Another day

Even though I don't calibrate Thanksgiving, my husband likes to have a traditional Thanksgiving meal. So I have been making pies and rolls for tomorrow. Have you ever had chess pie? I have, and boy is it GOOD! A bit too good actually, very sweet and rich. I made an apple pie also...

Other than cleaning house not much else going on. My daughter Blossom is visiting until the 28th or 29th. I really dislike this time of year. A month from now I will have the same scenario when it's Christmas dinner as well. The crowds at the stores are horrible. I won't even think about shopping on 'Black Friday"! But it will all pass and life will be back to normal once more.

I seem to have lost interest and I'm perhaps a bit depressed. It seems like I don't even care about what is going on around me these days. But spring will come and get my blood flowing again and everything will be right with the world once more.

Milking Frequency

Many variations in milking frequency or different lengths of inter-milking intervals have been tried over the last few decades. Here is a really intersting account of Milking Frequency and the conclutions http://www.moomilk.com/archive/nutrition-14.htm

Once a Day Milking, Twice-A-Day Milkings (2x), Three Times-A-Day Milking (3x), Four-Times-A-Day Milking (4x), and 5x Or 6x Milking.

Conclusions

1. Once a day or skipping a milking is not acceptable with high production dairy cows under intensified daily systems.
2. Twice -a-day milking with intervals of 10-14 and 12-12 are acceptable with very little research information as to the benefit of the 12-12 interval.
3. Three times-a-day milking will increase milk production 10-18% over 2x. Reproductive efficiency will be slightly lower, and udder health will be improved.
4. Four-times-a-day milking will increase milk production from 8 to 12% over 3x. Udder health will be improved, with no data available on reproductive efficiency.
5. When changing from 3x to 2x or 4x to 3x, dairy farm managers should not expect to see a 8 to 15% decrease in milk products. Research has shown (30, 32) that after 20 and 14 weeks of an increased frequency of milking there is a carry-over effect of 9 to 11%, which is the effect of lactation persistency.
6. Superior facilities and management are necessary to receive the height percentage increase from either 3x or 4x milking frequency.
7. Keep the daily milking and feeding schedule the same each day. Do not milk 3x or 4x with more cows than the capacity of the milking parlor capability in a 24-hour period.
8. Financial benefits of milking frequency greater than twice a day will be affected by feed cost, milk price, and labor cost.

Kids due

Bieber, I am sure got Cali on 10/26, if so she will be due 3/25/10. It has been 28 days since and she has shown no signs of heat. I will quit milking in January when I breed Angel.

I started milking around noon on a semi-permanent basis today. The sun burns off the fog by then and it is nice outside. I have also been finding ticks on both Cali and Angel. The ticks are always dead, which seems rather strange, I found the same thing with the dog and I give him sulfur also. I don't want to use Ivermectin on them, but if it keeps up I will have to. First I am going to try putting some DE down and then fresh straw. I think the ticks are in the wood chips that I got from the road crew. I will wait to see if that works. Also I have increased the mixed minerals with salt lately (I hadn't done that for a while) so we will see if that helps as well. I was going to drench them with the sulfur and may still have to. It would be better than resorting to the Ivermectin.

A few weeks ago I started not feeding the girls during the day if they are loose in their yards. They have tons of leaves out there to eat and quite a bit of grass and other green stuff. I do feed them alfalfa pellets at night. I will continue this until the leaves are not any good and the grass is gone. But probably unless the ground is covered with snow, they will have food all winter. Bieber is tied during the day so he does get timothy pellets while out.

Update on Homemade ACV

You can catch up with the other posts about how I made ACV... http://lindercroft-smwon.blogspot.com/search/label/homemade%20ACV

I emptied the crock and put them in jars. I didn't really get all that much. All together with the vinegar from apple peels, I made about 4 and a 1/2 gallons... Was it worth it? Probably not and to be honest I don't know if I will do it again unless I have to. I probably will still do it with apple juice one gallon at a time. It's less trouble and faster.

Here is what I got for a No. 6 crock and 15 pounds of apples.

I let it drain some until I almost filled that parltly full jar. The rest all went out to the comost. The peelings I had emptied the vinegar from and refilled - they didn't smell like vinegar so they went down the drain and out to the compost as well.

I found out why I had lots of fruit flys - one of the jars was partly open. The fruit fly trap did work btw, but I'd rather not have the fruit flys to begin with! LOL