Dairy Farm “Tails” from Moo to You

It’s a beauty day to be in the cow barn! Lots of fresh air, shade, a beautiful view, fans to cool them and keep flies away, all-you-can-eat buffet and great company! We’ve been hoping for some warmer temperatures to help our late started crops along, but for the cows, these temperatures are pretty perfect.

It was interesting to see that the heifers in the other barn, who have access to the pasture, chose to stay inside for the whole day today! It’s the first time this season that they haven’t come outside at all. Why? As the days get hotter they prefer the shade and fans of the barn to the hot sun. As we get farther into summer, the grass out there is older, more mature and just not as delicious as what is being served inside. And, as summer sets in, so do the flies and they are relentless. The heifers know the barn, although not free of flies, provides some protection from them as well.

I love sitting in the comfort of our living room and seeing the heifers in the field around us. Pasture seems so idyllic if you aren’t the one actually out there!….The reality is that through the course of a Canadian year, the days where the pasture outperforms the comforts of a good barn are few and far between!

We are giving everything in the barn a “once over” ahead of our ProAction inspection later this week. Every Canadian dairy farm, from coast to coast, adheres to our National standards for milk quality, food safety, animal care, livestock traceability, and environmental stewardship. This program is called ProAction and it means that every farm, including ours, undergoes regular inspections to ensure compliance with the standards.

I’m really lucky to have extra help in the barn today to do some cleaning and paperwork. Farm kids are one of a kind. She wrote an exam this morning, helped me through midday, heads off to her off farm summer job at our local feed store later this afternoon and then finishes up studying for tomorrow’s exam tonight. She also has a ball practice but she opted to sit that one out tonight in favour of studying.

Balancing school, work and fun is an important skill, as well as prioritizing those activities in order of importance at any given time. Growing up on the farm and being trusted with meaningful jobs from an early age gives opportunities to develop these skills. They don’t just happen. They take practice, reminders and patience.

Sometimes doing jobs yourself and just leaving the kids in the house is easier…especially when they’re younger. And definitely there are times they can’t be taken along…but there’s also lots of times they can. And, here’s the thing, they LOVE to help and feel so proud of their accomplishments when they’re younger and given “important” age appropriate jobs to do. And as they grow older, that sense of accomplishment in doing good work tends to stick.

Our daughter knows the importance of the inspection coming up and understands the connection of the work she helps with and the resulting high quality milk that then helps feed our community.

In the end it isn’t just about the extra help I get from them as they get older (although it’s a huge lifesaver in a lot of seasons), it’s also about the really valuable skills and values that they’ve picked up along the way as they’ve grown up working alongside us, that will help carry them down their own life path, whatever that may be.

Variety is the spice of life ❤️
Just ask Emilou, 64 (aka Cathie iykyk 😆), Alice and Dalilah…our industrious gentle giants come in all shapes, sizes, colours and patterns.

Taking care of cows so they can take care of us will forever be my favourite part of my job.

Thanks but no thanks! What we don’t need right now…is any more rain.

Our recently planted crops are all feeling a bit soggy and they’d love some heat.

But the heifers are enjoying the cooler temperatures and the wind keeping the flies away.

THE MIGHTY BEAN AND MAKING MILK

When soybeans germinate they grow a root down and then they use all that energy stored in that seed to push that round seed right up out of the soil. It’s a tremendous task and it’s why a soybean contains a bunch of energy in the form of oil. The seed, as it pushes through the soil to the light, greens up and splits into two cotyledons which somewhat resemble leaves and sustain the tiny plant until real leaves start to grow!

All that energy stored in that soybean (in the form of an oil) is what makes them a crop of value to humans. That oil is what is extracted when they are pressed! Soybean oil is the second most consumed vegetable oil in the world.

After the oil is pressed out, the left over crushed bean material doesn’t have a lot of energy left in it and isn’t much further use for human consumption BUT it does have a lot of plant protein!! And while the raw protein in a soybean is not readily absorbable to livestock, the processed form is!! This makes the byproducts of the soybean oil extraction, the soybean meal, a really valuable protein source for livestock feeds!

Our cows take that protein rich soybean meal, as part of their balanced diet, and they use it to help fuel their bodies and their milk production! We give the cows high quality and balanced sources of plant protein that we can’t use ourselves and they turn it into the nutritionally complete protein that we find in milk!!! 🌱 🐄 🥛

Yesterday’s project…replacing the cable that runs the manure scraper. Made it easier by replacing it BEFORE the old cable broke. BUT still took longer than planned (not actually surprising) when more of the corner wheels needed to be rebuilt than originally expected.

The sand bedding causes a lot of added wear and tear on a lot of the barn systems, especially the manure system. It’s the price we pay for giving the cows the comfiest and best beds possible.

Dinner time!

We’ve welcomed several new calves over the last couple of weeks. These girls drink a total of 8L of milk everyday, split into a morning and an evening meal. Along with their milk, fresh water, calf starter and hay are all on offer throughout the day to every calf. They will get their full amount of milk for 10 weeks before we gradually start to decrease the amount of milk. At 12 weeks they will be fully transitioned onto a solid diet. The goal is to give calves everything they need to be healthy, strong and fast growing.