Productive Day of Dairy Farming

hey guys so it's monday night about 8 30 in the evening i wanted to make some adjustments to this robot feed pusher and the reason is because tomorrow morning we're gonna start milking our cows in a different order in the barn so we've always milked that group first that's group one two three four and tomorrow morning i want to change it we want to start over in this corner and milk these as group one and then we'll wrap around that way it feels like kind of a big change because we've just done it the same way for so long i'm sure to you it seems no different main reason we're doing this so that we're done crossing the middle of the barn earlier in the morning so that way we want to run feet out we're not waiting on the milkers to get down and get this area scraped up so we can drive through with the mixer i'm just gonna make this robot run a little bit earlier so that it's done going around its last lap before milking so we're just going to go to routes and you can set the times that all the routes run it runs about 20 times a day or so so right now it's set to run at 4 30. let's do 4 10. now we'll go 405 to be safe so that'll be good for now so should save that so yes we have 22 routes a day that's all i had to do for now i'm going to be out here in about seven hours and we'll get started milking see you guys then milkers are going right now we muck three times a day we have a lot of part-time employees that help us out it's the only way we can make that happen morning guys 4 15 i'm getting out to the barn it's a chilly one this morning what's up casey you smell a mouse or something i don't think there's usually mice in there put our curtain up it's a little after 4 15. the robot just made its last lap around so i hadn't changed the time the robot would be running about 5 or 10 minutes and i want to open this gate now so i'll be in the way feels very strange for me to go start on that group it's really not all that much different but done it so many times feels weird i believe we've milked this group first three times a day for the last 17 years this group is our first calf heifers the young ones kind of makes sense to have them be group one anyway man that brush sounds a little bit unhealthy got all the cows out clean the stalls now we'll chase them over and start milking so so there we go doesn't it look so much different we're about halfway through the milking now it's 6 a.m i'm chasing the last of this will be the new group two going back so we're done milking that whole side of the barn i'm gonna open up this group to let them in and i need to scrape that middle area up because we're done crossing the middle this is the biggest reason i wanted to make the change now we're ready to run feet out my dad's working and mixing the feed right now he's not quite ready to run out but when he is you can just come through and do it i'm about to get the last group over now this is the old pen one for most of the groups this is a pretty normal morning i was about 20 minutes early for each one but these cows had to wait normally they go first now they're going last a bunch of them are still laying down and relaxing there are a lot of them standing though probably wondering what the world's going on um the third group is done milking close them up so now i'll let the fourth group back the old group one here's where the advantage is so before right now is when i would be done going across the middle so then i could scrape it up but it's already been done for a while my dad already came through and ran feet out now group three as they're getting back there's already feed there and group four they haven't even started coming back into their pen they already have feed usually when they come back for milking and there's feed there they'll pretty much all eat so i think that's gonna be a big advantage when they're standing for a bit after milking their teeth have a chance to seal up a little bit better and then when they go to lay down it's less likely bacteria will end up in the utter i'm gonna clean the parlor up now i gotta scrape this alleyway we had some warm wet weather last week this is so much nicer i'm just gonna get the scraper tractor gotta have it plugged in when it gets this colder it won't start no problem [Applause] [Applause] got the milk and parlor cleaned up the hoof trimmer is coming this morning he should be here in about half an hour i'm going to try and hold a little bit manure because the ground is frozen it would be wet if it wasn't cold enough but it's solid right now so i should try to get a little bit more out that i wanted to haul this tractor should start it's about 20 degrees right now [Music] get the charger on and use a little bit of ether should be able to start it up dad's gonna get the hoof trimming list ready [Music] i want to try to clean this area out pretty often so it doesn't get too full just need the right weather to actually get the spreader out this is such a breath of fresh air 20 degrees and crisp like this awesome i like to check and make sure nothing's frozen up on the spreader make sure it still slides back and the door lifts up well it's a little cold so it's slower but it's working [Music] [Music] [Music] should just be two loads i don't usually run skidler in these boots i barely have any ankle flexibility i can hardly even move the pedals i'm gonna go run this out we probably have to go sort cows after this we've had so much warm weather the cover crop in this field has actually been growing through december i can see little rows of uh rye growing there now seeded it kind of late about time we get some cold weather i saw the hoof trimmer coming up the road so i'm gonna have to stop now and we'll sort some cows out get him set up it's about eight am now i'm just gonna spread a little bit of wood shavings in the alley where we're gonna put the hoof trimmer we hit trim once a month and i filmed last month when he was here pretty much the same process sort out some cows every cow gets a maintenance trim once a year before she goes dry pretty straightforward i try to stay on his way he he don't mind if i film him but i don't think he loves it either so now we're sorting these cows out to trim not too many today [Music] we got about 15 cows sorted out he's going to work a tremendous now [Music] so [Music] [Music] i'm gonna grab some breakfast quick well my cousin jason just showed up with the trailer load of straw i'm gonna unload these bells before we hold more manure [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he turns around for me so i don't drive around his trailer [Music] [Music] [Music] i got the rest of that pile cleaned up it didn't even quite fill the second spreader there's no wind today and the sun's starting to come out so the ground is going to start getting smeary pretty quick i just stopped in here at the hoof trimmer the cows would turn out this way we're just putting some cows back in their group we're trying to use the new group numbers and it's kind of difficult the ground is still pretty fit i'm gonna keep hauling until i can't anymore we'll go to the heifer farm there's some menorah in that barn to clean out dad's gonna bring the skid loader try to clean this pen every couple weeks it's been a few because the weather hadn't been the best we'll just get as much as we can until it's too muddy in the fields hey come on girls head out head out of here let's go [Music] the hoof trimmer is done dad just let me know he's ready to clean up i'm gonna head up to the farm we'll come back and finish this then [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] woohoo got two bells in there i'm gonna take the spreader out dad's gonna clean this driveway up a little bit so i had some lunch and now i'm out here in the freestyle barn we bed the stalls three times a week and we'll do two groups at a time so we've always done these two groups together and then we've bed these two groups together on this side but now with the the different milking order we're actually going to have to bed this group like the whole length of the barn on this side of it and then that whole length so it's just going to be a little different the way we're going to open the gates up it's actually going to be really nice this way it's just we never open these gates over here i want to make sure they're actually loosened up so tomorrow morning when i want to bed stalls i can swing these open so we're just going to come in that corner door we'll be able to drive the whole length of the barn wrap around the end do the other side of these stalls and then the same on the other side we don't want to cross over that middle anymore but the really nice thing is we're not going to have to go in the west end which has the curtain on it it's a little bit less convenient to open up just want to loosen these up a little bit spray some pv blaster in there and make sure they're working [Music] oh that side's loose it's good this one here is not as easy i got it loose enough to work now tomorrow morning when i go to bed i'll just open this this way this other gate goes this way and we can drive straight through i guess they laid this out that you could actually pin the cows over if you wanted to to work on one side of the alley at a time well all the guys are going to be out of the group just need to get these gates out of the way so really wouldn't need two gates here we've used them several times when we were working on stuff in the pens and had to keep the cows off one side of the beds for a while i was gonna drive around the back of the barn but it's kind of muddy yeah well truck's dirty i'm heading over to the caf bar and i'm gonna grab some skids out of there we get a batch made one ton at a time and we pick it up at the mill we always take our used pallets back because they'll reimburse us the cost of them yeah all we had left was half a bucket these young girls like to eat the feed pretty aggressively that's good we had some monta billiard calves i showed you a couple of them when they were young got two growing up now number 29 she looks nice and 25. i was hoping we would get one of the red ones they can be red or black they're still a little unique looking but kind of similar to holsteins it's only three miles or something to the mill trucking they had a couple bags of hydrated lime that broke that they gave us for free because they know we use it [Music] this is calf feed we use in the calf barn but then we transition calves out of there into the new heifer barn so we want to have this feed to put on top of the forage that we're giving them to transition them we always use more in the calf barn so we added some off that other skate on this one i'll carry those hydrated lime bags over to the shavings those are about seven bucks a bag so we saved ourselves fourteen dollars could invest that in good mutual funds and i could use that to retire eventually today's tuesday we have the straw chopper scheduled to come on thursday i'm gonna grind all these bales off put a little bit in the cow feed dry cow feed you like it ground up though so dad's going to take that skid up to the calf bar and i'm going to get the shaving skid loader and we'll bed those calves up take some bedding up there [Music] [Music] these are all on milk they drink milk out of the bucket and we weighed them at eight weeks old these here about seven or eight weeks right now so we're going to start weeding those off once we pull those dividers out that means they're off milk this is when we stop getting them milk about this size and we want to make sure they're eating a lot of grain at that point this is the grain it's got a lot of goodies in it corn oats soybean meal there's some pellets in there mineral a lot of good stuff the girl who's milking with me in the mornings megan manages the weaning of the calves and takes care of that stuff so i don't worry too much about it we're back out in the freestall now this water trough had been leaking a little bit don't know if the valve wasn't sealing up right or if uh i need to adjust something dad had just turned it off he's gonna go turn it back on and see if it's working now and it's on right now it's working i think we're good you can adjust the flow how far down it goes and i guess it uh just up a little too high and it was not stopping it we do need to adjust these waters though they're made to have this little bleeder line you open up in the winter time to just let water out constantly so the line doesn't freeze and the float keeps the water level lower than this drain so that way even though there's some leaking out it's not spilling onto the ground it has some space to fill up before it starts leaking out too fast now to finish out the day i need to bed the heifer barn i was going to do it this morning but then we had other stuff going on i'm just going to sweep in this feed all the heifers will come up to eat and then i can close the gates easily these are the young guns out of the calf barn giving them some of this screen so [Music] this youngest group of heifers can be a little more susceptible to health problems while they're in transition out of the calf born so to help cut down on the air movement in this panel a little bit we've been setting some bells in just to kind of give them some more shelter we've put a bell back here that they pretty much destroyed now but it just kind of helps if they want to find a role still a spot that doesn't have a breeze there should be some good shelter back in here they've been doing really well for us so that's gonna be it for today i'm gonna go put these clips on my computer and start editing pretty productive day i feel like tomorrow we're going to a farm show walk around there be kind of nice see you guys in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: 10th Generation Dairyman

Views: 386,185

Keywords: farming

Id: VkRrLBbfAmE

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022