The Bovine Bugle

The cows get moo-ving to new quarters

It was a rainy day today--a good day to do some inside work in the heifer barn. The heifer barn is where our young stock are kept until they are old enough to go outside. We have two rows of tie stanchions in the heifer barn, one row sized for younger animals and the other row sized for older, larger animals. The heifers on the small animal side were getting too big for that side, so we moved 12 of them over to the now empty big animal side. Before moving the animals we had to fix several leaky water bowls and a couple of chain ties on the big animal side. Once that was done, we shuffled the heifers and a couple of Angus steers across the gutters and alley to their more spacious confines.

We then moved the remaining four heifers on the small animal side to the far end of that side, and then moved four calves out of the calf pens and onto the small animal side. These calves are two months old, the age we normally move them out of the calf pens. At 2 months of age, they are eating hay and grain well and are ready to be weaned off milk. With these calves out of the pens we could then clean those four pens, bed them with fresh sawdust, and move the remaining three calves in to the clean pens. This left the last three pens to be cleaned tomorrow to be ready for the two heifer calves born the other day. All together we moved 23 animals around in the heifer barn this afternoon. Whew!!!

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont