In case you are wondering, while I am busy tying up loose ends here in Canada, I have talked to Garry on the phone, and have some new information to report- yesterday Garry had 3 cows calve. While this should help him in the making more milk department, they all had bull calves. I think we are at 8 bulls and one little heifer calf that was born while we were in Canada. Now there are only 8 dry (non-milking) cows in the herd.
Garry tells me his visitors last week when the power was out were Pentecostal and told him after the lights came back on the that of course they did because they prayed for the power to come back on. He told Victor that maybe they should get them back out to pray for heifer calves. In case you're wondering why it's better to have girls instead of boys- heifer calves grow into new cows to milk while bull calves grow into dinner. In other news the heifer calf he pulled for the neighbor that day was running around the next day- so he may get more villagers stopping in wanting help with calving cows (see the previous post for more about this).
Garry says the trucker is hoping to be able to get some more brewers grain to deliver soon, but meanwhile the sunflower meal he started feeding when he got back last week is starting to show results- the last three days the cows made 300, 311 and 335 liters of day a day, and there are 4 fresh cows to go into the sale milk soon, so he hopes to be at 400 liters before long. The weather sounds much warmer than Manitoba- about -4 C while is nearly -30 here. When I talked to Garry he was in Dnepro in the afternoon, getting his semen tank refilled with liquid nitrogen (that's how they keep it really frozen- of course in North America someone comes out to the farm to deliver the nitrogen and frozen semen.)
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