But in the meantime, I did manage to snap a few pictures of an excitement on our farm - new babies! I know I've mentioned before that we raise all of our own heifer/cow prospects. But this week, a friend of my father's had a dairy herd dispersal, so my dad jumped on the band wagon to purchase some outside genetics.
About 8 pm Wednesday night, my dad called me and said "Emily, you and Connor [my brother] go up to the barn and start preparing pens, I'm bringing 21 new heifers in!"
When Dad calls, we better go! Time is of the essence to make sure the new babies get off the trailer quickly thus minimizing hauling stress!
Here's our newly arrived heifers calves in the trailer about to be unloaded.
We separated them into different pens based on different sizes. This way, when we feed them, competition will be reduced and each calf can grow at an appropriate, healthy growth rate.
The next step was making sure the babies got fed properly for the evening. These calves will grow up to be the cows that produce milk for America, so giving them great nutrition from the start is pertinent!
On normal days, the calves will get fresh milk from our milk tank. But since these arrived after feeding hours, we had to mix some powdered milk. This milk has the same needed nutrients as fresh milk, it's much like formula for human babies.
Here's Dad mixing milk in one of our sanitized mixing buckets.
Next step, grab some clean, sanitized bottles and fill with milk. this bucket held 9 bottles of milk.
Fill with milk and put on the nipple.
They seemed to be pretty happy!
In the end, as my Dad says, it's not only ensuring a healthy start, it's about caring for the well-being of animals.
I raise Holstein bull calves. Last week we got 118 calves in at about 11:30pm. It's a job. I was exhausted the next day. I finally got to bed at about 1:30am but we just give them water until morning. They are the most fun to work with! I love it!
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