Post by mazurzoo on Jan 15, 2008 14:16:55 GMT -5
Hey I just thought I would fill you all in on the newest news with me.
You all know what a hard job I have had w/ Bella since she calved Dec 2nd, freshening w/ mastitis.
To make a long story short, I burned out on it, Bella is still not fully better, and she doesnt behave too well either.
So we decided to phase out our cow share program, and go to once a day milking. We can do that with Lily because she is bred and also over a year and a half into this lactation, giving 2.5 gal a day. With Bella, she gives 6+ gallons a day, we have 2 calves on her. So we seperate at night, milk out the good quarters for us, and then let the calves clean up the bad ones. Currently we only let her be in w/ the calves for 1 hr, 3x's a day. Just because she is mean to the foster calf, and we have to be there.
So this will leave us enough milk between the 2 cows OAD to phase out the share holders. All our commitments will be complete with them in the next 3 months. Because we have to buy back the shares they originally purchased we gave them the option of cashing out now and leaving or letting us buy back the shares with free milk for 3 months. Some will leave now and some will take the free milk, so that will relieve us.
Then once our share holders are paid off and not getting milk, it will be about the time to dry of Lily for calving, and Bella will give us milk OAD, then when Lily freshens we may decide to sell Bella but thats the end of July, who knows what my change by then!
As far as her bad quarter go, they are much softer, the calves keep them empty, or almost empty. I am not getting anything on the strip cup anymore. The CMT is still thick on both, but not as bad.
The only thing that might really foil this whole plan, is that the sale barn calf we got last week is sickly now and not eating as much! He was perfect when we brought him here, and we even gave him colostrum, but if he didnt get it in his first day or 2 then from what I have read thats a prob.
I will post seperate about the sick calf so that I can get some answers on that one.
I am really relieved to be done with the pressures of TAD milking and the light is at the end of the tunnel with getting rid of the pressures of share holders. If things were different, we would have stuck with it but Bella was one bad thing after another!
So thats life for us lately!
You all know what a hard job I have had w/ Bella since she calved Dec 2nd, freshening w/ mastitis.
To make a long story short, I burned out on it, Bella is still not fully better, and she doesnt behave too well either.
So we decided to phase out our cow share program, and go to once a day milking. We can do that with Lily because she is bred and also over a year and a half into this lactation, giving 2.5 gal a day. With Bella, she gives 6+ gallons a day, we have 2 calves on her. So we seperate at night, milk out the good quarters for us, and then let the calves clean up the bad ones. Currently we only let her be in w/ the calves for 1 hr, 3x's a day. Just because she is mean to the foster calf, and we have to be there.
So this will leave us enough milk between the 2 cows OAD to phase out the share holders. All our commitments will be complete with them in the next 3 months. Because we have to buy back the shares they originally purchased we gave them the option of cashing out now and leaving or letting us buy back the shares with free milk for 3 months. Some will leave now and some will take the free milk, so that will relieve us.
Then once our share holders are paid off and not getting milk, it will be about the time to dry of Lily for calving, and Bella will give us milk OAD, then when Lily freshens we may decide to sell Bella but thats the end of July, who knows what my change by then!
As far as her bad quarter go, they are much softer, the calves keep them empty, or almost empty. I am not getting anything on the strip cup anymore. The CMT is still thick on both, but not as bad.
The only thing that might really foil this whole plan, is that the sale barn calf we got last week is sickly now and not eating as much! He was perfect when we brought him here, and we even gave him colostrum, but if he didnt get it in his first day or 2 then from what I have read thats a prob.
I will post seperate about the sick calf so that I can get some answers on that one.
I am really relieved to be done with the pressures of TAD milking and the light is at the end of the tunnel with getting rid of the pressures of share holders. If things were different, we would have stuck with it but Bella was one bad thing after another!
So thats life for us lately!