Our friend Derek gave us some Black Currant plants at market Saturday, November 8th. Even though I was tired after market, I got them in the ground, because the weather was expected to change. And change it did, with falling temps, wind, and snow. Feels like winter.
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Above is the #75 cow who we’ve been following in this blog since she was a calf. She’s always photogenic.
Below is a well put together 1st calf heifer. I love her small udder. You need small udders that will outlast the cow.
The calves continue to grow, but I’m not sure they will be bigger than last year’s calves, which is counterintuitive, as last year was dry and this year was wet. On a farm with adequate forage, cattle will do better on a dry year, as every bite of forage contains more nutrients compared to forage on a wet year. When you’re consuming dozens of pounds of forage per day, the amount of moisture in the forage makes a big difference.
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We’re having a wet, hot, Wisconsin summer. With several multi-inch rain events and less pigs this year, my pig pasture is getting away on me. So I gave it a quick rotation with the cattle.
I’m super happy with Teddy, my South Poll bull. He’s in the photo below, after six weeks of breeding. He gained weight during the breeding season.
Teddy’s super chill, yet attentive to his heifers. Look at how much slicker his hair coat is compared to the heifers in the top photo. I’m planning to keep daughters out of Teddy and hoping they have his good attributes.
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My youngest sister caught this photo of sunset overlooking our hay field. All three sisters and most of their kids made it home for the fourth and we had a nice family gathering. Below is some of the family in front of Vicente’s corn for our traditional fourth of July corn photo.
After a dry winter/spring, the sky spigot turned on and we are green! Nothing ruins a drought like rain.
We turned out the big bulls June 27th and the yearling bulls July 3rd. Below is a photo of two of the big bulls following a cow and a few calves. This pasture was rested eight weeks and rebounded nicely after spring grazing.
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Happy spring everyone. I have one black calf this year. Calving is going well. We’ve lost two, but with two sets of twins saved we’re still at 100%.
I wanted to ask the farmers where they keep their cows in the winter time. The last two winters have been the warmest ever for Wisconsin.
We dealt with a lot of mud and compacted the soil where we had the cows. In the background of the top photo, you can see where I replanted part of the pasture and the field above it.
We are used to dealing with frozen ground, which kept the cows from doing much damage, but it appears I can’t count on that anymore. So if you have some thoughts about winter and mud and cows I’d appreciate if you left a comment. Thank you.
The photo below shows where I frost seeded red clover in a pasture damaged last winter, so perhaps there’s a way to turn a negative situation into a positive.
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We’ve probably had over 10 inches of rain in September and October. It’s a little late after a dry summer, but it’s nice to remember how productive our pastures can be with the best fertilizer, which is rain.
We plan to wean our spring calves next week and then we’ll be able to graze everything one more time before winter. The cows, free from the burden of nursing a calf, will put on weight before winter.
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We are excited for a couple of litters ready to pop any day now. Hoping they avoid farrowing during the predicted winter storm Wed/Thurs, but probably will, as a dropping barometer tends to induce labor.
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Six months of green! Our late snowstorm of April 27th joined forces with an early October 29th snowstorm to make this the shortest green season. These photos were taken after a second, October 31st snowstorm.
We have one litter outside. They are doing fine with lots of bedding.
The sows are still finding some grass to eat. You can see the one in the bottom photo munching on a clump of Orchardgrass.
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Six or so inches of the latest snow in southwest Wisconsin I can recall. April 14th sticks in my mind as some big snows, so this one beat it by a couple of weeks. It had been warm and dry previously. Some of our friends’ children were confused and got excited about Christmas coming!
All the trees, bushes, and plants that were already flowering took a beating, but my main concern was our animals. My parents practice spring calving, as we don’t have barns for our cattle and April and May is usually quite nice for calving.
Sunday morning we were out at 6 am on our ATVs seeing if any calves were too cold. We looked for any new ones, as any calf that is actively nursing often, is very tough and can take a great deal of cold. We had 3 new ones, but their mommas were experienced and managed to find some decent shelter in the woods out of the wind and snow and the calves were fine.
We weren’t as lucky a couple of weeks earlier in another rain and snowstorm. A heifer was lying near the creek. She didn’t seem too agitated, but she must have had a difficult delivery as she showed little concern for her calf which was lying in the cold water of the creek, just managing to keep its head out of the water.
I grabbed and put it on the back of the ATV and drove it to the barn. We stuck a feeding tube down its throat, (when calves are this cold they lose the ability to suck), and gave it a warm colostrum replacement. I rubbed its body with straw, but I realized it wouldn’t be warm enough to survive the night, so we took it to the basement and put it in warm water for a half hour or so until it started to revive. Then we towel dried and used a hair dryer to dry even more thoroughly and then left it in the basement overnight.
The next morning the calf was standing. We walked its mother into the corral and helped it nurse for the first time. After all that, momma and baby were fine and we turned them back out to pasture a couple of days later.
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Winter 2018, mild, mostly frozen, animals and people doing well. Above is one of the hogs exploring, and below are some of the cattle resting on their bedding pack, with hogs exploring at the left of the frame.
I wrote that last week. Winter has decided to come back hard in February, with below zero wind chills and several inches of snow last night, February 3rd.
Thank you to everyone who has purchased meat, or boxes, or halves, this winter. Your business is appreciated.
I added several new products, (Brats-links and patties, Breakfast sausage patties, Cottage Bacon, Canadian Bacon, Ham Hocks).
I also tweaked the Classic Pork boxes. Check them out and let me know if something interests you.
I am farrowing several litters in one of the hoop barns with farrowing huts. The sows get to choose which hut to farrow in, and also make their own nest inside the huts.
When it is this cold, I never have any trouble with a sow choosing to farrow outside of a hut, which can be a problem in the warmer months of the year.
I haven’t lost many piglets, even though its been colder than I would prefer, (below 20 F).
Except for one very big Landrace sow who chose to carry way too much bedding into her hut and farrowed on a very cold night. All her piglets died. My theory is whereas the other sows made a nest with at least a little room for the piglets to nurse, see photo below, this sow was so big with so much bedding, the piglets were simply unable to start nursing due to lack of room.
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Curiousfarmer 