It just occurred to me that I have never written (in the blog) about what we do for summer barn chores. It is such an important thing-- so I thought I had better explain! In the summer time, chores are easier. Most of the heifers are out of the barn, so there is less feeding and less scraping and bedding to do each day. That is kind of nice... especially when we have to do barn chores in between each load of hay!
Morning chores for dad start at 4:00 AM. Derek or Jennilea will also get up then to go out and get all the cows in from the pasture and put them in the barn to be milked. This is about a 45 min process. After the cows are in, whichever "kid" went out to the barn gets to go back to bed and dad milks the cows. At 6:00, mom heads out to the barn to mix feed for the cows, which she’ll then feed at about 6:45. Around 6:30, dad finishes milking and Ryan or I go out to help do everything else. This includes: cleaning off the troughs (taking the leftover food away from the cows), feeding sweep outs (feeding that leftover food to the heifers and steers), feeding milk calves (we have 3 right now), feeding the weaned calves, bedding the cows (put fresh hay under all of them), sweeping down the walkway, and feeding the cows their corn and grain. We usually get in from the barn at around 7:30. Evening chores begin at 3:00 PM. Mom mixes feed for the cows and then feeds them, dad scrapes the walkway and behind the cows, the rest of us do the other chores. These include: feeding the milk calves, giving corn and grain to the heifers and steers, scraping out the calves' stalls, bedding the calves, and feeding corn and grain to the cows. Right now, all of that takes about 45 minutes. At 4:00 Derek will go out and milk the cows. He is usually done at about 5:45 and then the cows are all let out into the pasture for the next day. There you have an overview of the chores we do everyday. Now, you know what I mean when I write about morning and/or afternoon chores. :)
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AuthorHello, if you are a follower of this blog you will remember that Angela was doing the blogs. Well, things have gotten busy for her and so Stan, her dad, is filling in for now. I am not as techno savy as her so I am not sure how this will work but I am going to try and post on a hopefully regular basis. Archives
March 2016
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