It’s a Heifer! And a Bull?

Wednesday evening cow number 976 had a calf. It was a heifer. The calf was pretty small, which is generally a good thing because its easier on the cow. But this time it had us puzzled; 976 was 5 days overdue, and it’s unusual for an overdue calf to be that small. The cow was up and had cleaned the calf off, so we moved her to a hut, fed her colostrum and covered her in straw to help her keep warm. Fifteen minutes later I walked by the barn, and 976 had delivered a second calf. This one was a bull.

We were disappointed for several reasons. We never like for a cow to have twin calves because it’s tough on her. On top of that, when the twin calves are different genders, often the heifer is a freemartin. This means she has received testosterone through a shared blood stream and is infertile. A freemartin heifer appears to have the reproductive parts of a female, but she grows and behaves more like a steer (castrated bull). Not all mixed twin heifers are freemartins, though. It depends on when the embryo divides. Since we couldn’t see that, we needed another way to assess the situation.

We were aware that there were indicators that could predict if the heifer was fertile, but in the past we had just raised them and waited to find out. This is where the awesomeness that is twitter comes in. We asked a couple of friends who we thought might have experience with this, and within minutes we had a free and easy check to try. The explanation that follows isn’t dinner-table conversation for most people (it is here..), but I think it’s worth sharing.

A blood test tube we normally use for pregnancy tests.

If the heifer is a freemartin it’s likely that the length of her reproductive parts would be reduced, so we used a small blood test tube (blunt with rounded edges, so it won’t puncture or tear anything) with AI lube on it and inserted into her vulva and applied gentle pressure to see how far it would go. The tube stopped at about 2 1/4″. Based on the guidance we were given, anything over 2″ means it’s worth raising her and trying to breed her. If the tube had stopped only an inch or so in, the odds of her breeding would be very low, and we would most likely sell her as a calf. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that.

The twins, bull on the left, heifer on the right.

We had a beef farmer stop earlier that evening looking for a bull calf to put on a cow who had lost her calf. We didn’t have one at the time, but he was still interested a few hours later. After we fed the bull it’s colostrum that night and in the morning, we sold him to that farmer. The heifer is a lot smaller than another calf born the same day, but hopefully she’ll start catching up soon. We’ll find out for sure if she’s fertile in 12-14 months.

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National Ag Day: Why do we farm?

Today is National Agriculture Day. I often write about what we do as a part of agriculture, but today I want to talk about why we do it. Michele Payn-Knoper wrote this post about taking the time to explain the personal nature of farming.

I’ve said too many times that farming is hard, that it’s so hard that many people aren’t willing to do it. I’m certainly not saying farming is the only difficult job out there. Engineering is hard, too, trust me. But as an engineer, I’ve never had to get up at 2 AM and go out in a cold rain to check on anything. As a farmer, I have.

So, if farming is so hard – why do we do it?

It’s a difficult question to answer – and one I’ve asked myself a million times. After all, when I met David, I wasn’t a farmer. It’s difficult to explain a decision like ours to someone who hasn’t farmed. There are certainly easier ways to make a more comfortable living. I admit that at times I needed a little convincing, but the process that convinced me didn’t include lists of pros and cons and logical reasons.

The process of buying the farm was very stressful. If we had given up and moved closer to my job, our lives would most likely be easier. But it wouldn’t be right. We talked about it, a lot. The thought of someone else milking our cows, of not seeing our calves grow up and have calves, of my husband putting on a tie every morning – it was heartbreaking. The more we worked side by side, I just knew. I understood what David always seemed sure of.

David’s veiw from the tractor while planting corn

I believe farming is something inside of us. Its a love for all things living and (for us at least) a faith that God will provide what we need. We love the good times – the newborn calves, the high milk tests, the yields that exceed expectations. The struggles, though, are what make those good times great.

The weather and our prices are two of the things we depend on most, and two of the things we have the least control over. Last year, our first year as owner/operators, neither was favorable. The past year has no doubt made us stronger. It has made us appreciate the things that do go right. If farming was easy, it wouldn’t be so rewarding.

View from the chopper.

We enjoy the challenge of doing more with less and finding new ways to do old things to make our cows and our farm better than they were before. And I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – we take pride in continuing a tradition that started in our families over 100 years ago. Farming is truly in the cloth from which we were cut.

If its so hard, why do we farm? We farm for our families, for our cows, for our land, for all those who need something to eat and drink, and for us. We farm because it’s who we are.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard…is what makes it great.” – Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own

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The Pulse of Milking

Our pulsators are something we rely on every day, twice a day, like so many things at the dairy. When everything’s working correctly we can forget how vital things like this are to our operation. Two weeks ago half of our pulsators quit working, and we got a brutal reminder of just how important they are.

What is a pulsator?

The pulsators are really what makes the milking units work. You can have all the suction in the world, but without a pulsator, you don’t get milk. The vacuum pump provides the suction to the milking units while the pulsators cause the shell liners to move in and out, basically squeezing then releasing on the cow’s teats.

If you’ve seen someone milk by hand you know they don’t just pull and hold, you have to pull and squeeze and release and pull and squeeze again. That’s what the pulsators do using differential pressures on the inside and outside of the liners. They also alternate so that two teats are squeezed and two are released at all times. Our pulsators are fairly loud, so you can clearly hear them switching back and forth. I guess they provide the rhythm for milking.

Here’s a short video with clips of a couple of cows milking. With our (new) clear shells, you can actually see the black liner squeeze and release. You can also hear the rhythm of pulsators and see the milk flow alternate between teats.

When the electrical box for the pulsators on one side of the barn quit, we were able to get both sides wired through one box so we could get by. They didn’t have quite enough juice, though, so a few units wouldn’t work correctly, and it really slowed things down. We milked with disabled pulsators for three days before we were able to get them fixed (it was a weekend, of course). After that experience, we’re a little more grateful for things like our pulsators and vacuum pump that really make our lives easier when they work twice a day every day.

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Bring on the Mud

We had about two feet of snow at the end of February, and last week it was over 40 degrees for several consecutive days, melting all but the tallest piles of snow. Then, on Saturday, it rained all day long. We were sitting on the couch on Sunday night, and I said to David, “Any ideas what I can blog about?” His response was “All I can think about is mud.”

To say it is muddy is an understatement. We do our best to keep everything clean and dry, but this time of year it’s nearly impossible. Every calf group has some type of shelter, a structure with a roof, to keep them dry, but our cows and calves eat outside. They have free access to the exterior of their shelters at all times. Because of this, despite our best efforts, they get muddy. They really don’t seem to mind, but boy they are a mess. And muddy cows and calves result in muddy farmers.

The muddy road through the barnyard.

This weekend I bedded down all of the huts and groups. We use a bale shredder to bed down the milk cows, but the tractor won’t fit in our calf pens.  Bedding down calves means bending over into buildings whose roofs are lower than your height and breaking apart and spreading out straw bales to give the calves something warm and dry to lay on.

In the end, the person doing this is generally a little sore and completely covered in straw. To give you a visual: I had my phone in a pocket on the inside of my vest, and I have a case that covers the charging port, and when I went to charge my phone, I had to remove a piece of straw from inside the closure over that port. I can’t explain how that happened. Bedding down calves isn’t anyone’s favorite job, but its important to keep things as clean as possible, and the calves are always appreciative.

Let me stop my complaining for a minute, though, because I’m not really complaining. Last year we went months without mud, and drought is far more difficult to deal with. So as the rain came down on Saturday, no one complained. We changed our wet clothes at noon and went back out and got our dry clothes wet without a word. We’re extremely thankful for the rain that will hopefully turn into ground moisture to help our crops and pastures grow so that our cows will have something to eat.

Because of last year’s drought, we’ve had to buy a lot more feed than normal. And because of last year’s drought, feed is hard to find and expensive. We hope to grow more feed ourselves this year and need to buy less next year. And we hope that what we do need to buy won’t cost quite so much. Given all that, bring on the mud.

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Farm Stories

After our snow day a couple of weeks ago, I sent a photo of our heifers walking along the lake to my manager at my off-farm engineering job. He included it in his weekly email to our department. A week later as I was getting ready to leave my office, filling up my water bottle before I headed home, a manager of a different department passed me and said “I saw a picture of your cows”.

He took a few steps, then stopped and asked me about the cows. He told me the story of his dad who used to haul milk, back when it was stored in cans. When he was a baby, his mother would ride along to open gates, and he would go too. He finished with something like “anyway, they love to tell that story.”

I’m really glad that he took the time to stop and tell me, and for some reason it really got me thinking. This isn’t the type of conversation that I normally encounter at work, and I have a lot of time to think during my 50 mile commute. Maybe this is something that should have been obvious, but finally it hit me: Farming is nostalgic to people who aren’t farmers.

There are some who felt the much-discussed Dodge Super Bowl ad didn’t accurately portray modern farming or modern farmers. However, most farmers I know loved it. Yes, farming has changed since Paul Harvey gave that speech in 1978, but maybe farmers aren’t so different. When the speech was given, farming innovation wasn’t new.

Bulk tank storage and the milk machine were already commonplace at that time. In fact, the milk barn we use today was already standing. Farmers have been looking for ways to improve efficiency, to do more with less, since long before 1978. However, I think many of us still cling to the values of our predecessors: honesty, integrity, and hard work. Farmers are nostalgic about farming, too.

Minnesota farmer Tim Zweber recently wrote this story about an old manure spreader that sits by their shop. And an Illinois farm wife wrote this post reminiscing about an old barn. I don’t think farmers are the only ones who enjoy these stories.

This was my great-grandparents farm in Illinois. The barns and house are gone now, but photos like this one help us remember and reminisce.

When we’re looking for the link between food and farm, maybe the nostalgia is where we connect. Maybe these farm stories are our common bond with those who left their farming roots behind. Just because we’re moving forward doesn’t mean we can’t look back.

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It’s Finally March!!

 

March has begun. For some of you this may mean spring, but there are still several inches of snow on the ground here. I’m ready for spring, but that’s not what has me excited. And for those of you wondering, this post isn’t about farming. David and I are both big college basketball fans, and March means NCAA basketball at it’s finest!

 

My parents raised me right, as an Illini fan, and in my time at Illinois I grew to truly cherish basketball season, and especially March. I refuse to believe there is any post season event in any sport better than the NCAA tournament and ultimately the Final Four. I got the opportunity to attend the Final Four in 2005 when my Illini were the number one number one seed. Unfortunately we lost the title game, but it was still one of the best events I’ve ever experienced.

 

My friend Tiffany and I at the 2005 Final Four. I apologize for the picture quality – this photo was originally taken with a disposable camera.

 

If you’re questioning my level of basketball crazy, let me elaborate. I was a member of Orange Krush at Illinois. Orange Krush isn’t just a student section. To be a member you have to raise money for the Orange Krush Foundation, which has donated well over 1 million dollars to various charities over the last several years. I was an All American Member, which means I raised $3 per 3-point-shot, that’s about $750 a year. This status gave me preference for floor seats, but no seats were guaranteed. If you wanted the best seats, you had to get there first. The doors opened an hour before the game. To get floor seats you generally needed to be there at least two hours before that. For big games it was often more like six hours. My seats were usually front row right next to the opposing team’s bench. I actually purchased my first Cahartt coat to keep warm while waiting outside for basketball games – remember, this was Illinois in December through February. Anyone can wait outside when it’s 70…CLICK HERE to view a great video about the Orange Krush.  You can see me in my college days around 0:41.

 

I also paid enough attention to the teams that when David bought me a piece of the Assembly Hall court as a 2011 Christmas gift, I recognized the game the photo it was framed with was from. It was a “break game” (over the holidays) from the 2005-2006 season against Iowa. We let Iowa make a comeback near the end, but came away with the “W”. The break games didn’t follow the same ticketing/seating procedures, and I had managed to get tickets for my parents as a gift. I actually found myself and my parents in the photo sitting (well, standing…) on the sideline. It’s maybe the best gift I’ve ever received, even though he had no idea.

 

The top picture is the one I was able to spot my family and I in. The other two are what clued me into which game this was. The orange at bottom center is a piece of that floor that gave me so many memories.

 

Since meeting David, I’ve also adopted the Kansas State Wildcats as my local favorite team. We actually have a K-State/Illini room that serves as an office, where that picture and piece of the hardwood hang. As you can imagine, this has been an especially fun season since K-State hired Illinois’ former coach, Bruce Weber, who was in Champaign during my tenure. I actually met him several times, and as most who know me know, I think very highly of him as a person and a coach. I was thrilled when K-State hired him because it felt like I got to “keep him” as “my coach”. Now both of our teams are doing well and look to be headed to the tourney.

 

My friends and I were at the park practicing for our concrete canoe competition. Coach Weber was there speaking at a charity event. He was the reigning National Coach of the Year, and it was the day after the team’s first practice of the new season, but he graciously said hello and posed for this photo, again taken with a disposable camera.

 

Don’t be surprised if we set a TV up in the milk barn during the first two rounds. It’s March; anything goes!

 

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Milk: It’s Local and Natural

In my first ever post about milk, inspired by this Bullvine article, I promised there would be more to come. One thing the article discusses is the declining demand for milk as a beverage. It seems like lately food choice has become a hot topic, and it’s no wonder when you look at all of the options available.

When people talk about food, and specifically food choice, there are two buzz words that seem to be repeated over and over and over: local and natural. These two qualities are among the things that many people claim are priorities in making food choices for themselves and their families. When I hear that these are the things that are important to customers, all I can think is – why isn’t milk demand increasing? If this is what people want, why aren’t they drinking milk? As dairy farmers, we’re proud to be producing healthy, natural food for our local community.

Milk in the bulk tank at our farm.

Milk is Local

Our milk is hauled from our farm, roughly 50 miles, to a Roberts Dairy facility in Kansas City, MO.  It is sold as “Class I”, which is fluid milk, and Roberts distributes it to stores in the KC area, including the ones where we buy groceries.  By my definition, that’s definitely local.  Many farms do send their milk to plants outside of their state, or to processors who make products that are distributed outside of their region.  However, the fluid milk at your grocery store is most likely locally (or regionally) produced, regardless of the name on the label.  It typically takes less than two days from the time milk leaves a farm for it to reach a grocery store shelf.

Roberts 1% Milk Carton

Milk is Natural

Not much is done to milk between our farm and your table.  Maybe the biggest thing processors do is pasteurize it, which kills bacteria and increases shelf-life. They also homogenize it so that the cream doesn’t separate, and they fortify it with Vitamin D, an essential nutrient that also helps calcium absorption.  The rest of the essential nutrients milk contains (calcium, potassium, phosphorus, protein, riboflavin, niacin, and Vitamins A & B12) are there when it comes out of the cow. Processors do also add Vitamin A to low-fat milk because it is naturally contained within the milk fat, which has been removed.  That means your low-fat milk has a whopping three ingredients: milk and two vitamins.  Where else can you get that much good stuff naturally? While I’m sure beverages made from beans and nuts are very good for you, there’s nothing natural about those products.

When you’re considering the food choices you make, if local or natural happens to be something you consider a priority, consider milk. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find something as naturally healthy produced so close to home.

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