Sunday report

A year ago, I only posted on Sundays, giving a report for the week- now I sometimes post everyday! Once again, it’s above zero C today- there are puddles and slush everywhere. Garry tells me that the fields are even looking green in places. Garry and the guys left for church a bit earlier this morning, since they had 160 liters to drop off at Victor’s church and were bringing 100 liters to Morningstar. I stayed home as I was feeling a little feverish with my cold.
Unfortunately, they forgot to bring the empty pop bottles we had saved up to take (empty plastic drink bottles are the container of choice for the sale of Ukrainian liquids.) When Garry phoned at one o’clock he said church had been longer than normal, and it’s the first Sunday in the month, so there was communion. He said they would likely be bringing back some milk, as many people had forgotten to bring containers. As soon as they were finished he and the guys would be heading home (I assume after a stop at McDonald’s- the boys are always starving after church.)

The ladies dried off (stopped milking) another cow yesterday, Garry thought with just 25 cows milking the average would be at 20 liters a day per cow. Yesterday's milk total was 498 liters, and they continue to milk well. The cow giving the most has 28 liters a day. Many of the village cows are dry now, so we sell milk to many people in the village who come to buy some for making sour cream, cottage cheese and drinking.

Garry tells me he has more people in the village wanting him to breed their cows bred artificially. Apparently the last bull in the village has been made into dinner. Wednesday evening he bred one, he says he’s not sure if she’ll get pregnant as she was very skinny. The owner told Garry in Russian that they are very lucky that he has come to the village to live and do this. Later he called Victor to say thanks again and say he wanted to come over and see what we are feeding our cows because they are fat. So Garry’s demonstration farm may be working, if people are noticing the differences between the cows here and the rest of the village (we are however milking regular Ukrainina cows like everyone else- just management is different.)


When the vet came yesterday, he confirmed a number of pregnancies in the herd, which should allay Victor’s fears that the semen we bought is no good. Garry has been telling him that some cows are pregnant when he checked and some have come back in heat like the ladies say, but that is normal, and it probably has more to do with the cow than how she was bred. One of the cows was bred twice to the neighbour’s bull before Garry got his liquid nitrogen and tank for breeding cows, and she did not get pregnant either. On our way to Kiev, Garry showed me where they go to get the liquid nitrogen near Dneproprejisk, I took a pic of the "big bull" by the turn into the bull stud.