Mixing It Up

This week we bought a new-to-us TMR wagon. The TMR wagon is what we use to mix feed (TMR) for our cows. I’ve written before about some of the different components of our cows feed, and since we stopped feeding grain in the barn, the cows have been exclusively eating a TMR ration.

The new TMR wagon made it home!

This purchase is more than a change in equipment, though; it’s also a change in the way we feed our cows. Our old mixer didn’t have a conveyor for unloading feed into bunks or tires that would work off of concrete. This meant that we had to unload the feed where we mixed it, and then use other means to put it in the feed bunk. We had a bunk right next to our silo (where we mix) that we would scoop the feed into using a skid loader. The main problem with this was that the silo isn’t close to the free stall or lean-to that our cows like to hang out in, so they were eating and then going to lay down, with too much travel in between. It’s better for them to be able to eat and lay down as they wish throughout the day. The long walk meant they did one and then the other instead of eating a little, letting it digest, then eating a little more.

For a couple of months we did try loading the feed into a different wagon that did have a conveyor and adequate tires (but that couldn’t do the mixing) to be able to feed closer to the free stall and lean-to. It should have been better for the cows, but the process took a significant amount of extra time, required an additional tractor, and we saw no change in milk production to justify the extra effort. It became clear that if we were going to feed near the barns, we needed a wagon that could both mix and unload the feed.

The conveyor unloading the TMR into the fence line bunk.

We spent some time looking for such a wagon, but every one we found was out of our price-range. We really had quit looking; we were getting by with what we had. Then last week David’s dad was at an auction and noticed they had a wagon just like what we had been looking for. Knowing we had stopped looking, he didn’t bid. The wagon was auctioned and “sold”, but we have enough experience with auctions to know that “sold” doesn’t always mean a piece of equipment has gone to a buyer. The price they stopped at seemed reasonable, so the next day they called the auction company to see if the wagon was still available and it was.

On Friday, David and his dad went down to take a look at the wagon, and for the same price the auctioneer pronounced the wagon “sold” for, they pulled it home that afternoon. David mixed with it that evening and fed the cows in two big steel tubs and a concrete bunk along the fence line, right next to the freestall and lean-to. The cows were a little confused at first, as they stood by the gate to the silo while their feed was unloaded back by their beds, but they’ve caught on now. Our cows aren’t the type to miss a meal.

Some cows enjoying their dinner at the fence line bunk.

We hope this time around the cows’ production will increase, but if not the wagon is a good investment for the time it saves. The old process used to take an hour and 20 minutes twice day, but today mixing and feeding took a total of about 45 minutes. The new wagon has two augers to mix instead of one, so it mixes a bit faster, and the old process to unload and scoop the feed was cumbersome and time consuming. By giving David an extra hour every day, the new-to-us TMR wagon should help our overall dairy operation run a lot more smoothly!

End of an Era

Sometimes change occurs in unexpected ways. And sometimes, unexpected circumstances are the only way to change.

Despite knowing that it was not ideal for our cows’ diet, we had been feeding grain during milking. This wasn’t done with ill-will toward the cows. On the contrary, the cows were rather partial to this twice-daily treat.

Several years ago, David quit feeding in the barn, and the disgruntled cows simply refused to come in to be milked. He gave in and resumed feeding. We made some improvements to this feeding last winter, but all the pertinent research shows that it is best to feed dairy cows a TMR (total mixed ration), in which all the components of their ration are blended together.

Several months ago, a few of our feeders quit working. By the beginning of December, one whole side was basically useless. Inconsistency can cause problems, and each cow might eat a little different ration day-to-day depending on the milking order. In addition, the cows were very difficult to run in on the side without working feeders.

Finally, we quit using the feeders altogether. The cows were pretty ticked at first, but over a few weeks they adjusted, and things started going more smoothly. Now with a more consistent diet, and a true TMR, they’ve picked up on milk a little. It has been decided – the feeders won’t be fixed! We are officially done feeding in the barn!

This is extremely exciting for two reasons. First, fixing the feeders was an unfinished task that had been hanging over our heads for a month, and second, we’re doing the best thing for our cows, even if it wasn’t what they thought they wanted. I suspect this is how parents feel when they get their kids to eat their veggies.

Fall Fieldwork

The guys finished the first round of silage chopping back at the beginning of August. We mentioned several times that we had some corn come up late, and they just finished chopping that corn this week. Our first corn had a decent amount of grain for its size and actually yielded a better quality silage than last year’s crop; there was just quite a bit less of it because the plants were so short. It has been tested and is being fed to the milk cows without incident from nitrates or aflatoxin.

The late corn may be a different story. There was very little grain on even shorter plants. The grain that was there was drier and the plants were greener than corn we traditionally chop. We will need to test the silage for both nitrates and aflatoxin. If it contains aflatoxin, we may still be able to feed it to heifers that won’t be milking. If it contains nitrates, it would be harmful to any animal, but it’s our understanding that the chemical process that occurs in the silo would solve the nitrate issue.

We chopped 100% of our corn, so we haven’t had to get the combine out yet. Our soybeans are only about knee-hight, but they put some pods on. They won’t be ready to harvest for a few weeks and have just started to “turn” in the last week or so. As the plants dry down, they change color from green to gold.

Soybean foliage turns from green to gold as the plants dry out before harvest.

Besides fall harvest, the guys have been planting fall crops. We planted three different forages on one farm.  First, we borrowed a no-till drill from a neighbor to plant oats that we hope to chop for silage this fall. They’re up and growing – probably about 4” tall. We hope they grow quite a bit more before we get a hard frost. We also used the no-till drill to plant rye that we will chop next spring. The rye is growing well (about 6” tall now), and we may also be able to mow it this fall if it gets tall enough. We then worked the ground on part of the farm and seeded alfalfa. We will mow and bale the alfalfa 3 or 4 times each year for the next three years.

We also ordered seed for both triticale and turnips which we will plant on one of the other farms that we just finished chopping. Rather than harvesting these forages, we plan to graze heifers on that farm.

We’re trying to raise enough feed for our cows and calves for the next year, so we have to be somewhat creative with our crop rotations and are trying some of these forage crops for the first time (triticale and turnips). Hopefully we’ll continue to get some moisture and the frost will hold off long enough to produce some feed to supplement what we’ve already harvested.  In the meantime, we’ll be busy in the field

Drought 2012

Everyone knows we’re in a drought. It seems like it’s all you hear about, especially if you know any farmers. Everyone also knows that a drought means its dry.  Maybe you’ve heard that we’re 10″ behind average precipitation, but maybe you don’t know why it matters for us and our dairy.

Pastures

Last Sunday we moved some heifers home from a nearby pasture that we rent. The pasture has two water sources – a creek and a pond. The creek has been dry for months (usually is in the summer), and the pond had been dwindling. That Sunday, it was gone. It was 105 degrees, and the calves had no water. There wasn’t much green left for them to eat anyway, so now they’re at the dairy where the cows and calves have access to the same water we drink.

A couple of weeks ago we repaired fence around the “Junkyard Pasture” because “Below Bud’s”, which I would call our primary pasture, was pretty bare. Thankfully the two pastures connect because the Junkyard Pasture also currently has no water, but Below Bud’s has a frost free water. The dry cows and bred heifers can graze the Junkyard Pasture and can come up to Below Bud’s for water. It’s not ideal, but it’s working okay, and so far the fence has effectively kept them in the pasture rather than the corn field.

Crops

I rambled on about our corn silage situation last week. We feel fortunate that most of our corn did put some grain on and overall has been better than we expected. Some of the corn (planted the middle of May) laid in the ground a full month until we got a rain and came up around June 15th. That corn is very short and just tasseled this week, so it’s fate is yet-to-be-determined.

David finished chopping corn silage (until the yet-to-be-determined corn is ready) Monday, and the bigger of our two pit silos was full.  It took about 40% more acreage to fill the silo than in an average year due to reduced plant size and yields.   

I discussed our soybeans’ need for rain in June. Thanks to a timely rain, they came up. However, we haven’t had much moisture since, so they fall under the “yet to be determined” category also. They’re not very tall, but are alive and starting to bloom. 

We also raised brome hay that we mowed and baled earlier this summer.  Many of our neighbors reported about half as many bales per acre compared with a typical year.  Our yield was closer to 75% of average, but it was definitely a noticeable difference.

Feed

In addtition to not being able to raise as much feed, prices for the feed we will need to buy are much higher than usual due to the drought. Both corn and soybean prices are approximately 33% higher than last year’s prices, which we considered high at the time.  We will likely need to buy some corn because we chopped all that we grew, and our commodity blend typically contains soybean meal.  Hay is hard to even find for sale locally, and we’ve been hearing of prices more than double those of an average year.

The drought also affects the quality of feed.  There have been many reports of corn crops containing aflatoxin, which could be passed to the milk if we fed corn containing it to the cows. There’s also a risk of our corn silage containing nitrates, which can be deadly to cows. Under drought conditions corn stalks can contain nitrates. If you shell the corn, it doesn’t matter, but when you chop it, it could. We will test our silage before we feed it for this reason. 

Cattle

All of these things indirectly affect our cattle, but the cows are directly affected by the drought’s partner in crime – extreme heat. Our facilities aren’t great for keeping cows cool (yet), and the cows don’t like the heat at all. It affects their appetite, production, and reproduction. Yes, it’s summer in KS, and we do expect it to get hot. However, we had a record number of days over 100 degrees in the month of July, and we started having 100 degree days in June.

As we head into August, we don’t expect the heat to subside.  It would help if it were less consistent, though.  More than the high high temperatures, the high low temperatures have hurt the cattle.  When it doesn’t get below 80 degrees at night, they have more trouble cooling off from the day’s heat.  Monday morning it was in the sixties, and I imagine the cows enjoyed it as much as I did.

So Now What?

The drought has been a major challenge, and it’s not over.  This something we never could have expected to face in our first year operating the dairy, but it’s also not a new problem.  This New York Times graphic shows how drought is and has historically affected our country.  Like many generations of farmers before us, we will do the best we can with the hand we’re dealt.  Over the next several months, we will manage our resources carefully and hope for much needed improvements in economic and environmental conditions.

Chopping Time

Silage chopping is underway! Chopping is the busiest and most important season for our dairy. I wrote about chopping rye this spring, but that task pales in comparison with this one. This time we’re chopping corn.

View from the chopper.

I’ve said before that corn silage is a big part of our cows diet. Chopping cuts up the whole corn plant – stalk, leaves, cobs (with or without grain) and all. Our silage is then packed and covered in pit silos. The end product is very efficient feed for our cows.

We only get one opportunity to chop corn silage each year, and the plants are only at the right moisture for a short time. We do stagger our planting to extend our window to finish, but it’s still a high stress time involving very long days.

Cleaning out the silo before filling it.

Typically we chop around 80% of our corn in late August or early September. Because we’re in a drought, the corn didn’t get as tall and has started to dry out faster. That means there will be less grain (quality) and less tonnage (quantity) than an average year. It also means we’re chopping in July for the first time in David’s memory, and we plan to chop 100% of our planted acres.

We ran out of corn silage about a month ago, so chopping early isn’t all bad. It was hectic trying to get the chopper, trucks, and dump box ready, though.  Also, I should note that I’m using “we” pretty loosely.  I’ve been working in Wichita and have contributed little other than moral support to the chopping effort.

Packing silage from above with the skid loader.

David’s cousin Jeff has been a huge help, running the chopper so David can get milking and chores done. Jeff also recruited his dad and other neighbors to help out driving trucks back and forth from the field to the pit silo. This also allows Dave to spend some time packing the silage – an essential part of the process.  David’s dad and our employee, Tyler, have also been logging extra hours.

Having a person to do each task (chopping, hauling, and packing) has made chopping significantly more efficient. We still have at least a week to go – we’ll keep you posted on our progress.  In the meantime, prayers for safety and sanity are appreciated!

Silo partially filled.

Chop It Up

Hondo hanging out the rye about 3 weeks before chopping.

I mentioned in our planting update a couple of weeks ago that we took a break from planting corn to chop rye. Last fall we planted cereal rye for the first time, and we were really pleased with how it grew this spring. At the time we thought this would require about a three-day break from planting, but in typical fashion, it was much longer.

Jerry mowing the rye with the disc-bine.

For those of you who don’t know what a chopper is, it looks a lot like a big, backward tractor. It has different “heads”, similar to a combine, depending on the crop you are chopping. To chop the rye, we first mowed it with our disc-bine (hay mower) and then used a “pickup head” to pick the rye up off the ground and chop it.

David’s view driving the chopper over a windrow of rye.

The chopper passes the rye over a rotating drum covered with knives to cut it into small pieces then shoots it out the back through the snoot into a dump box, wagon, or truck.

The dumpbox after it fell forward onto the chopper.

We started out using the better of two dump boxes. The first afternoon of chopping, the dump box broke, while dumping. It fell forward onto the chopper. Thankfully, the damage to the chopper was mainly cosmetic. The back end was dented and the snoot was bent, but there was no mechanical damage. If it had smashed the radiator or caused some other more severe problem, it would have cost us days or weeks. In the interest of time, instead of trying to repair the other old dump box, we first borrowed a wagon from David’s cousin Jeff.

View out the back of the chopper of rye-lage filling the wagon.

The wagon was smaller, though, so they were having to stop and dump more often than with the dump box. The rye was also wet, thick and heavy, and the field was rocky. Every time a rock passed through the chopper, they had to stop and straighten the knives. In short, it was slow going.

After a few days, the guys ended up repairing the other dump box, and they finished chopping more quickly by dumping into a truck to haul to the silo while the chopper kept running.

David driving the 4440 with duals over the silage pile to pack the silage.

About half of the ryelage was put in a pile on the ground, and the other half was put in a pit silo, or bunker that has a concrete floor and walls.  We used a tractor and skid loader to pack both the pile and bunker.  After packing, the silage is then covered with a plastic tarp.

After the silage was packed, our nutritionist came to the farm and took a sample of the ryelage for testing.  He and David then worked together to adjust our cows’ ration based on the feed we now had available.  We are hoping to see a jump in milk production because of the ration adjustments, however, initially we’ve seen production drop, so we will be tweaking it further.

What’s For Dinner?

Timer on the right now controls the feeders.

A lot goes into what a cow eats. Nutrition is incredibly important to many aspects of the operation. Not only does it affect their overall health, it affects their milk production, the fat and protein (components) content of their milk, and even reproduction and behavior.

We feed our cows a TMR (total mixed ration) twice each and every day after milking. It includes alfalfa hay, corn, corn silage, and a commodity blend.  The blend includes distiller’s grain, soybean meal, minerals and many other ingredients determined by our nutritionist and feed man at Wildcat Feeds.

We also feed our cows grain in the barn while they milk. This actually isn’t an ideal practice, but some time ago they stopped feeding in the barn and had a lot of trouble getting the cows to come in to be milked, so we started again and will likely continue until we build a new milk barn without feeders.

We recently had noticed reduced milk production along with some cows reluctant to come in or move up in the barn, so David looked at the ration to see if that might be the issue. We had been running our feeders manually with switches, which led to varying amounts of grain going to each string (group) of cows depending on when someone remembered to turn the feeders on and off. The first step to correcting the ration was to install timers so each cow would hopefully receive the same amount of grain while in the barn.

After the timers were installed, Dave tested the output of the feeders and found that there were significant differences in output between different feeders. He adjusted the outputs and tweaked the time so that each cow would get the same (appropriate) amount of feed every milking, no matter the order they come into the barn.  Previously, the grain fed in the barn had been only ground corn.  Cows prefer a consistent feed, so he also started mixing it with some of the commodity blend.

The results have been exactly what we hoped for.  We’ve seen a jump in milk production, and the cows are eager to come in the barn. Many of them are actually coming to the gate to be milked at or before milking time.  We just completed these changes last week, and there is usually some adjustment period, so we are hoping production keeps improving over the next week or two.