Reasons Why...

I really love my job...

Sugar volunteers for adorable photos.

Gracie and Medina Dreamin' always say hellooo

Hillbilly chews on shoes like a puppy...
I just wish she would do it when I wasn't in them!

All of my girls would rather come with me than stay on the hill and eat.

And they aren't afraid to show me so!

A New Name

First off a big thank you to everyone who put in names for the "Name the Calf" contest. I cannot express how much I appreciate them all. And they are great names. Believe me we are keeping a running list here of all the names that don't come out of the hat for future use.

Secondly, we picked a name from the hat this morning. And a big congrats to Andy Drish on his suggestion of "Sage" which was the first drawn. Now Andy can officially say he has named a calf...but I'm not sure how many people actually want to be able to do that. We're gonna be getting both of the calves registered soon, and I am looking forward to hopefully be able to show at least one of them next summer.

Wow

Man am I beat. Four animals at the fair and I am as tired as if I had a dozen or more (been there, done that got the tshirt, so I know). It has been such a long week. But I have been tied with some great people. One of which keeps going every morning and bringing me back coffee. I am too exhausted, and desperately need to head to bed so I can head back over to the fair early again tomorrow for the last day, or I would put up my own post.

Instead, why don't yah all head over to Northview Diary, and check out all Mom's posts on the cows and show time. She's got some lovely photos of Mandy.

Oh The Irony

For the last several months, I have been trying very desperatly to get semen on Semex proven stud Silky Cousteau. I wanted five units and my parents decided after I had ordered that they would also like five. See this bull kind of makes udders that are just that, SILKY, they tuck right up under the cow, so I want to use him on Mandy.

I then proceeded to attempt to contact the company. I sent multiple emails, all in an attempt to get the semen delivered to our farm. Some cows I wanted to use it on have already been serviced and are hopefully carrying calves, but to other bulls. My first email went out on April the 26th. I got a reply May 21st. Not a very good turn around time. I heard from our so called 'representative' the 22nd, and despite replying with all the information, to this day I have not heard back from him. I was to say the least getting very frustrated. One of the main cows I want to use this bull on is rapidly reaching the end of her voluntary waiting period.

So, as with me with frustration comes desperation, I was considering canceling the order altogether (I am not patient when it comes to handing my hard earned money to other people, they want it they better earn it!) and ordering it from a guy down in Pennsylvania who is like a semen broker and pulls in semen from all over the world to sell at below company prices very often.

Then, our feed rep brought a new man to the feed company through. He (the new fellow) told me an old family friend of ours, who quit over at the college as a result of certain individuals in the dairy barn, names to not be mentioned, was a new Semex guy, and could probably be made our rep if we wanted. Well HECK YES!! He will at least get us the semen. So on the 17th I sent them another email requesting that they put him on as our representative, cause dang it I want that semen. This very afternoon he pulled in to our driveway to check and make sure he was putting the order together right, drop me off some new stud books, and just check in and see how everything was going.

But here is the part with the irony. No it isn't that it only took three months just to get ten blasted units of semen. It is that in April when I originally ordered it, a single unit was $20.00. Not bad compared to the Blitz I have been using, he is valued around $30.00 or so the last time I looked. The irony is they never billed me because they never shipped it out.

WELL... Cousteau is now only $14.00, so we ended up saving, oh, say, $60.00 on a bull we were gonna buy no matter what. And though I kind of hate to say it, Semex is notorious for this. Wonder how much in sales they have lost over the years as a result...bet it is a pretty nice chunk of change. At least I should have my semen the first week of August. Whoo Hoo! Now I am excited. Ahh the possibilities.

Stuff that makes for a really long day...

I finally decided today was the day...

...To start getting this spring and summer's calves registered...

...And to get the fair entries done...



...And finish my scholarship application for Pennfield Feeds (which really wasn't too bad, I just had to proof it a bit)...



All of which lead to mammoth headaches.

The whole bunch of work.

See, for starters, Holstein Association USA's registration forms are not known for their ease. They are down right complicated. They have this EZ program for the computer, but that is actually even worse than the paper blanks. So I tend to shy away from the computer program, unless I am in a real hurry. One big problem with the EZ program is that we have young daughters on both really really old bulls from AI studs, like pre 1980, and from our own bulls that Dad has bought and raised. If the sire of a calf isn't from the studs over the last say fifteen years, the program is determined the bull is not a legitimate sire, and causes all kinds of grief until the user manages to over ride what ever the problem is. Which tends to put me in the one headache too many category to use it. Plus I am really not all that fond of computers. They are great...when they are actually working, but I tend to manage to make them not work.

A finished registration paper. What the end product looks like.

Then there are the Altamont Fair entries to do. They really aren't much easier. Mostly because this season they decided to put everything on the web. From entry blanks, to rules and regs, all the necessary information is on the net..in pdf form...which our computer hates. So it took me more than three days just to get stuff to load between error messages, and having to get into contact with the actual fair office to get all the pages I needed to do my cows entries. Then I had to transfer them from this computer to the one in the main office with a printer. The other one has internet capabilities, but is slower than molasses in January. And naturally the printer didn't want to cooperate. Guess who I went to with that issue...My wonderful Mommy. Who fixed the problem. I printed out two sets of the blanks, even though I needed five or so, and then just used the copier to get everything I needed.

Heifer list so I know which calf goes with which cow.

At which time the even bigger headache causing activities started...



Acutally doing the entries themselves. Which required finally picking which animals were gonna get entered. And this year I was smart. I put at least one animal in all my immediate family's names (nyvolfan, darling big brother, we would like to include you in this list, no you don't actually have to show, I do know better than to try that one any more (yeah right, and if you believe that I got a bridge to sell yah), but we need your signature on the blanks) so I could get everybody passes. And so Frieland Ex Spec Camry (Dad), Frieland Ex Spec Junie (Mom), Frieland Ex Spec Lemonade (Becky), and Frieland C Alpha Zulu (Alan) were entered for everybody. I have the blunt of the string, as this is my project...aka my vacation. I entered Frieland Z Mandolin Rain, the new mommy, her yearling daughter Maqua Kil Blitz Mendocino, Frieland Zander Foolish, Maqua Kil Zander Spruce, and Frieland Chilt Blink for myself. Then I put up the fees for Best Three Females, and Daughter-Dam. I don't plan to actually take the majority of the ten animals, should I enter one for big brother too. I kind of just want a small string this year, so I am not so totally stressed when school starts up. Plus with just four or five, I can relax a bit more, hang out with my friends and enjoy my 'vacation' as much as possible.

Hope to see everybody there. This promises to be yet another crazy and fun filled fair. As of yet none of the actual events are up for the fair week itself. But I can say that right now it looks like the dairy classes will again be held Thursday morning and night (with just Holsteins we're only showing in the evening), and beef will be late Friday. Be sure to stop by and sit a spell with us if you swing through the grounds. We're happy to sit and chat awhile. And Mandy is almost always looking for a few more pets.

And of course my ever present cup of coffee. It is about the only thing that will give me enough energy to keep going.

She's Such a Cutie...

Here's a few pictures of my new girl with her momma, Mandy. I'm gonna have to come up with a name. I may stick with Margaritaville, though it isn't quite 'her' if you know what I mean.

Another New Baby

Ahh, the last two days have been horrible.

Mandolin Rain has been, as we say, 'hanging fire', and not calving, but really acting like she wanted to. So as a result I have had a grand total of about 7 hours of sleep in the last two days, and less than two of those hours were last night. See, around 2 yesterday afternoon, she started really acting like she was ready. Up and down constantly. She was restless, straining hard, and dropping thick heavy strands of mucous. So I went back and forth between the barn all day checking on her. I panic when it comes to this cow. She is my darling baby. I pamper and spoil her constantly. She is easily the biggest cow we have, but she is something of a weanie. Not that I mind most of the year, but when calving time comes, it is not good. Every time she calves she has big problems.

No different this year. She kept straining, dropping mucus, obviously feeling miserable, and not doing anything. Her ears were a bit cold come milking time last night, so Dad and I were going to give her a bottle of Cal-Nate, a calcium supplement to ward off the milk fever she was slightly suffering from. Or at least we were until we discovered there was only one bottle left, and the other five bottles of drench were Dextrose, which wont do diddly for milk fever. So we decided to hold off in case she got worse.

I stayed up til just shy of midnight, and since she hadn't made much progress, and I couldn't yet feel a calf, I decided to try and sleep for a little bit. I managed to zonk out until just shy of 2. When I woke up with this feeling of 'get to the barn quick girl'. Sure enough, Mandy's water had broken, and when she lay down bigger than my fist white hooves were sticking out of her backside. I checked to make sure everything was lined up good, went back to the house to grab a chair and a cup of coffee and headed back out to the barn. By the time I got back it was obvious the calf was going to be a monster. Within another five minutes or so it was also apparent that Mandy and the calf were really really distressed. The calf had a sickly yellow tint to it, which spells trouble, and poor Mando was having real trouble, pushing harder and harder without getting anything out.

So lucky me got to pull the calf. Fortunately after the difficulty I had with her having the Blitz, this calf's full sister, last year, I had strings and such on hand for just such an emergency. It took more than a half hour of hard pulling to get the baby, but it sure seemed longer. I got to admit, I was so worried for the cow I was somewhat out of it. But aside from the calf's extreme size it wasn't a real bad pull in terms of calf position, just a 'baby too big for hole' problem.

I figured just based on size, and being a day late the baby would be a bull. But really I didn't care. I just wanted momma and baby to both be okay. It wasn't breathing when I finally managed to get it out, so I beat on its chest until it coughed up the gunk that had gotten into its lungs. Then I decided to check and see if it was really a bull. Much to my delighted surprise it was a girl. A big, lovely, inky black girl. I tried to get some pictures of her, but she wouldn't cooperate. And my dear dad kept sticking his hand in front of the camera everytime I lined up a decent shot. Poor Mandy has still got a touch of milk fever. Dad and I gave her that last bottle at four this morning. So now he and mom and Becky are off at Tractor Supply Co. in Amsterdam picking up some more.

What a long long day. I will try again later to get some pics of the new girl, cause she is just a little cutie. I was going to name her Margaritaville for the old Jimmy Buffett song, but somehow it just doesn't seem to fit her. Any ideas?

Oh, and Mom did a real sweet post today. Check it out. http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/

Some Real Sweet Paintings

As I am too lazy at the moment to do up a post on this weekend's event, I figure I will point everybody over to my Mom's blog, Northview Diary. For today she has put up a post with pictures of some of my Grandma's paintings. I think you should take a look at some of the comments. See, the middle painting is of me at about four or five, I think. Joni says I look like I am ready to go get into trouble.

Uhhh

Hmmm,

Well, I was always up to some sort of mischief as a young child. Let's just say that hasn't changed much. I kind of ran (and still run) with the boys. Though I usually don't have to go looking for trouble if I want some. It is usually more than willing to find me.

Awww, Another Newbie

Well, big old Foolish had her calf. Who am I kidding though, she's two years and two months, so not really old. The baby is a very cute little Holstein-Jersey cross heifer. Unfortunatley as we are currently very over stocked she will probably end up being sold.

All in all though we had a very interesting morning. Saturday morning is traditionally my time off. I don't normally have to milk. But we are having some serious problems with Hooter, who calved the night of the final day of the Enterprise event. She got really bad mastitis in two quarters, and we have been having to treat her, with little result. And as a consequence she is a real bother to milk, so I am the one doing it. Which means I get up and milk her, every single milking. Fortunatley for me she is out of the tank, so I can wait until they are done Saturday morning, then go over and take care of her.

The interesting part was that Foolish started calving as Mom and I were leaving the barn. She was out in the yard with all the other cows, and it was only the two of us left at the stable. So we figured we could just split her off enough for me to get a halter on her, and move her over to the shed that we cleaned out yesterday, fill it up with straw, and let her have her baby.

Then, as I went to get said halter, Mom noticed that Takala, Lakota's Kenyon daughter from last May, was in a raging heat, and the older and much bigger cows were beating her right into the ground. So we had to try and catch her up too so they couldn't kill her. And from there it became a two person, fifty cow and heifer rodeo. Tak was all spooked up and skittish, so once I managed to get her pared off I drove her into the sawdust shed where we were going to put Fooolish, figuring she is an old show cow, so getting a halter on her shouldn't be too big an issue. Well, between her wanting to stay with the other cows, and being in the starts of labor, she was not feeling any need to let me near her. And then Tak jumped OUT of the sawdust shed.

After about an hour of me and mom trying to catch the two of them up, Alan and then Dad finally showed up and we were able to get them both settled in. Takala in a calf stall in the barn, and Foolish in the pen.

We literally went over to the house, I grabbed some toast and went back out to check on Foolish to see how she was doing, before Mom and I went to get some Black Locust saplings from a friend, and the baby was already there. What a morning!

WOW! WHAT ARE THE ODDS!!

How often do you see this happen? Every year I pick two or three young sires off of Select Sire Power's Super Sampler lists to use on the majority of my cows. You never know, you might get lucky. And over the last few years I have. Ocean-View Zenith graduated into AI stud. Canyon-Breeze Storm Atom graduated. And there have been a few others that I didn't get heifers out of, but that made it into stud. Select samples hundreds of Holstein bulls. And less than 10% graduate every year. Just to have two bulls that you used and got daughters off of make it into stud is amazing. I figured all my luck had probably been used up completely. I mean, I use so many young sires that I probably shouldn't be able to pick any that will not only make nice daughters, but will graduate into the 'Proven' group.

But I just checked out the new sire summaries for May. They come out every three months, February, May, August, and November. They are one of the few things I really look forward to. I have been watching for Ocean-View Derry Zander to have a proof. I'd been keeping an eye on his prelims and he was shaping up pretty decent. Not too stellar in the milk department, but with a whole pile of type points, and a pretty decent TPI. I did a post on him a while back, but darned if I can find it (AH HAH. Found it, here it is). Another bull I've been waiting to see if anything was going to happen with him is Vital-I Durham Lewis. Mom and I both loved this bull as a young sire. Me in particular. Another Regancrest Elton Durham son, he is out of a 96 point Hanoverhill Lincoln daughter. and though I was either very young or not born yet when Lincoln would have been a 'big name' bull, I really love his daughters. They are big, long, dairy, and in this case inky black. I have two Lewis daughters, one, Sedona, is currently milking.

Guess what.

Both bulls graduated. And I mostly like the looks of their proofs. Surprisingly Lewis has the better milk proof , but both bulls are very close on type.

I'll write more later. But I have to go rescue poor Hooter, my very very pregnant Jersey from the rest of the cows. Who are for some reason trying to beat her to death. Gotta love cows!

Hmmm...Babies sure do get big in a HURRY!

We had an interesting morning. For the most part it was relatively routine. Get up, milk cows, feed calves and such. We were down to the last bit of milking, and Mom and I were sitting on the concrete bench like thing that runs along the one back wall, talking about making up some stalls for the babies in the main barn. This will require moving some older heifers out into pens, and then moving the little calves into their stalls.

The talk moved to which animals would be put in pens and where. One former 'Name the Calf' contest heifer, Takala, will just be run in with some other yearlings, as she is no where near ready to breed, along with Magma, our first and currently only red Holstein. Then there are two others, the Blitz and Medina, a big March yearling by Kenyon (who is also Takala's sire). We breed most of our replacement animals either Jersey or Shorthorn, based on calving ease as a result of the calves being so much smaller than the average full blooded Holstein.

But these are two of my best babies. Medina has a lot of potential, and I am really fond of her sire. The Blitz is just a wonderful animal. Big and sleek, she is really fairly correct and I am anticipating a decent show season with her if I can keep her growing the way she is. I really really want to breed them both to an old Holstein bull, Cal-Clark Board Chairman. Pretty much anyone familiar with the Holstein breed knows him. He was the sire of To-Mar Blackstar. Who was one of the most influential bulls the Holstein breed has ever seen. I've got one other Board Chairman daughter left. A coming five year old out of my old Straight Pine Elevation Pete daughter.

Mom told me I'd better weigh them both, as she was uncertain as to whether they would both be big enough to breed to a Holstein and be able to safely have the calf. Blitz we figured HAD to be big enough. She stands next to her mammoth dam, and looks good there. Medina we weren't to sure on. She looks big, but looks can be deceiving. We figured if she was over 675 or 700 lbs we could be pretty safe.

So after milking I dug out my weight tape so that I could get a relatively accurate assessment of their actual size. I figured first I better do Medina. She can be a bit screwy at times, though all in all she is nice to work with. I slid the tape around her barrel, made sure it was good and tight, and checked the reading...

And darn near fell on my head. She weighed in over 900 lbs, just barely, but over none the less. I thought maybe she would be over 800, maybe up to 850, but not THAT heavy. I told Mom who was coming to see what I had gotten for a weight, and she didn't believe me.

So I weighed the Blitz to see where she fit in. Because if Medina, who is the smaller of the two, weighed that much, Blitz was gonna be big. The Blitz's weight equaled 968 lbs, with me rounding down.

And then our next question became, if they are THAT heavy, what is Mandy, the tallest cow we have, weighing in at. Well we got our answer of 1468. She is a big girl. Alan wanted to weigh Bayberry, his show cow, who came in just a bit lighter than that, around 1430. We have some heavy cows. And yet they are still extremely dairy. My goal is to one day have a ton plus cow. It will be a long ways off, but I'd say we have made a good start.

And both my babies are DEFINITELY getting bred to Board Chairman. Now if they'll just settle and give me some heifers...

We Have a Name

It has been an interesting (and just plain crazy) day here at Northview Dairy. Check out Maqua-Kil Farms Blog to find out more!

My Kid Brother Got So Lucky Yesterday

My baby brother, Alan, should really really thank his stars that I came home in a pretty great mood yesterday. I had gotten to hang out for a bit with a guy who is becoming a real close friend, and was still kind of riding that wave of general happiness as a result.

However, I was also really tired, and so opted to try and catch a bit of sleep before we went out to do night chores. About 5 o clock last night he knocked on my door, and it was one of those knocks where you could just tell something was really really wrong. He says to my still asleep brain, "Liz, I'm really really sorry, but I cut off the Blitz's tail'.

Now, to my sleep logged, and very tired mind, it came across as he removed her entire tail.

Whole thing.

Gone.

And you gotta keep in mind this is probably my most promising Holstein yearling. The Blitz as she is known in our barn is Mandolin Rain's daughter by Fustead Emory Blitz, one of the top bulls in the country. Mandy as we all call her is a two time Junior Champion. Not to mention I am just crazy about both of them.

Let's just say I woke up REAL quick. And finally managed to discern that he had removed the switch of her tail, because he thought he would be helpful and cut all the manure balls out of it. Manure balls which, if he ever actually LISTENED to what was going on around him, he would have known were going to be washed out today or tomorrow, since the weather is finally nice enough to give ole Blitzie a bath.

Mom and Dad were actually madder than I was. After this week's tragedy at Virginia Tech, where I have friends going to school, the loss of the Blitz's switch to the baby brother was fairly mild. I even managed to laugh.

However, lets just say that Alan will receive a bit of punishment from my folks, and my cow must hang her head in embarrasment for the loss of her switch. You can read my mom's take on the whole subject over at Northview Diary.

Oh, and I will probably bust my brother's butt for this one for a long time. I keep telling him my cow got scalped...just like on that old Davey Crocket movie, with the river boats and such. It is giving me a good laugh. Though I probably won't be laughing come show time.

Another Bull

Well, little Ricky Bailey had her calf this morning. Massive bull. Kind of cute though. I will try to get a picture of him tonight during milking. That makes four bulls, two heifers since we started calving out the cows. None of the purebreds have had heifers since River had Riptide way back when. Next one to calve should be Sequioa. She's due the 20th,but I am starting to have doubts that she will calve by then. Guess we will just have to wait and see.

We Have...

We have a cow in the kitchen.....

Some Oldies From This Summer's Fair

The New One...AKA FRIELAND SIN RIPTIDE

This is baby Riptide. I promised a picture of her. Sorry it isn't so great. Her neighbor, Blink, decided I looked like a tasty snack, so I was trying to keep her from eating me at the same time I took a picture. Not an easy task. She joins two older sisters, Frieland Swain Mandarin, and Frieland Sin Hollywood Kiss.

Herd Health...

We had fun today. And it is called Herd Health. Our favorite vet, Kris, comes in every few months, to vaccinate, dehorn and preg check animals. Out of my animals all but three that were preg checked are indeed carrying babies. One who I was really hoping would be pregnant but wasn't was my six year old Jersey, Heather. She is unfortunately open. Oh well, she was really lame and sick this summer, so I am not really too surprised. Not to mention, the bull she was serviced to doesn't seem too have all that great a conception rate. He only caught one of the cows he was bred to in one breeding. The second cow is a lower end milker that has never really done very well. And the third one is old Star. She is coming up on twelve, so she can be cut some slack. On the upside, Mandy, Junie, Foolish, Lakota and Hattie are safe in calf. So are a whole slew of my parents animals. And Alan's cow, Bayberry, is indeed pregnant...to a bull that was big time FIFTY years ago. Talk about being able to really store semen. Figures that she would catch to him after being serviced about a half a dozen times.

I have a new nickname... and it is 'bull roper', guess it is better than some of the others that have been thought up over the years. It's a long story, but suffice to say that my dad's coming yearling bull, Frank, had to be dehorned. This meant that he and my bull Heath had to be caught. Heath wasn't a problem. He is way overly friendly for a bull. Frank was another story. He had pretty big horns, and a "Hmm, can I get you with these?" attitude. After the follow around the pen trying to convince him I wasn't so bad complete with a nice big scoop of grain, and getting the halter over his head only to have him pull it off with his feet, I got a bit, um, not so happy. SO, I employed the, 'I am getting pissed off at this animal but I don't want to upset him any more than I have to' method. This involved the lariat that we keep for pulling cows feet up when we need to hoof trim them. Anyways, I threaded the end through, and roped mister big bad bull. And I do mean roped. Then mom and I snubbed him up good and tight and got a halter on him and I pulled him out into a stall. Hence my new nickname. I think I might actually like it.

Whoo Hoo!

From time to time, I like to get onto dairybulls.com, just to check and see if any new preliminary bull proofs have been added. I use a large number of young sires, primarily form Select Sire Power, and preliminary proofs are a good way to know if you can expect a bull to be ‘released’ from the stud. This means that they get added onto the price list and put into the stud books, and are available to be bought so that breeders can use them in their herds. One bull that I started using about three and a half years ago was Ocean-View Derry Zander. I got three pregnancies, two of which resulted in heifer calves (Foolish, and Spruce). Zander has a preliminary proof consisting of 35 daughters in 25 herds for 491 lbs of milk, and a 70% reliability. Not too bad. USDA really hits bulls if they are over a certain percentage of inbreeding, which he is. But I like him pretty well. I would definitely get some more semen if I could.

The First Calf Has Hit the Ground

Well, old Eland had her calf this morning. Big ole bull calf. Figures. I should know by now to never get my hopes set on a heifer. The cows will nearly always disappoint you. Mom has a picture of the little bugger over on Northview Diary. Hop on over and take a little look see.