Category: Cows

Today we took LF 500 to Chaudhry’s to be processed. He weighed the week before about 1060 pounds and he dressed out hot weight 590 pounds. The processor remarked that we had gotten a much better yield out of this cow than our previous ones.

How to sell milk at your farm store.

Step 1. Do you have customers who will buy raw milk? Check!

Step 2. Do you have a milk cow? Check!

On Monday I went to go purchase a milk cow from a nice family. I could understand why they needed a milk cow. They had 13 kids!! However there were moving and couldn’t take the cow with them. Turned out she was from the same guy, Mike, who I bought both Dottie and Maggie (our previous milk cows) from so I knew the type of cow I was getting. She was very sweet and gentle which was great because she still has her horns. It was a bit of an adventure getting the truck and trailer into the yard where the cows were but eventually I made it in and after some more adventure (they didn’t have a loading facility) we got them loaded.

I say cows because this was a pair of cows, both mother and daughter. The daughter was about 6 months old and was quite a character. Apparently she is prone to escape, plays with kids like a dog, and is halter broken. Sort of. Not exactly sure what I’ll do with her but for now she’s keeping mom nursed and growing. Both tasks I need performed so she can stay. The seller asked if I thought she could be a milk cow in the future. I really didn’t see how with the 1/2 Angus blood but it’s not like I’m a milk cow expert.

We are going to dedicate the front pasture to our milk cows. This will make it easy for them to be milked daily as it’s right in front of the barn. It also keeps them away from the bulls so we can breed when we want to. I say cows because I believe I’m going to look for a second milk cow to join this one. I have to talk to our milker, Erin, and see if she’s ok milking two cow but we’ll get it worked out.

Step 3. Clean the milking parlor. Check! Erin went to work on the milking parlor already. I haven’t been in there to look at it but I know how clean she keeps things. I’m sure it’s in great shape.

Step 4. Test the milker. Dope! The vacuum pump was twitchy before we shut it down for a year. It was locked up solid when I went to check on it. I spent a few hours on it already (which is why I was so dirty). I got it cleaned up. I machined the vanes of the pump to correct the damage from previous issues which sounds like a big deal but we have a machine shop here so that makes it simple. Sadly, the clearance issues were not simple and took two days to get resolved.

But after involving the hydraulic press, the lathe, emery cloth, various hammers, Miguel, and some choice language, we resolved the issues and it’s running like it was new.

Now I only need to dig out the drain to the parlor, test the milker itself, try some test milking with Erin, and then we will be in milk here on the farm. Not sure when we’ll have enough to put some in the store just yet. For now, I have to find jugs and labels for the milk as well so there are a few more steps. But we are making progress!

Look for milking updates coming soon.

This little calf was only a few hours old when this picture was taken on November 21st.

He was born to #12 who is one of our long time moms here on the farm. She is a great mom and always raising nice kids. She was a little late this time as her last calf, #44, was born in August of last year. Her calf before that was born in February of the previous year. It looks like it’s taking her a few tries to get pregnant each year which may mean it is time to retire her and bring in a replacement mom.

We will see. We aren’t exactly high production around here so as long as she can get pregnant I think she can stay. At least until some of our replacement heifers get bigger than they are now.

November 17th we finally were able to get #11 back into the head gate to remove her trocar. You can leave a trocar in permanently but it’s not something I like to do. We decided that since we had all hands on deck, we’d go ahead and weigh all the cows and update their records again. This would give us a chance to see what has happened to their weights since coming back to the farm.

We’d just started processing cows when Miguel noticed that #3, whom we’d just run through the head gate, was having trouble. Maybe she’d eaten something that was bad while in the barn yard, a piece of plastic or something? We quickly isolated her and put her back into the corral to run through again. We got her back into the head gate and looked into her mouth and down her throat. Yes that’s as difficult and messy as it sounds. No plastic or obstruction that we could see. Weird. It’s almost like she’s bloated or something….

A quick check on her rumen and yes indeed, she had begun to bloat. Conveniently right there while we were already working the cows. What are the odds? We already had my vet bag on hand so it was a simple matter of shaving her down and inserting a trocar. However this was Makayla’s first time inserting a trocar so this was a special time for her. She has aspirations of being a large animal vet so a little home surgery was right up her alley. At one point she was taking selfies with the cow when I walked back up. That was a first.

The trocar went in fine and we quickly had a big rush of gas blowing out, along with some grass and whatnot that she’d eaten. Since she was coughing a bit occasionally we also had showers of gas and goo occasionally which covered both myself and Makayla. Makayla was laughing and thought it was great, I was trying to stay out of the line of fire.

We did eventually get the trocar out of #11 and she is doing fine. But now we need to bring the cows back again in a few days and take #3 back through the head gate to get this new trocar out of her. It’s always something.

Now for the weights. I’m trying out a Google Docs spreadsheet to see if it works well for publishing these weights. I have lots of experience with spreadsheets, and decent experience with WordPress. Bringing the two together, not so much. We’ll see how it goes.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YPSzeMiPzAPKWqS73dCTty3jngQpOUpZRYNqx78AM64/pubhtml

Not too long ago we were milking our Jersey cow, getting fresh milk every day that we used for our family and our neighbors family. For various reasons, we sold off our milk cow and got out of the milking business. Recently we’ve revisited the idea of having a milk cow and it looks like we could not only have a cow(s) but we could also have milk for sale in our store.

Of course, the milk will be labeled not for human consumption, pet food only as is the law in North Carolina. How you feed it to your goldfish is up to you. I don’t really understand that part but I do understand being compliant with the law.

We haven’t gone out and purchased new milk cows yet so really this is a question to you, our customers, that I’d really appreciate you feedback in the comments.

1. Would you like us to have and to sell raw milk in our store?

2. How many gallons per week would you think you would want. If you only want a gallon here or there, just average it out over the year. 1/8 of a gallon is a perfectly acceptable answer.

Again, please let me know in the comments section. We are set up in the store to have room for milk (planning ahead!), and we still have our milking parlor, milking equipment, etc. All we need is to go pick up some good cows and we are ready to go so this is really just to gauge interest and plan for what we’ll do.

So we have something new here on the farm. One of the big things you look for in your cows is the yield percentage, or how much meat is there compared to total body weight. Because we’ve never had scales, we had no idea what our yield was. With all the weights recorded from our new scales, we have our first yield.

#25 weighed 1126 pounds on October 29th, 2015.

On October 29th, we took #25 to Chadhry’s Halal Meats. On that date, she had a hot hanging weight of 594 pounds. That means head removed, gutted, and on the hook. That is a yield of 53%. Anything above 60% is great for grass fed, anything below 50% and you are losing money. #25 fell a bit to the low side but all things considered I’m pretty happy to have our first data point on our yields.

On November 4th, Vicente came and grabbed me first thing in the morning and told me one of the cows looked wrong. Miguel and I were right in the middle of planning out a busy day so I hoped maybe Vicente was wrong, and the cow just got up on the wrong side of the bed.

A quick look and sure enough, he was right. #11, our best momma cow, was beginning to bloat. She seemed to be handling it well and was still passing gas (burping) but not enough to get rid of the swelling. After watching her for about 20 minutes I decided we better treat her. We rigged a corral out of temporary wire and moved her to the barn yard, then into the corral, then into the head gate.

At this point, we inserted a trocar and bled off the gas she had in her stomach. For our new interns, Yarik and Felix this was a new experience. Felix wants to be a farrier so I made sure he came over and got some up close and personal experience with home surgery. I also reassured him that if he fell and hurt himself, we’d doctor him up right there and then as well. (That’s how we motivate people to be safe around here.)

After some clean up and observation we decided to put her back in the pasture with the trocar still in her rumen. That is our normal practice, to leave it in for a few days to make sure everything has normalized. I wasn’t too excited about the way the trocar had gone in but it seemed to be good enough and I didn’t want to have to put her through any more to reinsert it.

That afternoon, she had swollen again. Apparently the trocar had gotten plugged or dislodged so we had to get her back into the head gate again. She was well aware of just how fun the head gate was so this time it took a bit more coaxing but we eventually got her in there. However by the time we got her in all the running around had unclogged the trocar so there wasn’t really anything to do. What to do?

I didn’t want to have to chase her all over again, so I decided we should put her in the barn. I knew she wasn’t going to be happy in the barn because her calf, #51, was out in the pasture. #11 is our best mom. She’s actually the mother of Boyd, our up and coming herd bull and she’s a large part of why we kept him as our bull. I knew she wouldn’t like being away from baby but baby weighs about 600 pounds now so he should be ok one night.

After getting her in the barn, I finished up everything else that had to be done and checked on her after dark. Laying down and calm. Thank goodness! First thing in the morning I’ll check on her and hopefully she’ll only be off pasture and away from her calf for one night.

Yeah right! I don’t know when she decided she wasn’t staying, this picture was about 4am. Probably the first time her calf called for her she decided she’d make her break. I didn’t even have to look for her. She’d left all the food sitting in the barn yard and had gone straight back to her calf. I just raised the hot wire and let her go back into the paddock to be reunited. The good news is she was feeling much better. After it stops raining, we’ll get her back up here and remove the trocar and she’ll be right as rain.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a picture of a cute kid feeding the cows. The cows have been off farm for about two months and all the tours we’ve done during that time have been to see the pigs only. It’s neat to see the pigs and toss them a bit of food but it isn’t the same as hand feeding the cows. There is certainly more giggling and screaming, especially when the foot long tongue comes snaking out trying to grab the banana right out of their hand or a bit of drool gets on mom’s hand and she’s not quite sure what to do.

I’ve missed my cows and I’m glad they are back.

Yesterday I took #25 to Chadhry’s to be processed. We used our new loading ramp and our old trailer and everything went smoothly.

#25 is the one who lost her calf because she wouldn’t nurse it, then jumped the fence to go find the calf causing a whole nother round of trouble. She wasn’t a bad cow, but she was a bad mom and therefore made the cull list. She was a young full Angus cow so she should be good for good beef. She definitely packed on the weight at over 1100 pounds.

We’ll be hanging the beef for one week to age and then picking up the cuts for sale. That’s good news for those of you who’ve been waiting on steaks, especially the long list of people who’ve been waiting on filet mignon.

33,025 pounds of cattle on the farm.  825.65 pound average. This includes cows, calves, stockers, etc.

Stocker cows total 11,632. Average weight of 969.85 across 13 cows. Plan is to finish 1 cow per month in 2016. 13 cows should help us meet that goal. Some stockers have had good weight gain, some are trailing behind. Need to identify the ones that are trailing and either cull or get them back on track.

#39 also finished and ready, from our own herd.

9 established momma cows. #1 Uno, #3, #50 Sprinkles, #7 Laser, #11 Curious, #12, #14, #22 who was retagged as #62.

2 new momma cows will be calving in 2016, #33, #37

4 new momma cows in late 2016, early 2017. #45, #46, #48, #51

Ideally we’d like to have 15 momma cows. Waiting till late next year to get them isn’t a great plan. Need to buy at least 2 or 3 good momma cows.

Finished, ready to go to processor now- #25, #39, V7, LF7, Steve 05

Not quite finished but crazy and need to go. LF 501, LF 500, LF07

Between our stockers we bought and our own finishing cows, we should have 1 cow per month from now till April of 2017. We need to buy feeder calves now in order to have our next batch of cattle ready starting in May of 2017, or stocker cows in the spring. Feeder preferred.

The head gate worked very well with the new scales. Display is a bit hard to read in the sun but it’s manageable. However the head gate moves when crazy cows hit it. It needs to be set back in place and secured to the posts holding the fence so it doesn’t move.

Individual cow records across the scales.

#1s baby escaped when the head gate got pushed back. We need to bring that one back in and weigh him.

#1 1175 pounds. 53″ tall. BS 5

#3 1014 pounds. 52″ tall. BS 4

#50/#6 1188 pounds. 53″ tall. BS 6

#7 1139 pounds. 49″ tall. BS 6

#11 1069 pounds 50.5″ tall. BS 6

#12 1272 pounds 52″ tall. BS 6

#14 1122 pounds. 53.5″ tall. BS 5

#23 1038 pounds. 52.5″ tall. BS 4

#25 1126 pounds. BS 5. Scheduled for processor 10/29/15

#32 942 pounds. 50.5″ tall. BS 5

#33 840 pounds. 47″ tall. BS 5

#37 758 pounds. 49″ tall.

#39 1019 pounds. 52.5″ tall. BS 5

#43 789 pounds. 50″ tall. BS 5

#45 666 pounds. 48″ tall. BS 4

#46 610 pounds. 46.5″ tall. BS 4

#47 519 pounds. 47″ tall. BS 4

#48 519 pounds. 44″ tall. BS 5

#51 433 pounds. 40″ tall. BS 4

#54 411 pounds. 41″ tall

#55 269 pounds. 37″ tall. BS 5

#59 102 pounds.

#60 101 pounds. 29.5″ tall. BS 4

#61 119 pounds. 28.5″ tall.

#62/#22 910 pounds. 50.5″ tall. BS 6

#A11 1118 pounds. 52″ tall. BS 5 – Graham

Stockers

#42 976 pounds. 52″ tall BS 6

#LF07 997 pounds. 47″ tall. BS 5+

#LF32 956 pounds. 50.5″ tall. BS 5+

#LF501 1009 pounds. 51.5 ” tall. BS 5

#WF18 863 pounds. 50.5″ tall. BS 5

#Steve10 960 pounds. 52″ tall. BS 6

#LF500 983 pounds. 53.5″ tall. BS 4

#V7 1040. 53″ tall. BS 5

#759 908 pounds. 51″ tall. BS 5

#B4 955 pounds. 50.5″ tall. BS 5

#761 886 pounds. 49″ tall. BS 5

#LF7 1012 pounds. 52.5″ tall. BS 5

#Steve05 1063 pounds. 52″ tall. BS 5