Heifer buying

This morning Garry and Maxim went over and got the heifer they bought on Wednesday- I heard Polo and the neighbour dog barking and saw the heifer and Max go past the kitchen window, so I went out to take a picture, here she is in the barn. She looks like she’s got some Holstein genes in there, with a very distinctive face marking- we won’t mix her up with anyone else! Garry tells me that she is supposed to be two years old (according to the lady with the 13 year old cow- see last post)she looks pretty good, but we'd guess about 18 months old, and she's open (not pregnant) but looks more tall and dairy than some we have bought.










Then Garry told me that they were going over to weigh (with the handy weigh tape from Canada) the other heifers they were thinking of buying. I went along, along with Yana. The little barn over there is one of the nicest in the village, Garry says. This yard in the summer has a beautiful flower garden in the front yard, and is on the first street coming off the highway, one over from ours – we live on Centralna (the main street.) You can see they have grain storage, a little mill and a couple of old fridges with milk inside (Garry peeked) in the outer part of the shed.

Inside the door, there were the row of milk cows, along with the two heifers we bought (they weigh about 500 pounds) with a little gutter behind and on the other side of the narrow alley way another gutter with pens with mama pigs, baby pigs, and two calves (one of which Yana bought.) There were cats and chickens running around the shed, and four dogs (only the german shepherd was chained in the driveway- the man held him so we could walk through), more cats outside - and a number of geese out in the garden. To my surprise-one of the dogs was the black dog that hung around our yard the first summer- we called him Jack. He was the dog that ate all the liver vereniki, and is looking fat and happy for a village dog, and seemed happy to see us. Garry and I went back in the car so Maxim and Yana could walk the young heifer she had bought back to our place. Jack the dog (his name seems to be Ren- the farmer was yelling at him to stop chasing them)was following them, so we’ll see what Polo thinks if he comes all the way here.



Yesterday Garry went on an excursion to look at a milk tank like one we could buy with the salesman from the DeLaval dealer in Dnepro. First they delivered some new automatic milking machines to a farmer who turned out to be one Garry had visited last summer with the Canadian-Ukrainian dairy commission. He was very excited to see Garry again, and remembered that we had eight children (a never-ending source of amazement here where three children is a large family) and insisted that they come in for a bowl of borsht.

They went on to the farm that had a tank like the used one we could get (imported from Germany) with a new compressor (that’s what does the cooling) It has a flat top that opens so it can be cleaned manually with a brush, rather than using an automatic cleaning machine (which would mean that we would need cleaning products we have not seen for sale here, and a lot of hot water- so another bigger hot water heater.) The salesman’s boss had another place for him to go (Garry had made three stops with him) so he drove out with his Land Rover and drove Garry back to Dnepro for his dentist appointment (Garry says he drove much faster than the salesman in his old Lada). The dentist said the milk that had been delivered in the morning tasted so good.

Garry and Maxim spent the rest of the morning forking out the pen where the three heifers were tied, then moving the bale insulation walls from that area (they will be used for bedding now- temperatures are predicted to be plus ten C on the weekend.) They put the new heifer and the three (plus another one) outside for the day (where they were enjoying a good romp in the photo), then they will be locked in the new larger pen at night. Then Garry went into Dnepro to put a deposit on the milk tank, they will order it to come in with a load they will be getting in a couple weeks, and it is less than half the price of a similar new milk tank we got a quote on this week from Germany. The two new heifers came over this afternoon, even though we told them we couldn't pay for them until next week. Garry is paying better than meat price and apparently this family doesn't need any replacement cows this year, so they were destined for the dinner table.