Cattle Care & Maintenance Day!

good morning and welcome to grock farms uh we just finished up with morning chores and in today's video we're going to be working with the cattle to start off with we're going to be using a treatment called epernex on them which is a liquid treatment that goes along their back we can explain more later in the video we gotta grab some pails of grain to get these guys to all stay lined up really nice for us so give them a little bit of incentive to stay at the bunk or in the manger hope you guys enjoy the video [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] uh [Music] well the little hand pump for the treatment broke on us and we don't have a spare one here so uh that uh that's delayed for a while but that's not the end of the world it doesn't need to get done exactly today but that's part of farming things don't ever go to plan silver lining uh for the cattle they got some extra dry grain and they're gonna get silage today too so uh it's a win-win for them they're all very happy we'll just have to get a new pump the next time we go to town and uh finish that i gotta clean up the mangers in this barn behind me obviously our other uh big barn the mangers are already cleaned so uh my father he headed down to the trench to open up the pile and get that working and i'll meet him down there with the 7405 and the dump wagon so we can start bringing feet up here [Music] [Music] so [Music] now [Music] do [Music] all right those cattle are fed this barn makes it a lot easier when it comes to these days where we have to move a lot of silage the old barn the manger used to only be like 50 of it was exposed to outside so you had to shovel a lot of feed in to the cattle where this building is all exposed it is so much nicer [Music] so [Music] so it's nice with this barn because you can back like halfway in there and get the feed right in the middle of the barn and these are the younger cattle too so you're not really moving that much feed anyways so you can get pretty close to all of them without too much shoveling i know what a lot of you cattle guys are thinking well why don't you just have a tmr that's why that new cattle barn is built the way it is is where if you really wanted to you could purchase a tmr and run that way but this dump trailer is working for us and uh it's cheap we already have it so and uh for those of you that are curious about what product we're using in the beginning of the video that's uh called epernex that's an anti-like bug treatment but that's what that product is for in case anyone was wondering so [Music] [Music] like i was saying it's really nice having an open-faced manger like this it makes it really easy and nice for feeding cattle all right we're done feeding silage and it's time to bring the dairy herd back into the barn they've been out for recess for a while now yep [Music] [Music] all right we got the cows in and uh my dad he wants to take some time and show you guys how he grooms up his uh his milking herds i mean it's already december they start to some of the cows aren't trained as well the crap in the gutter so they're getting a little dirtier but what we like to do is we'll take one of these combs and scrape all the big manure off the tail then i'll come back with a clipper and just clip the tail if the hair is short like you look at her this just won her hair they don't need that when they're in the barn most of the time we just get the big winner out and sometimes this ends up being like this long so we'll just take a big knife and cut off just uh some of the give them like a haircut some get dirtier than others some are just i guess they're just like like people some are better at grooming than others clean them up and cut the long hair off the tails and the tail head a little bit which is right here that's where a lot of the lice likes to harbor and then we're gonna efference them sometimes it takes me a few days i just do some every day and i like these combs i got i kind of got longer teeth on one side shorter on the other so we can pull it and turn it and then like for the utter we use the shorter i try to be a little more gentle but because the hair on the other is usually a little shorter try to get some of it off just like anything they just feel a little better in the summer when they're grazing they're outside the hair is very short you can't even grab it it's so short you wouldn't think but then it doesn't attract any manure and of course they're outside in the weather they get the rain and the wind and all that so then they get outside here a couple hours every day there's maybe two days out of this whole winter that we may not put them out because the weather is just so nasty but i mean if i was in a stall like this i'd want to get out of these towns today so they can scratch themselves and click themselves and rub on whatever they may find if they need to it's kind of a dirty job but it makes a lot nicer milk in these cows when the tail is clean that's the part that usually gets you and it's usually around december january we start doing this before that they're usually pretty clean for some reason the swiss they got a thicker longer tail and they know how to use it sometimes when you're milking them milk and they'll wrap it almost right around your neck just as if they're trying to aggravate you or it's their nature it's all it is but you look at the tail head compared to holstein there's a little bit less of a tail head there than here they like to get scratched up there kind of like scratching a dog behind the ears that's certain spots they can't reach themselves and i'll do it soon as we put them in the barn they're all standing up they're already eating their hay they're not i don't have to be trying to agitate them after they've started resting because any good dairy farmer will do whatever he can to keep these cows comfortable and fed well [Music] and i've heard it said many times by people that are in the business that these cattle are taking care of better than the people i mean we feed them before we feed our own family it just makes me feel better when you're doing what you can do and we sleep litter at night when we know we've done what we're supposed to do with these cattle keep these cows comfortable see now this is a first calf heifer she had her calf like a week ago and you see how long her tail is and we're gonna get a big knife and trim it a little bit and i'll feel where the bone is so i don't want to hit that and it's a very coarse hair it actually dulls your knife very fast sometimes i'll have to go sharpen three four times to do the whole herd like that but anyway so we're even beauticians they don't need all that right now that's more for swat and insects in the summer months which there's none of those out here now that has been so cold [Music] five to ten minutes like [Music] this stuff on the flanks this is what we call the flame and that when these cows start grazing the spring and it gets warm typically the first days when it starts 75 80 degrees the grass really takes off they start to lose this long winter hair practically overnight put them out on pasture you give it a week and it's almost all gone it's amazing how it all comes off but that's natural they shed that hair and then maybe a few good rainstorms and they look about as shiny as they can get like this color her hair is really long she just had a calf like a week ago being outside in nature even though it wouldn't have been that cold a week or two ago yet nature says they need to put their winter hair when they're in the barn where it's not so cold most of the time anyway they won't the hair won't get quite as long years ago when i was a kid it was actually a it was a a law or a rule if you sold milk you had to comb all your cows and click their long hair off their tails it was a requirement to have that done the state milk inspector would come during the winter months to inspect they don't do that anymore because of all the cold housing the freestall barns are just pull sheds with curtains on the side and even though it isn't bitter cold in there it's winter inside the building the manure will freeze to the floor so the cows need their long hair which cattle do better in cold weather like cooler weather or colder weather more wintry weather than they would hot muggy humid summer weather they will produce milk better and the milk production will be the gauge the better they feel the more they will produce and they're in the cool weather they got better appetites they'll eat a lot more which those two things go hand in hand the more the cow eats and if she's got the potential to produce the milk she will so a cow that's just had her calf maybe with the first two to three months after she cabbed that's where your best production time is you want her to eat as much as she can of high protein feeds and a balanced diet she will produce the milk hmm now we could spend all kinds of time tuning up these cows and get them looking like they're all ready to go to the fair but let's face it most of that doesn't really make that much difference just what i did here is probably about 80 80 percent of what makes her feel better and you notice how skinny her tail is and my dad always used to say that those are better milking cows long thin dale would kind of represent more of a dairy some of the holsteins have these big thick tails and these huge tail heads typically they're kind of built a little more like a beef cow then it's not a bad thing it's just not necessarily a good milking column maybe she breeds better maybe she has bigger calves [Music] yeah so in the summer months we don't do any of this stuff if you look at it master breathing you think there's nothing to comb off they're just shiny just nice there's a difference between being inside away from all the weathering again [Applause] [Music] all right so that's it for today it turned out to be a pretty productive day we wanted to thank you guys for watching make sure to like and subscribe and check out our other videos we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Gierok Farms

Views: 33,008

Keywords: Cattle, Cows, Cattle Care, Cattle health, livestock grooming, cattle grooming, Cattle management, Dairy cows, Farm tour, Heifer barn, Dry Cow Barn, Cattle Barn, Barn Set Up, Dairy Farm, Winter on the farm, Cattle barns, Feeding Cattle, Farm Improvements, cows, Milking Cows, How to Milk Cows, Dairy Farming, Milking, Milking on a small farm, Grazing Cattle, Chopping Silage, Silage, Feed, Corn, Heifers, dairy farming, How to raise cattle, Tractor Drive, Spreading Manure

Id: GJWdDFs1OLo

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022