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Week of Feb. 18, 2019

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T O P I C R E V I E W
maryjane	Posted - Feb 15 2019 : 4:17:31 PM I know. It isn't Monday yet but I've written off so many HJO days thus far, I might as well write off this coming weekend. So, happy Monday! (a couple days early:) In case I forget. Or in case I end up doing nothing but shoveling sh#@ and sn@* We've been getting buried in non-stop snow and are running out of places to put it all. My girls are bored out of their minds with so few places to go. "Hey, Maybelle want to walk to the office water cooler one more time with me?" And poor Maggie hangs by the door of the parlor hoping I'll still come and milk her (it's been 7 days since I started drying her off.)
25 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First)
CloversMum	Posted - Mar 02 2019 : 3:26:01 PM Thank you, Keeley, for your suggestions and encouragement. Both Betsy and Clover are actually in good body condition. I truly believe the barn has played a big part in that as they've been able to be protected from the worst of the weather. Both are in better condition than last year! phew... But I did increase their alfalfa quota which they, of course, love! Silly girls.
farmlife	Posted - Feb 28 2019 : 12:38:35 PM Yes, we got a break yesterday and today, but expecting more snow and frigid temps through the weekend. If we can make it through Tuesday things should start looking up. It should be in the 20s. . . above zero! Dare we say spring is just around the corner? Fingers crossed!
maryjane	Posted - Feb 27 2019 : 07:24:34 AM Snow, snow, snow. Shovel, shovel, shovel. Keeley, I bet you're getting all the same storms we're getting. Thanks for your important input on the needs of a high-production cow.
farmlife	Posted - Feb 25 2019 : 12:53:15 AM I haven't been on HJO for quite some time, but thought I would check in. Charlene, we AIed Elli 7 times once, although 2 of those straws went in the same heat cycle. We have come to the conclusion that for Miss Elli it is better to be dried off to get bred. When she is in milk she just doesn't keep enough body condition to breed up. In fact lately we started feeding her straight alfalfa hay instead of an alfalfa grass mix. It's been really cold here for a long stretch and we thought she would need the extra boost. She hasn't added any extra weight, but she immediately increased her milk production by a quart. It's what she does. As a result she is a 6 and a half year old cow who has had three calves. If I remember right Betsy is pretty wooly. She might be hiding how skinny she is under her winter coat.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 24 2019 : 08:26:38 AM Adria's birthday meal makes me hungry. Congrats on Mia's choir placing first. What a joy to see. The young man who is being mentored and given a beekeeping scholarship. How cool is that? That is such happy news. It's great when young folks get involved in such meaningful and rewarding work. I'm sure he will bee thrilled to get the honey. My hives are well insulated at the moment. Just think a couple of days ago they were out making cleansing flights, carrying out dead bees and spotting the snow covered landscape with bees. Winds picking up again. 50 mile per hour they say. More drifting. Someone doesn't mind all of the snow.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 24 2019 : 07:43:55 AM Janet, I know you'll love this. Meg has a good friend in Kansas whose son was jumping for joy this past week because he was given a beekeeping scholarship. He had to go through several interviews and testing first. I'm waiting to hear more, but he gets a local mentor called a BeeElder. And he gets equipment that piece by piece he's allowed to keep every time he gives a local presentation. Here's the really sweet part; he's only eleven. Meg and I are going to send him small jars of our spring honey and also our darker, late-summer honey.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 24 2019 : 07:30:14 AM So amazingly beautiful, Janet. I know all the digging is hard, but so stunningly beautiful. What a place to be. Just think of all the seasonal changes and hard times your trees and you have been through together. We're getting snow again right now but nothing like you have. Temps are in the 20s. I stayed up half the night getting caught up. Time for a second cup of tea. Milk delivery today. More bookkeeping. I made Adria her requested b-day dinner Friday night: mashed potatoes, roasted chicken, white gravy, and broccoli. For dessert we dined on frozen raspberries, blueberries, and sliced peaches topped with cream and a hint of maple syrup. Afterward, we played a board game. Such sweet girls they are! Mia's choir competed again in our local Jazz Festival. They took first place. I think there are 36 children in her choir--all of them singing their hearts out.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 24 2019 : 07:17:20 AM Just back inside from doing chores. Takes a bit longer. No sense scooping until it quits blowing, which they say will be this evening around 6:00 p.m. Animals are all okay. Carried water to steers as the BarBarA is covered and will have to be found and dug out again. Going to have to build a wind break around that one. Other than deep snow and wind blowing, not so bad. Just have to wait the storm out. Drifts are the worst, trying to walk through them to get to animals. Path to horses.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 24 2019 : 05:20:34 AM Beauty can still be found, even in blizzard warning. Good morning all! 9 degrees, wind blowing, still in blizzard warning, and just beginning to get light enough to see what's what. Things are buried, roads are blocked, so it's dig out time, again. Need to check on all the animals. Enjoy the day!
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 20 2019 : 07:59:42 AM The trees do become like family. You nurture and care for them for years, watch them go through good times and bad as it shapes the tree and gives it the unique character it has. Nothing more comforting, sitting at the bottom of a tree you planted years ago and just enjoying the scenery. I am getting my share of grounding in. Now for warmer temps and not 2ft. of snow. Had to dig out the BarBarA, completely covered and the steers couldn't find it. It took us a while to locate it too, but finally did and got it scooped out so they can get a drink now. Probably have to do it again the way it's snowing and blowing. You two be safe on your way to and from your Dr. Attic is coming along, slowly. He is ready to tape and finish walls, but working on all the bookcases first. Lots to do yet. And he started a new job so will only be here once or twice a week.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 20 2019 : 07:00:08 AM And just like you would one of your children, Charlene, take a towel and wipe that adorable nose of Clover's off and then watch to see if tiny sweat beads form. It's easy to confuse a licked or recently submersed-in-drinking-water nose with the wet Dr. Parish pointed out. It's a certain kind of wet we're after. Dr. Parish wiped Anna's nose to demonstrate the sweat bead principle to me. Janet, my father was a tree planter also. Once our place had all the trees it could hold, he planted them in nearby parks and neighbors' yards. I think trees that we plant from seedlings and wait 20 years to behold, know us, and communicate with us in a language that isn't English. Plus, when you hug a tree or sit back and lean against one, you're grounding (Dr. Koniver's go-to for fixing inflammation issues). Snowing here. Nick and I have our version of a Dr. P visit today. And a milk delivery. How's your attic coming along?
CloversMum	Posted - Feb 19 2019 : 2:12:03 PM Hello, Thank you MaryJane for your helpful links to your milking videos and the feeding set up. I had originally wanted to build something; but, hubby found the metal hay feeder, he wanted to go that route. We will see what happens. My cows are now getting daily alfalfa flakes along with alfalfa pellets mixed in with their chow at milking time. No change yet in their production but we are having incredibly cold weather with more snow forecasted. So if I can keep them at the same level of milk production, I’ll consider it a success. Here’s Clover’s nose ... wet! So perhaps enough calcium now?
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 19 2019 : 08:15:25 AM Good morning! Enjoyed watching Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees. I couldn't find it in it's entirety, but found some in a few different places. I too have a passion for trees, especially oaks. It was instilled in me from early childhood by my dad. So he comes to mind when I walk amongst them. The two pictures above, each one of those trees were planted there by us. When I first moved here, nary a tree on the place except some large walnut trees out front of our house, and the pine grove out west. Plus some cedars that surround the north and west sides of our house. The trees down south, as well as bushes were all planted by us through the years. Most in the first two three years after I purchased the place, before I married, and the rest followed. A peaceful haven for sure, for animals and us.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 18 2019 : 4:26:16 PM Thank You MaryJane! I will do that. I love Judi Dench. I will see if I can bring it up on IPTV Passport and watch it. Just watched the weather and it looks like we are to get another 8" of snow, so bye-bye snow angel. May have to do a repeat.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 18 2019 : 3:20:01 PM Home safe home and with a bit of time to play. I don't think I've made a snow angel in years. 'Bout time I follow your lead. Many a great poet found inspiration in a grove of trees. Such amazing creatures, trees. I can almost hear the muted silence of your snow covered walk. Look up Judi Dence's tree crusade/passion that aired recently on PBS.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 18 2019 : 2:31:50 PM On the way back from doing the chores, feeding the animals, I managed to get my snow angel made. And was able to get back up out of the snow. Smiling.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 18 2019 : 07:53:00 AM Good morning! All kinds of trees MaryJane, in answer to your question. Pines, oaks, crabapple, fruit trees, and a pine grove to the west. Just so pretty when covered in snow. Winter Wonderland. More snow on it's way. Don't need it, but it's coming anyway. Heading north to Dr. P and hoping for good roads. Enjoy your day!
maryjane	Posted - Feb 17 2019 : 6:45:31 PM Our temps are supposed to get down into the single digits tonight and tomorrow night. I gave my chickens a heat lamp and the girls extra straw. What trees are in your grove, Janet? Pine? Charlene, I've been thinking about your hay waste comment. In our main feed bunk my girls noses can push a little bit back into the area that I feed from, but it isn't very much. Every couple of days, I rake it up and feed it back to them since it hasn't gotten soiled. And they can't pull any out to where they're standing. In the photos in the link below, you can see some hay on the ground where we feed from but that's mostly from me dropping some and then the little bit they push with their noses. Hence, the rake. Our answer to rein in the waste culprit has to do with the galvanized pipe that runs above the bridge of their noses (if you look close, several photos show the pipe). In the end, nary a blade of greenery is lost in our main bunk where the girls eat. https://www.heritagejersey.org/chatroom/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=39392
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 17 2019 : 08:56:35 AM Good morning MaryJane. Yes the milk is awesome and so is the getting things worked out so that it's easy to manage. (or easier). Oh your hydrangeas would excite me so, as I love taking cuttings and getting things to start from the mother plant. You did good! How very pleasing to see. My house is fast getting full of flats of this and flats of that. Last night we really got the snowfall, and it continues. More scooping and getting dug out again. It's quite beautiful though and the temperature is up to 22 which feels so good. Nellie isn't convinced at all, but the other gals don't seem to pay any mind. The grove is so pretty. I love walking through it when we get a good snow. Just breathtaking.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 17 2019 : 06:55:15 AM Yes, always tweaking. The beauty of that is the satisfaction that comes from making your system more and more efficient and consequently more joyful over time. Milking a cow has plenty of moving parts, ups and downs, and hiccups that keep us on our toes, that I do know. But those buckets of milk sure do satisfy, right down to a person's very core. Here's a work-around you'll appreciate, not in the cow realm, but plant realm. Many years ago, I brought home five hydrangea "snow ball" bushes. They're 7 to 8 feet tall now and by far hardier than any of my other hydrangeas. I looked and looked online to figure out what variety of hydrangea they are so I could buy more of them they're so awesome. Unlike all my others, they never need watering (some of my hydrangeas need to be watered every couple days--their roots must be one inch below the surface), the leaves turn a brilliant red color every fall, and in the spring they are loaded, just loaded in white snowballs twice the size of my fist--my kind of care-free landscaping plant. But, I couldn't find all their traits specifically in anything I looked up. Oak-leaf hydrangea comes close, but yet not. Mine are better. So. On a whim one day last summer, I clipped several branches, stuck them in water, and put them on my kitchen counter for a bit of greenery to admire, changing the water weekly. The leaves never did tire out. About four months into my "bouquet", I started to see little white roots and a couple of them actually bloomed while in water. A month ago, I went to my garden shed, found some potting soil and planted all ten of them in pots. Guess what? One of them surprised me again last week with white blooms! And there are new little red buds showing up on all of them.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 17 2019 : 03:36:53 AM Enjoyed watching your thorough videos for prepping and milking your cow gals. Very nice. I think it will be a valuable help to anyone wanting to know how to prepare for milking and maitenance of parlor. Thank you for all that you do. A lot of work went into making all those videos and it's much appreciated. I know I could improve on some of my routine. Always tweaking.
maryjane	Posted - Feb 16 2019 : 6:31:03 PM I finally finished my milking post. It's l-o-n-g! https://www.heritagejersey.org/chatroom/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=41420
maryjane	Posted - Feb 16 2019 : 5:29:35 PM Yes, I used to buy grass hay from Standlee until I found a better, more local source. I think pellets are a new thing for them. I'll have to check it out. How handy would that be for me. Thank you so much! There's a Standlee dealer only a half hour away.
NellieBelle	Posted - Feb 16 2019 : 4:11:47 PM MaryJane, I was wondering if you are familiar with products from Standlee. I see they have organic alfalfa and alfalfa pellets. From Kimberly, ID. I haven't compared the products next to Modesto, but wondered if you have tried them. https://standleeforage.com/products/organic-alfalfa-pellets
maryjane	Posted - Feb 16 2019 : 2:02:32 PM My three pregnant cows (all of them due in April) get a 4 to 6 inch flake once/day of straight alfalfa hay (the width depends on how it pulls apart). Daisy, who is still giving me 2+ gallons/day (I dried off her problematic front quarter) gets a healthy 4-inch flake (probably more like 6) every evening plus the alfalfa pellets and bit of grain she gets every morning during milking. All of them get grass hay twice/day. I forgot about your flower theme with Clover; BlueBelle, not Annabelle. I was close. I do think about trying my hand at AI in the future. I have all the gear and a tank full of semen. Maybe by the time July rolls around and I start thinking about getting Daisy pregnant again, I will give it a try. After all, I did take WSU's three-day course. But for now, I have such a nice set-up for keeping a bull, that seems easier than embarking on AI. He loads in the trailer super easy and once a year I run him down to Lewiston for a hoof trim and trich test. While he's on the table, I give him his annual vaccinations. Given we all milk cows every day, you know how inviting a routine can be. Well, I have a bull routine that has worked for many years and I suppose it could be said, I do that rut pretty well.