30 Days of "What's That?"

I will write about weird stuff....stuff many of you have never seen, as well as showing some of those things you may have "heard" about, but don't really understand.  There is a multitude of these things on the farm, and so I will try to explain why we have different tools (and maybe I'll throw a few recipes in to explain what cut of meat we are using).

May the interesting stuff we find around the house be of interest to you in the coming month!

May 30 Days of "What's That?" begin!

Back from Leave.....

I'm guessing you are aware of why there hasn't been a post in over a month, but I'm back from Maternity Leave from the blog, and will be trying to post more regularly as Ainsley is sleeping in my lap (she finds my blogging boring I guess!).
Some catchup:
-We finished corn silage the day before Ainsley was born. (Thank Goodness!)

-We spent 4 days in the hospital (41 hours of labor, 4 hours of pushing) awaiting her arrival and recovering from said marathon labor (I know there are those who have had worse, but believe me, it was discussed on more than one occasion how much easier this is in the animal world!).  On September 15, we were blessed with a baby girl - Ainsley Rae Pollard - 7 lbs, 14 oz.  We are adjusting pretty well, and I'm anxious to get back into the barn (anybody know of a monitor that has greater than a 2000' range?  - I can make it to the corner of the bull pen & the edge of the heifer barn, but not to the parlor or the calf barn to actually do any choring, and Ainsley thinks milking time is eating time)

-Harvest is nearly over....in fact all the crops on the farm near the dairy are gone

-My grandpa passed away (that will be another blog when I have a box of Kleenex nearby)

-There has been lots of events about agriculture in the news - here and here

I am committing myself to join in Holly Spangler's blog series for November and am debating between 30 days of Pork, Beef & Dairy Recipes (pretty self-explanatory as I experiment with new recipes since I'm actually in the house to make supper, at least when someone cooperates, or dishes that can be prepared one-handed) or What's That?, a pictorial display & explanation of various tools, equipment & "stuff" on the farm that many people do not know about, as I've been asked many questions through the years that makes me go - "Oh, Yeah.  If you didn't grow up on a farm, you probably wouldn't know the difference between hay and straw." or a multitude of other objects.

Any preferences?

The Card is Hung....

The pig people are already giggling at this reference, but if you're not a person who has hung or looked at a lot of sow cards in your life, let me explain.  You may wonder how in the world on farms with lots of animals (several of the farms I work with typically have between 2000-3000 sows (mamas) on the farm at any one time), farmers are able to keep track of which sows are due to farrow (have babies) when.  Well, that is where computers and ear tags and an organizational system come in handy.  Each sow is kept with a group within the barn, that corresponds to the week she was bred, and therefore, everyone in the group will all have babies at approximately the same time.  (Let's just say that pigs are a little more predictable than people - as I am now +5 days past my due date!)

Each sow has a card hung above her stall that records all her vital information (like the computer that it seems like 4 people log on to to ask me the same 5 questions every week for the last month at my OB appointments), and then when she gets moved to the farrowing house, she gets a new card that is ready to record all the information from the new litter of pigs:  when they were born, how many were born, were any transferred to another litter, as well as all of her past history:  how many litters has she had?  how many pigs did she have in each litter?  did she have any previous problems that those assisting need to be aware of?  It's really pretty similar to people.  Each sow is monitored every 15 minutes during farrowing to make sure that things are progressing smoothly, and they are assisted when necessary.

Sows are kept with their babies for ~3 weeks at which time the piglets are weaned from the sow and moved to another farm, where they start a diet based mainly on corn and soybean meal, as well as other vitamins & minerals.  The pig's gut changes at this time to be ready for the new diet.  This may seem early, but a pig will naturally wean itself by ~5 weeks anyway, and the ~3 week time frame is an optimum for both sow and piglets for their future health. 

My "group" is fairly large with few slots available in the "farrowing room" right now, so we continue in a holding pattern until Baby Pollard decides to make their debut!



A Different Kind of Recipe....

So, I haven't blogged in awhile, but that doesn't mean that there has been a lull in things happening on the farm.  In fact, it's been the exact opposite, and as we are down to the wire (6 days to go!), we are trying to get ahead on as much as possible.  We also finished 5th cutting hay this week, and we recently ran out of last year's corn silage, which means that Brent is "green chopping" (chopping directly from the field daily enough to feed the cows) until we start corn silage in soon.....  That means that we are working on a variety of projects, including cleaning and remodeling the calf nursery to prepare for over 20 cows due to calve in October, and the calf barn is nearly full as it is!  We just hit calf #39 for the year, and Brent predicts that we'll hit 60 before the year is out.  Therefore, there are a LOT of mamas due in this fall, and we want to make sure we are prepared for them, and any problems that may arise.  As, I am also working to reclaim the 2nd car side of our garage (there are some problem-causers around the area, so even locked vehicles outside make me nervous), these 2 goals coincide.

So, the other night I measured out sick cow meds.  These are packets of different vitamin & minerals (Mg, Na, K, Ca, Cl), along with yeast cultures, alfalfa meal, and other "goodies" that should make a sick cow feel better.  We mix it with 5 to 10 gallons of fresh warm water, and give it to cows that aren't starting off well.  If she feels better, and we can get the good bugs in her rumen off to a good start, she'll eat more, and recover from calving faster - which is better for her and for us, as she is healthier, she'll produce more milk, and be ready to calve again next year.  We worked with our veterinarian on the "recipe" we use to mix up the packets, so that they include everything that the cow would need, and this way, they are already preweighed out & ready to go, so we can deal with any problems quickly when necessary.
So, here is to several more nights of productive preparation!  We finally have a stocked frig and empty evenings, since we've only be home together at night 3 times in the past 3 weeks, so looking forward to some more rest & relaxation, but then there are always cows to take care of.....

Through a Different Lens....

http://www.watchusgrow.org/_blog/Illinois_Farm_Families_Blog/post/Through_a_different_lens/

Check out my blog on the Illinois Farm Families website, and the Bertelsen Family 1983 Christmas card, and my 2 "babysitters" when I was little!

Thankful for "R"s

Rain & Right Turns....these may not seem like they go together, and we haven't gotten much of the 1st, but I got another reminder of why I'm thankful for right turns the other day, so I thought I would blog about my safety message.
Rain has been pretty sporadic and hard to come by this summer.  The yard hasn't been mowed for 3 weeks, and that was simply to knock off the tall weeds around the septic field and the road ditch.  However, our corn doesn't look like this, so we have to be pretty grateful for what we've gotten.  And, I'm especially grateful for the full 1 1/2" we received Wednesday night!  It was a great welcome home gift after a couple days of meetings.  It came with a little more wind than we'd like, but there are still puddles in the driveway!

Right Turns.  When moving farm equipment from one field to another, I always appreciate being able to make right turns.  I was reminded of this yesterday.  I was on a fairly highly traveled road coming home from work behind a loaded hayrack.  I noticed he was slowing down, and there was an intersection coming up, so I waited for him to make the left turn, even though I couldn't see his turn signal.  At that point, a car behind me decided to try to pass both of us.  My hand still hurts, as I instinctively tried to throw my hand out the window, screaming "No, Stop, Don't", and all I caught was the window glass.  Thankfully, the driver of the hayrack either noticed the idiot, or was just plain lucky.  Now, this person broke multiple laws (passing multiple vehicles, passing too close to an intersection), but it is amazing how often this happens, especially as many of the places farm equipment turns isn't at a marked intersection.  I'm very thankful that we only have 1 hay field that requires us to make a left turn into the field.  It's amazing how fast vehicles can come up behind you when you're going down the road. Many times, I would pull out onto our road (not seeing a vehicle coming in either direction), and by the time I'd turned and shifted gears, I was getting passed!

I can't see anything behind me when driving this equipment!

Please remember to be careful when you come across farm equipment on the roads.  As my mother always told me, the bigger vehicle gets the right-of-way, which is usually the farm equipment, so the life you save may be your own!

Don't Mess with the Bull!

As I was planting canna lilly bulbs around our now empty bull pen the other night, I was humming the tune from the old country song "Gettin' Down on the Farm".  We got a lesson a few weeks ago in why the bull pen is built like it is.

The now empty bull pen

Built with 2' square concrete posts & 2" steel piping.....
this pen is meant to control a big, large animal!

As a farm kid, you are taught at a young age to not mess with the bull, boar, ram, etc.  It was something we kept a close eye on when Brent's cousins visit - "Don't play with, tease, or try to pet the big black cow in the pen by itself" in a very stern voice.  I remember going over a fence headfirst as a teenager from a boar that seemed upset with me - I really think he just wanted more feed, but regardless, I went over the fence faster than he could catch me because I wasn't going to find out!  Normally, virtually all dairy cows are bred via AI (artificial insemination).  This allows us to use some of the best genetics available and use multiple bulls, not just the one bull we may have on the farm at the time.  Beef producers also use AI, but most of them also keep bulls on pasture with the cows most of the summer as well.  Maybe its the fact that we are working with the cows everyday with milking, maybe it is just the dairy genes, but dairy bulls are notorious for being just plain mean.  Not playing, mean!  I remember a friend in college that got beat up pretty badly working on the dairy farm on campus - you do NOT mess with a dairy bull!  In the last few years, we've started keeping a bull around the dairy to help get cows bred.  Most of these bulls used for breeding are born on the farm, raised in the pens just like the rest of the heifers, and so are used to all of us and being around people.  Overall, they are usually pretty docile, but at some point, we do need to keep them separated from certain groups of cows or heifers that they aren't allowed to breed.  This can tend to lead to them being put into the bull pen, which usually means they are by themselves, or they get put there when they show the first signs of acting like a bull.  3M (our previous herd bull) was a perfectly behaved bull.....until one day, Brent & I went into the pen that 3M was also in to sort cows.  He never bothered me, but the minute we walked into the pen, the bull made a beeline for Brent - so to town he went.  (We hypothesized that 3M liked to "fight" with the big round bales of hay when the skidloader brought them into the pen, and Brent always drove the skidloader, and that he recognized him, thinking he could fight the bale, except this time, there was no bale or skidloader!)  Kahlua, our current herd bull,  has acted more "bully" at a younger age than most of our previous herd bulls, so we had made a point of locking him up in headlocks before we even went into the pen, but overall, he hadn't been bad enough that we thought we had to get rid of him, or at least we were willing to deal with it until we used him to get a few more problem cows bred (as there are no younger bulls growing up on the farm right now).  That was until one morning Brent & his dad came out to milking to having found Kahlua out & about the farm having cleared the gate that was shorter than the rest of his iron/cement pen, but it was still chained, not bent or looking like he even nicked it when he cleared it (and the pen is only about 20' long, so he can't get much of a running start at it).  It took them nearly half an hour to get him back in the pen, after Brent got stranded on the top of a piece of equipment while Kahlua dared him to get off - pawing at him.  So, Kahlua is now gone, the bull pen is now empty, and we've had our share of messing with the bull, for awhile anyway.  

Kahlua before he left.  The pipe gate behind him that is sitting at an angle is what he cleared to get out.  It got put at an odd angle to prevent him from doing it again.