Government Money?!?

Hmmmm, as a dairy farmer I am loathe to accept help from the government. Many reasons for this, just take a look at the "Price Stabilization" proposal. What a mess, anyway...

A new program was just rolled out. Dairy Farm Management Team. In this program, there is room for 50 farmers in Wisconsin to enroll. If accepted you would be able to spend up to $2000.00 in grant money to learn to manage your farm better. There is a 10% fee the owner has to pay towards the expenses incurred by this project.

We, Cava-Lanes Holsteins, were extremely blessed to be selected as one of the 50 farms.

What does this mean for us? Well, for us it means we get to have a group of people that are normally involved in our farm, come together, and discuss (very candidly) our farms' strengths, weakness and how we can better strengthen our positives and create fewer vulnerabilities.

As a beginning farmer, this is extremely valuable to me. I have so much to learn and so little time to learn it.

We are extremely lucky to be in Manitowoc County, our extension agent is the best! We have only had our pre-meeting and first meeting so far, however, many things were discovered and I can't wait to see how this ends. We only get 3 meetings on the government, then the rest is up to us.


A Great Big THANK YOU to all who are involved in helping us make Cava-Lanes Holsteins a better busines!

When One Door Closes...Part 2

This is my update as I have not written in the last six months. I truly thought with my husband being laid-off that I would have more time, not less.

Well that has not been the case. I would like to start by THANKING all of you who sent me messages and I am sorry I was unable to respond.

Since my last post "When One Door Closes", my husband has been hospitalized twice (I seriously thought we were going to lose him this last time), my daughter had to have an outpatient procedure and I had my own procedure done.

If all that is not enough, my husband has still not found a job. I have started to apply off the farm, but don't have the earning potential he does.

On the bright side, my sister-in-law got married. She is now a part of Gildale Holsteins!


We are very proud of her and happy for both of them!

Thank you again to all who have kept us in their thoughts and prayers! I hope to send another post soon!

Just in case, have a Merry Chritsmas and a Happy New Year from Cava-Lanes Holsteins!

When One Door Closes...

My mom always said, when one door closes a window opens. Yesterday was a strange day of happenings...

At 3:00 a.m. as I am leaving for the barn, my 6 year old comes to me to tell me she can't sleep. I explain that 3:00 a.m. is no time to be up for little girls. She then explains to me that "sometimes little kids have bad dreams"... I start to say "bad dreams", she cuts in "I know, are not real". So I tuck her in to bed with her dog Kenai and some cartoons, then head off to the barn.

I start milking with a million things on my mind. The compressor is not working right (can't cool my milk fast enough); bills; 5 different places to go before chores in the afternoon and how many things I need to pick up at those places; I am taking Tuesday (today) off and need to explain all the things that are different from usual to the guy milking for me; wondering if my little one made it back to sleep...etc.

As the morning helper is coming down the middle aisle I stop him to remind him that the cow in the pen is treated and how to care for her. He looks at me and says..."if she is treated why are you milking her in the line?" I scream for him to cut the power to the milkers and run to grab the unit off the cow. You see...treated means she as been given antibiotics and gets milked into a special bucket that we dump her milk from. Not a good start to the day...milk price is so low that the bills continue to stack up while I keep getting notices of "Thank you for paying on you bill, but we still need you to pay more!"

I called my milk representative and the milk hauler. Mind you it is just after 4:30 in the morning. Oh well, can't have the hauler pick up the milk without it being tested for drugs. If I had contaminated the milk haulers truck...I would be responsible for ALL the milk in the semi.

I feel horrible at this point, but keep on going. I call my husband at 5:00 to get him up for his day and let him know what happened. My husband works off the farm as a manager and is supposed to be gone for the next 3 days doing inventory for his field reps.

He is supportive and I feel worse. Keep on going I tell myself. As I continue I decide I can't go on without heading to the house for a bathroom break...no potty in the barn. I head home and guess who greets me? Yep, my 6 year old. Now she not only can't sleep, but she is hungry. I explain that I have to get back to work and have her dad give her some cereal. I once again head out to the barn.

My milk representative (Dairy Farmers of America: DFA) shows up, again another supportive person and I feel that much worse! She tells me she will know if I need to dump my 3000+ pounds of milk or not in about 10 minutes. I have to tell you that is one long ten minutes! She comes in and lets me know my tank is not "hot". Hallelujah! I feel GREAT now! I finish chores and head home.

Just after I get home my husband comes home for a few items he needed to pick up. His first inventories are local so it is no big deal. I find my daughters are both fast asleep and I decided to take a quick nap. After I get up, my 6 year old comes out. Great timing, the day is getting better...or so I think.

My 16 year old daughter gets up, my mom calls and says she is coming over to help me and I explain that I have to leave...5 places to go with about 15 things to pick up. My mom comes to help me with laundry and dishes (without her I think we would go nude). Just as I hang up with my mom, my husband walks in.

I say, Hi! I didn't expect to see you again. He says "I'm done". I say..."done, done with what?" He replies with his job. The president of his company is waiting outside to take his company car, cell phone and laptop. It turns out due to the economy, he is being laid off.

Now what!?! I know I mentioned large bills and low income for the farm earlier, but now no income for the personal stuff? Wow!

Over the weekend we had borrowed a baler from a friend...it promptly broke down while my husband was using it. We are told that the part is probably going to be very expensive. Since that happened I made sure to call our friends and let them know why they would not be able to call my husband and give them an alternate phone number to reach him.

My friend says to me what are you going to do now? I say...When God closes one door he opens a window. Her reply...Where's the window?

Actually I laugh at this point because I don't know where the window is. I know that no matter what happens...if we lose the farm, horses, cows, house, whatever...we will still have each other.

Have You Ever Said This...?

Have you ever said...No More Animals In The House!?

I must have said this time and time again...so what happens? I start looking for a small dog for my mom. I don't particularly care for small dogs. They seem to be more difficult to train and keep on track (just my opinion).

No problem finding a dog for my mom right! Well, there was this fenced area in the yard with 3 puppies...I asked what was up with them and the owner said; those puppies were from her friend who thought she could breed and sell them. It turns out she is not a good breeder and didn't have the puppies advertised or sold. The puppies were then dropped off with her and she was trying to sell two of them, but the third one was larger than the standard for the breed. Hmmm, which one do you think I was holding? Yep, the one that was too large. Of course I had to ask what she was doing with him! Her response was IF she could find the right home for him, she would just give him up.

She is what I would call the ideal breeder...all the bitches were living in the house and the studs had plenty of room in custom built kennels that were clean. All the puppies were whelped in the house and cared for in the house with separate pens for outdoor play. Her requirements for people are that the don't get to go home with a puppy on the first visit and you don't have to call before you show up. I like that you can see they keep the kennels in pristine condition at all times. If you have to have an appointment, they probably cleaned just before you got there. This particular breeder also showed that she was responsible by taking in the puppies that her friend had bred. Her friend had purchased one of the breeders females and bred it to one of her studs. Thus the resulting litter that ended up with this breeder.

Any way, as I held this young pup I wondered how he would fare with my Koda. Knowing my retriever had been missing Snickers (he passed about a year ago), I thought maybe since Koda is still young he might like someone else to play with. I checked with the breeder to see how she felt about living on a farm...the Humane Society frowns on me. She said it would be fine if she could speak with my vet. I gave her my vet clinic and she was excited as it is the same clinic as hers.

Time to get on with this story...I took Kenai home. For those of you without children...Koda and Kenai are the main characters of "Brother Bear". By the way, mom did not get a dog.

I should mention...Kenai is a King Charles Cavalier (most people think he is some sort of Cocker Spaniel).

Nothing against the Humane Society; I understand that they need to be careful about who they let adopt from them, but not all farm owners keep their animals outside.

Kenai and Koda spend 95% of their lives in the house...winter is too cold and summer is too hot, they like the temperature controlled house AND sleeping in bed with us.

That means we have 2 dogs and 2 cats in the house full time and whatever stray cats show up in the barn get to stay and get fed.

I had been looking for a home for my indoor cats for a while...no one wants to help me clean the litter box, the hair is out of control and Kenai loves to torture them...which means that Koda has learned from the young one to play "chase the kitty". My daughter's boyfriend's mother (what a mouthful) was looking for a smaller pet for her youngest child. Teach him responsibility (supervised of course) and give him something to cuddle of his own. She loved the fact that the cats were used to staying indoors, were "taken care of" and trained. Tada! They had a new home.

Now, down to the two dogs, right? Nope! I seemed to forget that every spring/summer there are many babies that seem to need us.

If you look very closely, there is a towel with a tiny kitten head sticking out.

This poor kitty's leg looked like Swiss cheese. It finally let us pick it up about a week after I noticed it was injured. We have 2 barns...the milking barn and the horse barn. The horse barn has all very friendly cats and the milking barn has all feral cats. This kitten learned to be scared of humans from its mother. They day we caught him the vet happened to be on the property. While examining the kitten my daughter asked the vet what the "white" thing was. The vet grabbed a tweezers and pulled out a long white worm. Poor kitty! Needless to say we had a new "pet" for the house.

Sadly, the kitten only made it with us for 3 days.

We are sorry he didn't make it, but I am certain we will have other visitors from time to time. I guess I should never say "never". So the house has too many hairballs and never seems clean, I guess it is best to count my blessings and be happy we have the ability to help those in need.

Firemans Picnic and Parade

Reedsville, Wisconsin - Fireman's Parade June 28,2009

Every year the Reedsville firemen put on a fundraiser - Picnic and Parade. This year my 16 year old daughter was supposed to be in the parade with her 4-H group (Taus Livewires). It turns out the parade was the same day her dad had tickets to the Brewer's game. So she was unable to attend.

We volunteered our newly renovated tractor to pull the float for the group and placed my youngest child on the float in place of her sister.

The tractor is special to us because it belonged to Todd's (my husband) Grandfather. We had to have it overhauled and then painted it. We think it looks Great!

Here is Bryanna (my youngest) on the tractor...

We had a good time at the picnic too. There was food, drinks, games, and a petting zoo complete with pony rides!

We had loads of fun and hope that our fire department made enough money to keep them going another year!

Time Off; A Refreshing Twist

After many weeks of working I have finally taken a couple of days off in a row. My husband and I joined our friends (John and Rose Ebert) on a Brewer Game outing.

I have only been to a professional baseball game once before. It was with my husband, who wasn't feeling well that day...so we arrived early and left early. I think I saw a total of two innings.

The Ebert's know how to do things right...we tailgated, we stayed for the whole game AND the Brewer's won!

I spent quite a bit of time showing my friends that I know nothing about baseball...things like: Fielder; is that left fielder, right fielder or center fielder? Braun; it that like Braun Electric (we use them for our farm)? Not too impressive for my friends!

Another thing I learned is, that there are pom girls at the baseball games...never knew that before. There were a few in the crowd and 2 in Bernie's Dugout (I didn't snap a shot of them, sorry).

I just know that it was very refreshing to have some time off and I truly enjoyed spending time with good friends. God Bless and have a great weekend!

Stress, Stress and Heat Stress?

With all the stresses of dairy farming...milk price, feed price, illnesses, breeding, cleaning, labor, and inspections. There are many more, but I am certain you get my point. Now, there is heat stress.


You see, happy cows are comfortable, well fed cows. Happy cows are the ones that make milk (it's true and not just a commercial). So what is my problem? The heat index has been over 100 for the last two days. Since we raise Holsteins, most of my cows are black and white. The more black they have the hotter they are.


The problem is I can't afford an air conditioned barn, keeping the cows in just makes them hotter as they emit large amounts of heat, keeping them outside gives them the opportunity to catch a breeze and some shade. A breeze would be nice for them right? Well it would be, IF, they didn't bunch up like this...





There were 3 groups like this all on the concrete, giving each other a ton of heat, foaming at the mouth and panting like dogs.



This is a huge problem because as they are foaming and drooling they are becoming dehydrated. Milk is primarily water and if they become dehydrated it depletes the amount of milk they produce. We keep our water tanks full with "floats". As the cows drink the water the float refills the tank until the tank is full and then quits until the water is depleted below the float line again.


Most of our cows have been "shown" at some point in their life so they know all about water and getting washed. A couple of years ago when we had some sweltering weather, I decided to put a sprinkler on the wood part of the fence. Of course I attached it with twine...that and duct tape keep the farm running you know. :) After a few days the cows decided to pull the sprinkler from the wall and that was the end of that.


This year I decided that I would try to find a tripod system like the commercial landscapers use. Fleet Farm just happened to have 3 kinds to choose from. My fence is 5 feet high so I decided on the tripod that extends to 6 feet and "mists" up to 1900 feet. Here is a picture of my new "cow sprinkling" system.

The one thing I miss using this system as opposed to the cheap up and over sprinkler is that I can not stop the water from going 360 degrees. I would love to set it at 180 degrees and keep the water just going into the cow yard.


While my cows seem to enjoy the shower, my horses do not appreciate such things. Most of the time they don't even care for the fan I have in their shelter. The nice thing about my horses is that they do enjoy going to the wash rack, having a nice bath and munching on my lawn while they dry. It also helps that I only have 6 horses; not like trying to hose off an entire herd of cows.


I hope all of you have a GREAT summer and find creative ways to keep our creature friends cool and happy!

Cancer Affects Us All

These pictures are from the 2007 Wisconsin State Fair...both of my daughters are sitting with Miracle...the calf from "the first walk" picture.

In January of this year (2009), Miracle gave birth to a heifer calf. From the time she gave birth she just didn't seem right. She lost weight, she seemed depressed but kept a great disposition.

The veterinarian came out repeatedly for a couple of months, then over Labor Day Weekend, her brisket started to swell.

Swelling in the brisket is not a good sign but could be several different things. She was treated for hardware, a throat infection and indigestion. Eventually, the vet said she didn't have long to live.

We don't like to lose an animal and definitely to like them put down on the farm. We kept her for a few more days and the swelling started to present itself in her legs. My husband and I made the decision to take her to a farm that will use her meat to feed other animals (a mink/fox farm). They scheduled putting her down with when our vet could be there to do a necropsy. The necropsy found she had a very aggressive cancer.

We made the right decision to put her down and end her misery as there was no cure for her cancer. This cancer affected our entire family as we all loved her and miss her terribly.