21.1.2009 von admin.

Well, we are right in the midst of the busiest time of the year for us.

My husband, Robb, has been chopping corn silage for our clients, which means 18- to 20-hour days of staring at cornstalks from the driver’s seat of the chopper.

We’ll have to begin combining our soybeans soon, and the cattle work has started, too.

Add to that the fact that we shipped all 2,500 finished hogs out last week and will be getting new baby pigs in this week.

I am what they call a “harvest widow” - a wife who doesn’t see her husband for a few weeks in the fall!

This weekend, we had our fall roundup. Yes, it is just what it sounds like: All our friends come over on horseback and we go out through the pastures to round up the cows and calves to bring them home for weaning and vaccinations.

Robb and I prefer to use horses to move our cattle around because it’s much less stressful for the cows than chasing them with four-wheelers. We go slowly and take our time, and we have a lot of fun in the process. It’s a big social event also for all our friends, some of whom we don’t get to see very often.

Once all the cattle are brought back from the various pastures, we put all the cows through the livestock chute for their vaccine boosters, a dose of dewormer, to take a current body weight and pregnancy check all of them. This is where being a veterinarian comes in handy!

After we’re finished with the cows, the calves go next, and they also get vaccinated, dewormed and weighed. In addition, we place an electronic ID tag in the ears of the calves so they can be tracked once they leave our farm. We monitor the weight on all of our calves to see how quickly they gain weight, and we participate in the Iowa Gold Tag Preconditioning program, which specifies which vaccines, dewormers and other procedures the calves must go through before they can head to market.

Once all the cattle have been through the chute, we turn them back out to pasture for three more weeks, at which time we bring them in again for boosters on all the vaccines and to wean the calves from their mommas. That is a very noisy day - calves don’t like being taken away from their mommas, and the cows are usually a little upset that we’ve taken their calves away. It all passes in a few days, though, and everyone settles down.

The important thing is to avoid stressing the cows and calves during the processing through the chute as well as during weaning time to prevent them from getting sick or injured. Obviously, it’s a little stressful, but we try to make it as calm as we can.

Until next time, enjoy the wonderful fall weather (when it arrives), and think of me when you see a farmer combining corn or soybeans in the field!

And keep a close eye out for farm equipment moving on the highways at this time of year - especially at night.

[aus Quad City Times (Lokalzeitung in Illinois) 21.10.09]

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2.1.2009 von admin.

BigDog - The Most Advanced Rough-Terrain Robot on Earth

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