More adventures in cow breeding...

Wednesday Garry had a bit of adventure when someone called him to breed their cow. They had called and asked if he had Jersey semen. He said he was going to get some on Friday or Saturday. They called back and said they could get some and took him for a ride out on the other side of Zaporosia where they got a straw (one frozen dose for breeding a cow, it's in a little plastic "straw") at a big farm.
Then he thought they were going to Chorney Yar, a village where he sometimes breeds cows, but they had only heard about him there, where they own a house. They actually have a Jersey cow and milk fifty goats right in the Zaporosia city limits. That was a first for Garry.

Thursday turned into a very busy day with the guys deciding to kill a cow for hamburger. She was having problems with her feet that just wouldn't get cured. For some reason they started at eleven am and kept working until almost five pm (when our monthly missionary zoom call was scheduled for seven am BC time). Garry's student volunteer helpers got ten pounds of farse (ground beef) while the other students got one pound each.

They were cutting it up in the cheese room, because it has steel tables (getting closer to having it set up to make cheese now, by the way.) Since Alonya had come in to get a knife from me to help prepare the meat to be ground into hamburger, little Danil (he'll be two in August) was getting tired of sitting in his push trike for hours, so I took him out to play for a while after taking photos.

He liked throwing the ball, but he really liked playing in Garry's car. Clicking the ceiling light on and off was so much fun he was giggling. He also enjoyed looking at the heifers and mooing at them.

That's his mother in the red shirt, Garry said she worked really hard. I had to apply antibiotic cream and band-aids after they were done, mostly to her fingers.

It was also Valentina's birthday and our special lunch sat in the oven staying warm until ten minutes before five because she wanted to wait for Garry. The cake had cooled nicely by then. During a slow part of the call Garry lit up the candles and it turned out they were trick candles. We finally tossed them in a bowl of water, while Valentina and Garry couldn't stop laughing as the candles kept relighting. The baby was sleeping at that point. She likes to be awake more at night at three weeks old.

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Friday morning Victor called early, he had made arrangements for Garry to get semen from the Ukrainian Canadian Dairy commission office early. We met him at 7:30 after racing off to Dnepro.
Garry said it was a good thing he could get more as he only had two straws (doses) left to use.

First we drove over the bridge to the other side of the river to get more liquid nitrogen in the semen tank, then went to the office. That tank of liquid nitrogen in the photo was bigger than the van, I know because we parked next to it. That's Victor in the brown van in the photo above, we took separate cars... vans? since he had a medical appointment afterwards.

 If you are wondering, the Mormons are on one of the floors of the building. The office is not in the same area as ten years ago when we bought from them. Here's more of a photo tour of the office, it was empty early in the morning, except for the guy helping us.

I got a photo of the lab (DMS) that processes the milk samples for fat and protein and somatic cell counts when we do the milk testing.

There was a bit of a traffic jam getting back over the bridge because of a fender bender.

Before heading home, we stopped downtown to buy a new beading picture for Alonya. This one should keep her busy for a while, it has hundreds of beads to sew on. Plus she had phoned to say she was out of diapers. Didn't quite make it to Saturday sopping night. We ate an early lunch inside at KFC on the day inside seating opened up post-quarantine.

Garry had to breed a cow in Green Valley on the way back to Nikolaipolia-it was the place we drove to last month that was the wrong village. This time it was the right one, and the cow was in the field. Garry says this place has a good place to breed them in the field, the guy built a little stall. Often he's chasing them in circles on the end of a long rope when he breeds them during the day when they are out to pasture.

When we got home, we packaged up the ground beef Max had made and froze it. 

Saturday I got some weeding done in the flower beds and Garry (with a couple students mowed and weed-whacked the lawns. After lunch Garry went back to the place in the city with the Jersey cow to try to trim her feet. Sometimes cows need pedicures and Garry has done lots of it over the years, all the way back to when he was in university. It's a lot easier in his trimming chute, but he got the job done. At five pm he drove us and a van full of students back to Zaporosia for our third grocery shopping trip since the quarantine eased. We did not eat at McDonalds, as we normally do. With the inside seating open it was packed. 

Garry was out breeding cows until 9:30 Friday night, and Saturday night he was just back in the house when someone knocked on the door at nine. Off for another hour to breed someone's cow. He was in bed shortly after ten pm.