Garry has had an interesting week, he was running low on frozen bull semen. He breeds cows artificially not just at our farm, but for many people in Nikolaipolia and other nearby (and occasionally not as nearby) villages. Most people in Ukraine that have cows just milk a few cows. Some days he breeds four or five cows, all in different places.
He's had a few interesting stories lately about breeding cows that I haven't written about. Garry has been using Canadian Holstein semen we buy to breed cows since we started milking cows in Ukraine. He's been breeding some cows for a couple generations. As a general rule, everyone has been happy with the larger calves that get from the mainly Russian red local cows. Big bull calves turn into dinner (or income) faster. However, last month he went to breed a cow for Max's friend Slavic in the village, and he had a complaint. His two year old heifer that calved recently is too big for his barn. She's much taller than her mother standing next to her. Garry offered to trade cows, Slavic has been to our barn to see which one he wants, but I haven't heard if he took one home yet. Garry has decided to buy some Jersey semen for people who'd like smaller cows. Here's Garry's photos of Valentina standing next to the big cow and her smaller mother.
Another day, Garry was driving through the village, when a lady flagged him down. She wanted him to breed a cow at her mother's house. She rode along with him and congratulated him on how much Ukrainian he understands now. He thought that was funny, since all Ukrainian Garry understands is accidental, since he set out to learn Russian. However, many people in the village and even the students use a mixture of the two languages. In the village church Pastor Ivan only uses Ukrainian, so we hear a lot of it, especially since the war started, as part of people in this area being more patriotic now.
This lady is the one who plays the accordion with the local singing group. They are mostly middle aged women who dress in costume and sing traditional songs at festive occasions. We saw them when we took the students to that village day celebration. She rode back with Garry after he breed the cow, and on the way back, she asked if he could sing something, so he sang Amazing Grace in English and she joined in in Russian, he said it was an incredible experience. Her mother had a calf for sale, Garry buys heifer calves back from people that he breeds cows for. He only buys young ones, preferably about two months old, but sometimes he trades smaller calves, taking heifers and giving them the bull calves that they prefer. He has learned that the new ones don't adjust well if they are older, because they aren't used to large groups, and become the bottom of the pecking order and don't grow well.
Back to our story from this week. Garry has been buying semen from a company that imports from other countries for about seven years. It's a two hour drive, partly over really bad roads, that I often go with him for. He has Victor call ahead so they know we're coming, normally it takes maybe twenty minutes to get the liquid nitrogen refilled and the little plastic straws (or vial) of semen to go into the storage tank we bring with us.
Last month, Garry had run out of semen just before I returned and he drove down to buy more days before I returned. He dropped the students in Zaporosia for their weekly shopping trip on his way there, and was very unhappy when it took a hour of waiting to get his semen. The students were done shopping and phoning him and he was still waiting. The students are used to spending two hours or more at the mall, so it may have been more than an hour.
So early this week, he was down to one straw of semen left, so he decided to squeeze a trip down to buy some on Tuesday. Victor called to say he'd be there between 11 and 12. I am not sure if Victor went with him or not, it's a day Victor is normally in the village. Anyway, he (or they) arrived about 11 and went inside the office and paid in cash, and they refilled the tank with liquid nitrogen, and told him someone would be there in 10 or 15 minutes with his order. An hour later, still waiting. He went back into the office, 10 or 15 minutes. Still nobody there. Garry asked for his money back. They said they couldn't do that. Eventually the boss came and tried to make it good, but Garry did get his cash back and had Victor phone around to find a new place to buy semen.
It turned out to be an old place, the Canadian Ukrainian Dairy Commission was where we first bought semen in Ukraine, right in Dnepro. We had seen them at a trade show last spring, and they said they had semen again. Garry and Victor were there most of the day Wednesday. They bought semen for less than we'd been paying, he even got ten straws of Jersey semen for people wanting little calves. They know a place in Dnepro where he can buy the liquid nitrogen. He also discovered that milk is in short supply in Ukraine this fall, and they can get more than ten grivna a liter, our buyers are paying eight and a half right now.
We are making a lot of milk now, so much that the milk tank (refrigerated vat) can only hold 5 milkings instead of 6 (two days worth) as we are milking a hundred cows now. They can't start the morning milking on the second day until the one buyer comes and loads up his cans. Garry is disappointed in how poorly some of the fresh heifers are looking this year, they are small and thin, so he plans to focus on growing them out better before they get bred over the next year or so. There's always something to improve.
I just talked to Garry and today while he was teaching English in Dnepro the transformer at the barn blew up. It knocked out the power in the village too. Yana said all her breakers in her house tripped at once. It even set the grass on fire near the transformer by the barn. They will be using the generator to milk the cows until at least Monday because the electric company's solution was to cut off the barn to restore power to the village. Apparently we need to hire someone privately to fix the generator, it's not their problem. Garry says it blew up the power supply transformer for the video surveillance they put in the barn when it went. He's not sure if anything else was damaged.
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