Did you miss a few? Not to worry! Here they all are, telling a story of #DairyManDan’s days on our family dairy farm!
Since typically I’m the one who snaps photos around the farm & posts them I wanted to get #DairyManDan’s perspective on things and, as I expected, it’s bit different than mine! Some of the photos I still took… especially if I happened to be around (plus that way you can see him in action!).
As you’ll see, no day is quite the same although the jobs that have to get done are! My original intent was to have #DairyManDan snap a pic at the top of the hour everyday for the first half of the month & then on the half hour the second half of the month. That was unrealistic expectation!
His hands are usually busy with something, so the pictures ended up getting snapped when he’d take his phone out and would see that one of his many to-do’s was to take a picture! The second part of the month they’re not really even in a time order anymore!
During June Dairy Month we’re giving you a peek inside the day of #DairyManDan. Today he headed out the door with a new box of milk filters.
This morning #DairyManDan was checking into Maiden’s page in his Saturnus management software in his office that overlooks the barn & calving area.
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#DairyManDan had just put the milkers on Valiant, one of two of our cows that Rita doesn’t help, either because the cow is too nervous or in Valiant’s case her udder is too big & low to the ground for Rita to be able to see it properly. She gets to stick around because she makes nearly 11 gallons of creamy milk a day!
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Usually to bed by 11pm & up at 5am everyday means #DairyManDan tries to catch a nap sometime during the day. I thought he’d be sleeping when I snuck in to get this picture but I guess it’s a good book.
After a busy morning with no photo in the 10 o’clock hour because#DairyManDan was feeding the cows & then went right into our bi-weekly pregnancy & fertility check-ups with the vet, he finally snapped this pic while heading down to the old farmstead to pregnancy check & breed a few of heifers. Those are the supplies & traveling bull semen tank riding along.
#DairyManDan stopped for a quick rhubarb bar & tater tots casserole leftovers at his parent’s while figuring out which heifers don’t have their pasture quite yet ready. The rest will hopefully & finally get out today.
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#DairyManDan fetching a few cows & washing milk boxes quick before heading off to church. P.S. It’s Mary’s birthday today (she’s the one looking at the camera) & it’s Dan’s Gma Mary’s birthday too!
After a late morning nap & a quick lunch with the family #DairyManDan slipped his boots back on to head out to the barn to wash Rita’s boxes & change the milk filter. What else is he wearing? One of our favorite products, Shoe-in Boot Covers! So easy to slip on for running in & out of the office or house.
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This afternoon #DairyManDan was feeding a bottle to a 6 week premie bull born on Sunday!
#DairyManDan starting to mix the cows’ nutritional balanced casserole with the first scoop of haylage into the mixer wagon… good thing we don’t have to bake it in this heat!
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Never a dull moment… P.S. We have amazing neighbors!
#DairyManDan had Miss Muffet snap this picture of him scraping cow pies from the area we keep cows that are closest to having their babies.
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#DairyManDan had a moment to step in for baths, supper, & a book before bed tonight. We all love that!
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After sharing our farm with other dairy farmers & folks that work with dairy farmers and then going out to dinner with some of them too, #DairyManDan is finally finishing giving some clean, DRY bedding to the calves… Emphasis on DRY because everything else is WET!
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One last check before bed at the ladies who will soon be having babies…
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Today truly is Day 16… Sometimes the days all run together! #DairyManDan was making his morning rounds in the barn, which includes making sure the cows beds are clean by “kicking out pies” that didn’t quite land in the alley where they are scraped away!
#DairyManDan will be busy chopping tomorrow so we’re celebrating Father’s Day a day early with Greek Yogurt Peach Smoothies, one of our #Dairy3forMe for the day.
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Happy Father’s Day!
Enjoy, Eartha, & Eve decided to make it a triple-E calf day. The third calf of the day, Energy, is just getting up.
#DairyManDan is heading to give the heifers at his parent’s place a hay bale. Hopefully they’ll be content after the storm (and two inches of rain!) scared them through their fences last night!
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#DairyManDan was meeting with the cows’ nutritionist today… here’s a look at their casserole. Amazing that our cows can eat that & turn it into yummy milk!
2nd calf of the day… this time a big boy. The first was a heifer named Erace. Calves will be keeping #DairyManDan busy for the next few weeks as we have a lot due to have babies in the next few weeks.
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#DairymanDan found one of the first raspberries of the season today!
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#DairyManDan is getting ready for even more baby calves by getting our calf area clean, which means taking the compost (manure & stalk bedding & straw bedding) out to the field where it will help the next crop of alfalfa hay grow!
Getting ready to move some calves into group housing today to get ready for all the babies coming soon!
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#DairyManDan took the kids black raspberry hunting today… tomorrow we’re going to put them in homemade ice cream!
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The kids woke me up so after getting them back to bed I peeked out the window & saw Mera with calf feet out & bellering. So I woke up #DairyManDan & he headed out to make sure she was ok. A bit later, Minnie was born.
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First up is Renee from Eat, Farm, Love! She farms in Pennsylvania where they milk 200 Jersey cows. 20 of those Jersey’s get milked at one time, a bit different than 2 at a time at our farm! We have a few Jerseys & their eyes are so gorgeous!
Next is Alicia from Happily Married… To The Cows. She too lives in Pennsylvania too, which happens to means lots of beautiful things… I love her double story porch, old beautiful stone barn, and they have beautiful white fences, we just have some electric wire!
In the links below I’m up next so look around & check out our farm a little more!
Jumping to the west coast, we have Darleen at Guernsey Dairy Mama in Oregon. As you might have noticed she has Guernseys, all Guernsey, like Dan’s Grandpa use to have. We only have a few left, but they are beautiful! I love her post about what’s in a dairy farmers day since now that we have Rita the robot #DairyManDan’s days look so different than they use to! And her days will soon be changing too as they’re putting in robots.
Up to my home state of Minnesota we find Sadie at Dairy Good Life. Her 75 cows are milked in a stanchion barn, which means they each have their own spot and Sadie & her husband bring the milking machine to each cow to milk them. Check out their farm page & the great video about their farm!
And last but not least is Caci at The Farm Wife who heralds from South Carolina, which I’d say is the south, which means we’re covering a good bit of the US! Their family has been farming for 10 generations… that’s amazing! And she could be describing #DairyManDan, except he’s actually averaged a little over 30,000 steps this month, with his high days at over 48,000 steps!
Explore A Day in the Life of Dairy Farmers Across the US!
- A Day in Our Shoes as Dairy Farmers by Eat Farm Love
- A Day on Our Dairy Farm by Happily Married… To The Cows
- A Month of Days in the Life of Dairyman Dan by New Day Dairy
- June #MilkSteps in a Day Guernsey Dairy Mama
- #MilkSteps: All in a day’s work by Dairy Good Life
- #MilkSteps Monday: From Moo to You by The Farm Wife
This was a great way to capture your month! It was a great variety of activities, all familiar to me, yet unfamiliar too! Our 45 cow herd is definitely much smaller than yours, but yet we scrape manure the same way! 🙂
Absolutely loved the day by day work descriptions! Reminds me so vividly of my younger days up in Howard County. We tried to milk about 40 Holsteins year around in a double 3 stall in line milking parlor, milking 3 at a time. Maybe I missed something, but you said you milk 2 at a time. What system do you use? Automated perhaps? Anyway I loved the farm, especially the dairy part of it. Would love to visit more!