Snow Day!

The storm has arrived and is going strong. 

Normally when we open the coop, the chickens explode out the door.  Today, they did not.  They don't want anything to do with that white stuff.

There's an old farmer wisdom that if chickens stay out of a storm it will be short lived but if they go out in it it'll last a long time.  I don't know if that applies to snow.

The good thing about this storm is that it's supposed to dump a bunch of snow, and then promptly warm up and turn to rain.  Shoving is optional!

That great big egg turned out to have two really big yolks.  We're wondering if a goose snuck into the coop and laid that egg.

Christina is too skinny.  It's normal for cows to lose weight after they calve, but she looks skinnier than she should.  I found a "body conditioning" guide on the internet with pictures of tailheads.  See those dips on either side of her tail?  They weren't there two months ago and they shouldn't be there. 

We're feeding her all the alfalfa she's willing to eat.  So we called the experts (the dairy we bought her from).  They said that when she's in milk, it's pretty difficult to gain weight and she didn't gain enough on her last dry period.   We gave her straight grass hay and should have giving her some alfalfa.  Dang.  Okay, we'll do that better next time.

We found out that we're also not giving as much grain as we should.  We should be giving 1 pound of grain for each 3 pounds of milk.  I did some weighing and calculation and she was only getting only half as much grain as she should.    She's pretty pleased with the new big buckets of grain.  All that extra grain means she needs some sodium bicarb to counteract any acid stomach.  We put the bicarb out where she could get it and it she's eating way more of it than I expected.  Now I feel bad that she's been needing it and we haven't been giving it to her (did I tell you I'm pretty good at guilt?).

Our goal right now is to prevent her from losing any more weight and then catch up on her next dry period.  Christina shares the suffering of my oldest child, the one we do all our good learning on.