Hail Damage

     Last Thursday night June 20th we got hit hard with hail.  Two-thirds of our beans were damaged very badly.  Most of the beans that Farm Rescue Planted are gone.  Also gone are the beans that Brent and Dad fought mud, miserable conditions, and late nights to beat the rain.
     Luckily we have good insurance on most of the acres.  There are several options/levels that a person can choose when taking crop insurance just like other insurances.  We have a combination of federal crop insurance which guarantees a certain number of bushels per acre along with production hail.  The production hail guarantees bushels above the federal crop insurance if you get hailed on, again there are many options/levels a person can pick.  I met with our insurance adjuster and after going through the situations we will try and replant some of the beans and some we will not replant.  Yesterday dad replanted about 60 acres before we had a breakdown, we will probably try and replant some more in the next few days however there aren't enough hours in the day and we need to get the hay up and nitrogen spread on the corn along with the daily chores relating to the cows.
    The beans we do replant likely won't yield very good because they are being planted so late. We will still harvest the damaged beans even if there is only a few bushels an acre.  Also the beans that won't be replanted will not canopy and will have more weeds so we will need to spray those acres an extra time or two this summer.  Because we carry good insurance it is never fun paying the huge premium in the fall but after a situation like this we are glad that we have high levels of coverage.  So far we have had an extremely late spring followed by too much rain and now hail.  Even with all of this there are many others around the region/state that have it much worse.                                                                                                                                                                               

                                             A field not hit by hail planted on June 7th

 

 

A field hit by hail planted the same day

 

 

 

Haying and Weather

     Wow the weeks are rolling by in a hurry.  It was a race to get the crops in between rains we finally finished planting on June 10th. Then there were cattle to move and Brent started spraying.  We started haying on Monday June 17th.  This is the latest I ever remember starting because the hay wasn't mature.  There was one other year we didn't get started good until the middle of June because we had 10 straight days of rain.  However that year the hay was way to old when we got started and we lost a lot of quality.  I will dedicate this post to explain how we put up our hay.
    We bale our hay wet and wrap it in plastic to keep the oxygen out.  This causes the hay to ferment and it makes excellent feed for the milk cows.  We call this balage.  Quality feed is very important for the cows to produce well.  If we put up poor feed our milk production could suffer for the entire year.  The quality in the alfalfa is in the leaves and during the day the leaves are dry from the heat of the sun even though the stems are still wet.  Because of this we try to bale at night or when there is dew in order to keep the leaves attached to the stem. We run a baler with knives in that chops the hay into 4 inch pieces.  We switched to this baler last year, it saves a lot on the repair and fuel bill when we mix the balage for the cows.
    After we bale the hay we have around 12 hours to get the hay wrapped.  The sooner we get it wrapped the better the quality.  Normally we like to haul the bales to the building site and wrap them close to where we are mixing the feed.  But there are times when the workload and the weather don't allow for this and we have to wrap the bales on the field and haul them in the winter as we feed.  Once the bales are wrapped we can't take them out of the plastic until we are ready to feed them or the bales will spoil.  In the winter we can haul bales for 2 weeks to a month at a time.  This is similar to sticking your food in the freezer. 
     Ideally we like to bale the hay between 40-60% moisture.  This usually means baling about one day after cutting.  However when making excellent quality balage the wetter stuff get to "hot" and the cows are not able to properly digest it.  Everything is a balancing act and tradeoffs in order to get up quality feed to produce quality milk.
    We baled Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I started baling around 9:30 Wednesday night and it started raining about 4am Thursday morning when I had about an hour left to bale.  I kept baling until I got done.  We got about .75 inch of rain and we went out Thursday afternoon and wrapped these bales on the field.  Luckily we did because we had some nasty weather Thursday night.  We got about 45% of our hay acres baled June 17th, 18th, and 19th before it rained. 
    I'll post again in the next couple of days to explain the weather.  It was not good we lost 67% of our beans to hail.  It looks like we will get to start planting again, along with haying, spraying, and applying nitrogen fertilizer on the corn.

                                                   My view at nights this week.

 

 

chopped hay after going through baler

view from the skidsteer when wrapping hay

wrapping

helpers for the day

A New Home for the Calves

 It has been a very busy week of moving cattle for Travis and the guys. The calves were moved from their calf hutches, which is a great home for them from October through June.

In the calf hutches, they are fed pasturized milk twice a day until they are six weeks old, when they are then fed a grain mixture and water twice a day. Madi really likes when they are little and still drinking milk out of a bottle because she thinks they are the cutest at that point. Can you tell just how much she loves them by the big grin on her face?

Once the calves leave the hutches, they are brought to a turkey hutch to live which is a great place for them to be from mid June through late September. The turkey hutches provide a great environment where there is a lot of air movement and also protects the calves from rain and hot sunshine.

The past couple of weeks, all of the new calves were immediately put into a turkey hutch to live.

Today, Travis and the kids worked on moving all of the weaned calves (those that no longer need milk but grain and water instead) from their regular calf hutch home to the much cooler turkey hutch.

 

Farm Rescue

Last week, we had some very special visitors on the farm. Farm Rescue came and helped finish planting the soybeans for us. We are so grateful for all of the help from these amazing volunteers! The work that they do to help farmers who are in need is such a blessing and we hope to pay it forward to them someday!

If you would like to see some photos from media day on our farm please click on this link to Mandy's blog...VIEW PHOTOS HERE.

Putting Fresh Cows on the Robots

    Many of you know that we installed robots to milk some of the cows last winter.  Our first milking on the robots was November 27th 2012.  We installed two Lely A4 robots.  We are currently milking about 120 cows with the robots and 80 cows in the parlor.  The robots feed a pellet to attract the cows to come into the robot to get milked.  Because of the pellet, the robot cows cost more to feed than the parlor cows.  The cows can milk up to 5 times a day.  Our parlor cows are milking, on average, 3 times a day vs. 2 times a day in the parlor.  The extra milking translates into an increase in production.  We put the older cows on the robots because older cows milk more.  Our first calf heifers, some cows that don't work on the robots and later in lactation cows make up the parlor herd. 
    This last week we've been busy trying to get field work done between the rain showers so when we had cows calve they got milked in the parlor.  This morning I got 3 cows that calved this past week put on the robots.  Each cow on the robot wears a collar that includes the cows number, a responder that the robot scans to identify the cow, and a weight to keep the collar from spinning.  Before putting the cow in the robot group we have to make up a collar, enter the cows information into the computer along with her responder number, and singe the hair off her udder so the robot has an easier time to locate the teats.  When the cow enters the robot for the first time we use the touch screen to guide the arm under the cow and get it close so it can find the teats.  The robot uses lasers to locate the teats and attach the milkers.  There is a camera over the cow to locate where the cow is standing front to back. After the first milking the robot records the teat positions and remembers this the next time the cow enters the robot so it knows where to start looking.  On average it takes about a half an hour to get a cow on the robot the first time.  After the initial milking, we are averaging around 7 minutes per cow per milking.
     The cows are much happier with the robots.  They choose when to milk, eat, socialize or lie down.  The cows have transitioned to this system very well.  We use washed sand in the stalls for the cows to lay on, it feels like laying on the beach.  Comfortable relaxed cows will produce more.  Cow comfort is very important.  Another day I will include what the daily procedure for chores with the robots include.


Supplies to make collar(collar, responder, numbers, weight)
 

 

 

Cow wearing collar

 

Cow in robot barn side

 

Screen used to attach milker

 

Robot attaching robot room side

 

Robot attached

 

 

Happy content cows laying on sand

 

 

Kids Summer Project

Summer vacation is in full swing at our house already! The past two years the kids have each raised a bull calf over the summer. Before school starts in the fall they have to sell their calves and they get the money. Yesterday morning, which was the second full day of summer vacation, Madi and Tyson wanted to get their calves. I took the kids to the barn and they helped clean the cattle trailer out and service the robots. After helping with these chores, they got to pick out their calves. Tanner decided he wanted to raise two calves this year and because he has been responsible the past two years, I agreed. Out of the six calves the kids had to choose from, four of them were loaded into the trailer and brought back to our place.

The kids had to feed them for the first time last night. Today, Madi spent most of her day with the calves. She even did extra things (like bed for them and spread it around all over) for her brothers calves because she felt sorry for the calves.  After her grandpa told her that there were two more bull calves born today, she sweet talked me into letting her get a second calf.  So, as of tonight the kids now have five calves at our place.

We took pictures of the fun things they have bought with their money from the last two summers. They are really proud of their purchases! They bought their own trampoline, a 4-wheeler, and Tanner bought an autographed basketball from the 2009 state championship team, his favorite possession!

 

Rainy Monday

     Even though it was a rainy day there is still plenty to do when you have livestock.  Brent and Dad spent the day feeding cows and moving cows and heifers between pens.  This morning they took 5 cows out of the parlor that had calved last week and put in the robot group.  This afternoon they moved about 8 heifers that are getting close to calving from the bred heifer pen into the dry cow pen.  Philip and Jon took the truck apart in the shop because because the head gasket blew this weekend.  I spent most of my day in the office updating cow records and looking at our options when the weather cooperates again.  It's May 20th and we have only had 7 days that have been fit to plant so far this year.  As of noon today we've had 3 inches of rain since Friday night and the forcast is for more the next couple of days.  In addition to working in the office I also took a load of cull cows to Perham Stockyards today.  This is the activity that I'll explain today.
     At some point every cow has to leave the milking herd.  It is common for a dairy farm to sell(cull) 30% of their cows every year.  Some herds have a higher cull rate and some have a lower cull rate.  We have been able to be very selective in our culling the last year because we have plenty of replacement heifers.  We are going to have to sell many heifers this year in addition to our normal culling or we will be milking way more cows than we want to.
     Every Monday Perham Stockyards has a sale and once or twice a month we will bring cows to sell if we fill our trailer we can haul 7 cows at a time.  Every month we sort the cows by profitability based on how much milk they produce.  We use this along with an estimated milk price and current feed cost to see which cows we should sell.  Today we sold four cows.  Three of them were sold because they weren't profitable enough and one was sold because she had a high somatic cell count which is an indication of milk quality.
    Because Pelican normally doesn't have school on Mondays Madi usually goes with because she loves watching the calves sell.  Today however Pelican had school so Madi will have to wait for a couple more weeks.