Trench

The fellows came today and started forming the walls for the trench. I don't know if they are planning on pouring the one wall tommorow afternoon or not. It looks like we will be chopping a week earlier than I anticipated. Which is good because I am scheduled to be in the recording studio the first week of September. It is hard to be in two places at once, I have noticed....
Anyway, I was getting a little nervous because they hadn't showed up yet this week...

Trench

Well the trench took a turn towards finished today. The poured the footer this afternoon. Took 20 yards for the footer. Turned out the trench is only going to be about 30 foot wide. I decided to make it as long as possible so it will be 200 ft. long.

ID System Update

Friday I decided to do some research. I was wondering how many cows I had bred in the month of July. So I found a report in PCDart/DHIA that showed me the last twelve months. In July of 2007 I bred 12 cows. In July of 2008 I bred 32 cows. This is a huge improvement. I am still having some issues with the ID loop. It needs to be reconfigured. It is currently set up as a feeder. So it will ID the cow but not always send activity information. I feel fairly certain this is because a feeder doesn't really need to do anything but ID the cow. We will be setting it up as sort gate in the coming week, I hope. Hopefully this will fix the problem. A sort gate is designed to send a lot of information at one time. Nastitus cows or sick cows or lame cows or cows in heat would all be sorted out through a sort gate. My milking equipment is so outdated I cannot use any of this technology. This is why they set it up as a feeder instead of a sort gate initially. Ok, I will stop before I confuse you further....

Site Plan

Here is a picture of our most recent site plan. This will probably be tweaked some but overall I like it. I realize this is rather small but it will give you an idea of what I am looking at doing. The building on the left, the rectangle with no lines in it is the existing free stall barn which holds 100 cows. The set of pens in the middle are for special needs. Sore feet, calving, sick cows, etc. The next building is the new free stall barn. This barn would hold roughly 280-300 cows. The facility closest to you is the new parlor and

holding pen and all that good stuff. We downsized the parlour to a double 16 because of room. It is now a 16/32 swing, parallel, rapid exit. I can still milk close to 150 cows an hour in this parlour.

Farm Touring

Bruce and I spent the day looking at three different farms. One is a prototype which I am not suppose to talk about yet. The second farm is a parallel double 15 rapid exit. The third was 12-24 para-bone swing parlour. I didn't really like anything I saw. Not enough to say I want this exact setup. I did see a combination of things and I now have an idea which Bruce will quote for me in the near future. What I am looking at doing would be a parallel 20-40 rapid exit swing parlour. I would like to use the prototype stall and put the swing parlour in it. This makes me really excited. Theoretically we could milk 200 cows an hour in this parlour. That would be awesome....

ID System

The ID system is working. I am very excited about it. I spent all day on the computer at the barn. I was on the phone with Dairy Plan support getting help with some reports. I can enter everything in the computer now. All my herd check information, calvings, dry dates, cull cows, everything. So that is cool. I still have a few questions about how to do things but I think I will get it figured out with time.
Dr. Gardner comes in the morning so we will see how herd check goes....

More Purchases

What a day it was yesterday. A very long one... I arose at 3:30 AM and milked before heading to Harrisonburg. Walter McClure and I went to the herd sale of Daryl Heatwhole. A fine looking herd of cows it was of which we bought 28. We had them loaded and headed toward the home ranch by 5:30. We finally had them unloaded and headed toward the parlor by 11:30 PM. I finally headed to bed by 12:30 AM. I am nervously excited about this turn of events. Well, I better go make sure they are still alive....

Installing Lights

I hung 7 lights in the parlor today and I have four more to go. I have not wired any of them yet but if it rains and I am unable to mow the grass tomorrow I may work on that. Bruce Thompson told recommended improving the lighting in the parlor. We are hoping improved lighting will help cow flow. Bruce says we should be able to milk 80-90 cows an hour in our parlor. So far I have come no where close to this rapid pace. I think I could cut another 30 minutes off my milking time if cow flow was better. We shall see...

Purchase

Five milking cows, one dry cow, one springing heifer and two far off heifers were purchased yesterday in my name. The cows and springing heifer showed up last night about 9:00. I am unsure were the other two heifers are at this point. I should know more today. Now that I spent money I don't have I can tell Mr. Phillips in our meeting today that I really need some money and his bank really should help me out....

Sale

Today may be a big day for me. I have a gentleman attending a herd dispersal sale in NC. He may or may not buy me some cows. I can't wait to find out. I should know something tonight or this afternoon....

I Backed Out

Yep, I backed out on those 19 heifers. Here is why. #1 They were not willing to test them for Johnes or BVDPI (Bovine Viral Diarrhea Persistently Infected). #2 They had the parentage information on only a third of the animals. So the more I thought about it the less inclined I was. BVDPI is a mess. I know it can be passed through the fetus but that is really all I know about it. Dr. Gardner told me not to buy anything that hadn't been tested. Johnes is a mess also. most people have heard of Johnes. Our herd has been tested Johnes free for the last 3 years and I intend to keep it that way...

The Beginning Of The End As We Know It

Yesterday I chatted with a gentleman about buying 19 heifers due to calf between the end of April and the first of June. When it comes right down to pulling the trigger on spending money it's not so easy. At least for me....

Expansion

Bruce was here again today. We talked for several hours, four-five to be exact. We were pushing some numbers. He showed me that I could go get a $150,000 loan to buy 30 cows, an electronic ID system for 140 cows. At 8% interest on a five year loan, after feed costs and a loan payment of $3100 a month I would still be profiting $1000 a month. In two years these numbers would change because I would then be milking offspring from those initial 30 cows....
Low and behold I thinks I am going to do it..... In some form or another.....