68 degrees

It was 68 degrees today, and I was working outside in a t-shirt. The snow in the yard is all melted and the mud is drying out. Spring is here!

Since our last blog, we have added a calf to the farm. I was determined to try to catch the cow while calving, so when it looked like all the signs were there that she was ready, I started to check her in the middle of the night. The morning she calved, I had checked her at 3:30 am, and really expected her to be calving. But she was just laying there chewing her cud. When we went out to the barn to milk at 6, I was getting the milk room ready and Tyler went out into the barn to get the grain for milking. He came right back and said, "Uh, Dad? Daisy is calving right now." I went out and looked, and there was a portion of the water bag out that was about the size of a cantelope.

We kept on with milking/chores while keeping an eye on her. After about 15 minutes with no change, I called Don Ost. He said had to go to work and wouldn't be able to stop by. Expecting UPS to call at any moment, I wasn't sure what I was going to do if Daisy had trouble. However, all of a sudden things began to progress rapidly, and within 10 minutes the calf was out and Daisy was up licking it dry. Sure enough, UPS called and I had to leave for work, so I told the kids to rotate keeping watch on the calf so I would know if it sucked and got a good supply of colostrum by the time I got home. They say that it's critical for a calf to get mom's first milk within the first 6 hours of life.

By the time I got home around 1000, the calf had sucked several times so all was well. So we are now milking three cows and getting around 6 gallons of milk a day. That's a lot of milk! Fortunately, our customer base is growing. Today a lady stopped by for 5 gallons. Sure is nice when that happens!

Star is still the hyper cow. I call her the rodeo queen. I'll have to post a video of her at milking time. When we open her stall, she goes bucking and kicking at a run into the milk room to get the grain. Fortunately, she settles down pretty fast once she gets her nose in the grain bucket. She hasn't kicked anybody in a while, either.

We finally decided to go with laminate flooring in the dining room. It had some pretty nasty carpet in it, so that is now gone and I have most of the laminate down. It has been a family project, and when all of the children were outside enjoying the weather, Sheryll was helping me install the long runs. It definitely improves the looks of things!