(Continued from Part 2.)
Winter housing
When I bought this farm, there was an existing small barn and a two car garage sized shed that the door had broken off of. The property was completely fenced, and cross fenced, and there were even a couple of water troughs, which had to be replaced because they leaked. But, all in all, there was some structure to start with. Back then, I had no plans to obtain dairy cows, but I probably would not have gone with large livestock without adequate fencing and buildings. There is no water or electricity to the barn or shed, but I’ve made it work. After acquiring my first dairy cow, I built a lean to next to the shed for milking the cow in, and I strung a long electric power cord from the house to the milking area to run the pump. That has worked out well, but it can be chilly in the winter.
I live in the South, so our weather is mild compared to my northern neighbors. However, we still get below zero temperatures and blizzards in the winter. The barn is small, but it has a nice run-in portion that the cows can take shelter in, and they do. I upgraded the barn this past year with layers of crushed rock to raise up the level of the floor, and created ditches on the outside to prevent and divert Spring flooding. Then I laid down heavy rubber barn mats. On top of the rubber mats I spread straw. It’s much easier to clean out now, and the cows appreciate a comfortable, clean, location to get out of the weather. They do so in the Winter and during the hottest parts of Summer. Additionally, the small barn has 3 stalls, which is very useful for when a cow or calf needs to be separated from the herd for whatever reason. You’d be surprised at how many different areas you need when raising a small dairy herd.
Wind is the biggest enemy in cold weather, and with no wind break to speak of, my cows can easily take shelter by running into the barn. In the calf pasture, I have a run-in calf shelter that I similarly bed down with straw. It is open to the morning sun, facing East, and blocks the cold winds coming in from the West and North. The calves love it.
I have friends who run large beef cattle herds and they rely on several wind breaks – a line of trees mostly, but also an area of the land that is sheltered from the wind. Their cows seem to do fine during the winter without housing. It seems to me, that beef cattle are much hardier than dairy cows.
The two-car sized barn is where I store hay (square bales). With as much rain and humidity as we have, hay barns are essential. There’s nothing worse than moldy hay the cows won’t eat. In any case, winter housing is essential, as well as keeping things dry and clean. Mucking out the barn is probably one of my least favorite farm chores, but if I keep on top of it, it’s not so hard. I had initially tried hay for bedding, but hay mats up and is difficult to clean up. Straw holds up much better and is easier to scoop out of the barn. And I don’t like to see a dirty cow with muck up to her ankles or large swaths of manure on her. And I certainly don’t want a dairy cow’s udder to get dirty with manure. The cows spend most of their time out on pasture and are generally very clean.
With all my careful caretaking, I still had a cow come down with hoof rot last Spring, and it wasn’t from standing in the barn. We got so much rain that the lower part of the barnyard pasture was a soggy mess. I had to give her antibiotics to clear up the hoof rot. She recovered beautifully. I also moved the hay ring to a higher elevation on the farm, so that water would run off and cows would not be standing in the muck.
Breeding
Perhaps one of my most difficult challenges has been getting cows bred back timely in the absence of a bull. Ideally, you want for your dairy cows to be bred back and calve every year. This strategy helps their condition and hormonal life. It is what a cow was designed to do. A cow who is not bred back for years, may cease to conceive, so it’s important to understand. Her future, in absence of a calf and milk, is Freezer Camp. I had one that would not breed back after her first calf, not by artificial insemination and not by a live bull, and she filled the freezer, as heartbreaking as it was. She spent a total of 6 cycles with a bull, after at least that number of A.I. attempts, so it was determined that she had become infertile for whatever reason. She was in excellent condition and my Veterinarian told me that it just happens some time. Ugh.
I had to learn to watch the cows for heat behavior and then call the A.I. (artificial insemination) tech to see if he was available to come breed cows when I needed him to. It was a hit or miss for the first couple of years until I discovered a neighboring rancher who not only raised beef cattle, but also provided A.I. services for a really fair price. Nice, older, gentleman, who lives perhaps 15 minutes from me. Not to mention the frustration of the A.I. guy who absconded with the expensive semen I had purchased, and could not be located again by various methods… Live and learn.
A dairy cow cycles approximately every 17-21 days, and the trick is to identify “standing heat”, then breed them approximately 12 hours after standing heat. If it were that simple! Not all my cows have the same heat cycle, as in, some breed well on Day #18, some on Day #19, some on Day #20, etc. They are all a little different in their cycles. Weather also plays into breeding cows. I learned that it’s very difficult to breed a cow in the heat of summer, so I now avoid trying to breed them in July and August. It’s also difficult to breed them in the dead of winter, purely due to ice and snow, so January and February are out of the question. I learned that the best time to breed cows is in the Spring and Fall. But, even then, if you start breeding cows in March, for instance, and the cow doesn’t “take”, you have to wait another 17-21 days to breed them again, and that can easily push you into summer months if not successful. Then, you have some decisions to make: keep trying to breed them or wait until the Fall.
Last year I had the perfect plan! And it didn’t go like I wanted. One cow bred back immediately on the first try, one on the second try, one on the third try, and one had to go visit a bull after numerous attempts, but she got bred back. Frustrating. I had high hopes that all would be bred back around the same time, and calves would be born around the same time. Nope!
A cow’s gestation is generally 283 days, so I use a gestational calendar to pinpoint when to expect a calf. I do not want a calf born in the dead of winter just because I don’t want to risk a calf freezing to death. I use a gestational calendar (here’s one that I use [1]) to help me plan when to breed a cow. My Jersey cross cow will drop a calf around day 277, but my pure Guernsey cow will drop a calf around day 287, and her mother calved on day 293. Breed matters in this instance, and you can see that it varies significantly. The rule of thumb is that a cow can go up to 2 weeks early or 2 weeks late. I want to be home when a cow calves in case there is any difficulty. I learned to keep a “cowlander” (i.e., cow calendar), and I make notes of calving dates, heat cycles, breeding dates, due dates, etc., and any other relevant information. It is very helpful to look back on, and also plan my life around. I have missed a lot of family get-togethers.
It took a few years, but I learned about something called an “estrus patch”. I purchased a large package of them. Here’s how it works, you stick a patch on the cow’s tail head before you think they are going to cycle (you know because you are keeping a cowlander). When a cow is in heat, another cow will try to mount it and in doing so the patch is rubbed. When the patch is rubbed it turns bright pink or red depending upon brand of patch. You can see that bright color from a distance, which is helpful when watching cows out in the field. Early in the heat cycle, a cow will run from another cow mounting her, but when she is in standing heat, she will stand still to be mounted (as if for a bull), and that’s when the patch gets rubbed, and that’s when you know it’s time to breed the cow. I always do a morning and evening walkabout to check on cows. If the patch is rubbed bright pink in the morning, I know she went into standing heat that night, and should be bred in the late afternoon/early evening.
If the patch is rubbed bright pink in the evening, I will know she went into standing heat that day, and try to get her bred early the next morning. If I can visually observe standing heat, that is even better. When I want to get a cow bred, I stay close to home so I can pinpoint the timing. And even then, you can miss the right time. Some cows, such as heifers, might breed back better 18 hours after standing heat. And in some cases, a heifer can be inseminated twice, as in the 12th and 18th hour after standing heat, or close to it, just to make sure she gets bred. It’s going to depend upon when her body drops an egg to be fertilized, and when the sperm is made available to that egg.
To solve this problem, many will keep a bull, but in absence of a bull, they will do a “sync protocol”, which requires hormone injections to induce heat, and then breeding can be better timed. I did that once or twice with cows that were hard to breed back. It worked on one cow, but not the other. I have also taken 3 cows to visit a neighbor’s bull when all my methods failed. A bull always knows when the timing is right. But, I don’t have the choice of type of bull. Most of the bulls around here are Angus bulls, and when I want to breed for a pure dairy breed, I need to purchase special semen that the A.I. tech will hold in his “tank” that keeps the semen frozen until time to use.
My A.I. tech, the neighboring rancher, partners with Select Sires, so he can generally get any semen I want with the exception of Guernsey semen. Jersey semen is readily available, but the Guernsey Association requires that you purchase semen directly from them. It’s expensive, and has to be specially shipped to my A.I. Tech, and that has to be coordinated for when he is home to receive it so he can get it into his tank right away. If I want “sexed semen”, (don’t ask me how they sort semen for heifers calves), that is more expensive, and the semen is not as “robust” as conventional (non-sexed) semen. Last year and the year before I spent hundreds of dollars on Guernsey, sexed-semen. The one heifer calf that resulted from those expenditures died this year due to a terrible calving that I previously wrote about. I thought, wow, do I really want to do that again this year? Probably. I have 3 straws left of sexed Guernsey semen and I might use them all on one cow. The good news is that I do enjoy a good cross dairy cow – Jersey/Guernsey cross cows are great cows. The downside of a cross cow is that you don’t know what genetics they will inherit. One of my cross cows has the sweetness of Jersey milk, but only has enough to raise a calf. The other cross cow’s milk is more like Guernsey milk, and she gives copious amounts of milk.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 4.)