Change Requires Doing Something Different

Change requires doing something different. This sounds elementary but I think very few people believe it. It sometimes seems that people shun change. I used to always say I wouldn't become one of these people. Today, I finally realized I was becoming like this. It seems that as farmers, we can sometimes get into our daily routine and stick with it. Now much of that routine, must be routine such as milking, feeding ect. at a certain time but, there are always ways to improve that routine. So, I decided to think about how I do things today, here's a typical day for me.

Sister Milking

I usually get up about 7:00 am. The first thing I do is check on the cows that are going to calve and the ones that are in the hospital pen to make sure they are doing OK. I then help my sister get started milking before our milker lady gets here to help with morning milking.

Once she is here, I check my computer. We installed a program  that tracks our cows activity. It helps us determine if a cow is sick. If she is, she wont move around as much. It also tells us if a cow is in heat (ready to be bred).  After I have got any cow numbers to go and look at, I head out to the free-stall barn again to track them down. There, I visually watch for cows in heat and verify the numbers the computer gave me.  Then, I'll go back to the office with the numbers and begin picking out the bulls to breed the cows to. Each one of our cows is mated to a specific bull. Once I've loaded the AI gun I head back out to the barn and AI the cow.

AI'ing a cow

Once I'm done breeding cows, I check the calving/sick cows again, and then head to my sister's where our heifer barn is to check for heifers in heat. If there are any, my sister or I AI them as well. If I'm really busy, my sister AI's the heifers. By now, its usually about noon. I grab a quick lunch if i have time. Then its back to the office to update cattle records. After this I do any herd health work that is required. This includes things like giving vaccinations/medications, preg-checking cows/heifers, uterine infusions, and pretty much anything else that needs to be done. Once all this is done, I'm free to do other things around the farm. This may include moving cattle from place to place, helping with the other milking shifts, pushing feed up to the cows again, or if its spring, summer, or fall I'll do field work.

So, it gets to be some long days, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. There's no way I could work in a office all day. With that said, I'm glad there are people who like that too, but it wouldn't work for me.  I guess there are always changes from day to day, small ones be it, but the more I think about it, no change works for me.

My free-time  hobby

Our new puppy