rack up between 7-8 hours of actual working time even on days when we cover only the basics (milking and feeding). On a cool, rainy day like today, it would be nice to get off so lightly...handle half the chores before breakfast and the other half after lunch. But when we have other things that need to be addressed, we address them regardless of the weather.

my dad inspects heifers for signs
of estrus on a rainy morning

This morning won't go down as one of our most productive, but we did get a few things taken care of.  We sorted out and bred three heifers before retreating into the barn to repair a gate-opening pneumatic cylinder and two water trough floats. We also had to treat a cow for milk fever by giving her an IV of CMPK solution. We held off on making the feed rounds through the heifer pastures until the rain slowed to a drizzle, but as luck would have it the bottom fell about as soon as the guys pulled away with a truck full of feed.  One they finished, we knocked off for lunch a little early so we could all have a little extra time to dry out our work clothes.

Lunchtime is over, so I guess I'd better slip back into my damp overalls and head over to the dairy barn for the afternoon milking. A dairyman's gotta do what a dairyman's gotta do!