The Effect of the California Drought: Part 2

The hay that was delivered to our barn on monday was 200 bales short of what it should of been. The reason for that is that morning before 7 the semi truck had a collision with a herd of deer and the bales broke open and scattered on high way 20. We are getting a refund for the hay and hopefully get another 200 bales. This amount of hay that was delivered will most likely last 7 to 8 months at the most so hopefully we get a lot more rain before then so the prices will drop and supply will be high for California.

The effect of the California drought on hay prices: part 1

The drought that has occurred recently is going to make less hay and make the prices for the remaining hay extremely expensive. Ranchers and farmers say that as long as the drought continues, the nation's largest agricultural state will remain in turmoil, with repercussions stretching to consumer pocketbooks in the form of higher prices for such basic staples as meat, milk, fruit and vegetables. We are getting a full semi truck load of hay before the prices go up and it is going to last about 10 months to a year. Getting hay in bulk is better buying when cheaper even though it is a lot of a money but it would be the difference of 250 dollars a ton  or 350 dollars a ton which can add up to a couple thousand dollar difference.

Scours

Scours is technically just bad diarrhea, which you will almost never see in adult steers, bulls, or cows unless they are sick. Scours is more common in nursing calves because of the amount of milk they ingest in one feeding. My calves are nursing once in the morning and once in the evening. They nurse for more than five minutes on one cow. This used to be a problem because even five minutes would give them scours but now since they are getting bigger they can handle more milk quicker. If a calf gets extreme scours it could be fatal. So when my calf got scours I would reduce the amount of time he would get nursing until I saw good solid poop then I knew I was in the clear.

Grass Fed Dairy Meat

People who have bought our dairy steer meat have gave us amazing feed back that it is the best meat they have ever had and we thought the same thing. Many things have made it taste so amazing the way it does. The steers nursed off of their mothers until the day they died which people don't normally due for reasons they feel necessary. They were grass fed which led to the taste and they were never stressed out in their hole life which was played a huge role in the magnificent taste.

Heat behavior

My cow lost her calf a couple of months ago as I already talked about. She came into heat last friday which was also valentine's day so we had to get her back on track and pregnant again. The most revealing signs we saw that made us for sure that she was in heat was, walking our fence line and mooing, she did not come in and eat like she usually does, our calves started mounting each other and her vulva was reddish. When calves start mounting each other it is not sexual behavior at all, there is a sent that gets spread around when a  cow is in heat and it is just a natural reaction that they get.

Introducing New Babies to Surrogate Mothers

After we had their sons slaughtered for meat, the mother cows still produced enough milk for them, even on top of what we got by milking. We wanted to try to let Cortana, the one cow who has a baby due in June, dry out and rest for a while, but she is the one who got mastitis recently, so we can't yet. We now have two baby beef calves on loan from Nevada County Free Range Beef, to help ensure milk production stays high in Betty, the one cow who is not bred back yet, the one who had the mummified calf.

We have been letting the two two-month old beef calves nurse off the cows morning and night for a few weeks, since they arrived. We were waiting until the steers were gone before we let them out with the big cows because we thought the steers might hurt them. But now we are ready, especially since the weather is nice again.

We had let them out in the pasture a couple of times with the cows for just an hour or two. They all, even the big cows, ran around and bucked and played. They were happy to be out. Yesterday, we finally let them out together for the whole afternoon. They stayed together as a herd, and when the babies strayed off, the mamas went looking for them, softly mooing to them. So, they are at least looking out for the babies now. The calves tried to nurse, while out at pasture, but the mamas would not let them... yet. I will hopefully be able to report success with that soon!

mastitis

Mastitis is an intramamary infection. If mastitis isn't treated it could be fatal to your cattle. More common in lactating cattle mastitis can come in two forms, clinical and subclinical, and can affect both dry cattle and cattle in lactation. Subclinical is a diagnostic detected form of mastitis that can only be detected through laboratory settings such as microscopic evaluation, culturing, somatic cell counts, or CMT evaluation. Contrary to subclinical mastitis clinical mastitis can be detected through both laboratory diagnostics and in the field evaluation including observation of swelling, heat, hardness, masses, pus, blood, and sepsis as well as fever.