I started my day bright and early at 6:30 AM by feeding the calves and then I moved onto chores with the big cows. Currently I work at the Simpson View farm which has a mixed herd of Jerseys and Holsteins. There are around 1200 cows on the farm and of those we are milking roughly 570 of them. In the photograph below is the dry cow barn. A dry cow is a cow that is not lactating and is currently pregnant. This is an important rest period for the cow as they require nutrients for both their own maintenance and the calf that is developing inside. Most farms will dry a cow off for the last 60 days of pregnancy to ensure that she gets all the rest she needs to bring a new life into the world! All of the girls in the photograph below are preparing to give birth and to help give them an extra boost we gave them vaccinations of J-Vac. This will help prevent a disease known as metritis which is an infection of the uterus that can happen due to dystocia, retained placenta, or dirty material from entering the birthing canal during labor. In total we gave twenty J-Vac shots to help protect our herd!
I want to include some fun statistics in my daily posts about milk produced and calves born to wrap up my daily posts! Today we shipped around 5,560 gallons of milk, and there were no new calves.🐄🐄🐄
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