Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday – Dairy Aerial

A few years ago a good friend took me flying and I forgot the aerial pictures I took were on my phone here is a  view from the south.

A southern view of our Central California Dairy Farm.

Not Red Dawn, Red Dusk

Beautiful red sunset here in CA's central valley last night

Lazy Summer Morning

Here is a cow picture for Wordless Wednesday.

A few of our cows enjoying the cool morning before a hot summer day here in Central California.

These cows were just moved into this pasture yesterday and are relaxing in the grass. With all the late rains we had here in the Central Valley and now the heat the grass is growing very quickly in the pasture. these cows need to get up and get to work eating it down!

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Related articles

• Cows play in sprinklers? Wordless Wednesday (raylindairy.wordpress.com)

Cows play in sprinklers? Wordless Wednesday

Today I’m doing maintenance work on one of the major pieces in our cow comfort system the soakers that help keep the cows cool during the summer.

Here is a picture of the cows enjoying the cool shower just like kids playing in the sprinkler do during the summer.

Cows being cooled by the soaker system.

The soakers come turn on to soak the cows and then are off for a period of time to allow the water to evaporate and creating evaporative cooling. This type of cooling is the same cooling feeling you get right after getting out of a swimming pool on a hot day. We locate the soakers over the cows food so they are more comfortable while eating and their food intake stay’s up during hot days when they need the energy.

This little box is a great help to keep cows comfortable

This controller uses the temperature at the cow level to adjust the on and off times so the  optimum cooling of the cows is maintained.

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Making Cow Food

A few weeks ago we harvested our winter small grain crop to make it into a fermented cow food called silage. Here are a few pictures of the process.

This is what the crop looks like before harvesting.

This machine is a Windrower it cuts the crop and gathers it into rows to be chopped up by another machine

This machine is a Forage Chopper it picks the rows up and cuts it into approximately inch long pieces then blows it into the truck.

the trucks then back into this machine that packs the pieces of the crop into long plastic tubes.

The crop then ferments inside these airtight tubes and within a few weeks it is cow food.

For more about some of the other things we feed our cows read What Do Cows Eat?

Dairy farm with a view? – Wordless Wednesday

Our dairy is located to the west of Yosemite National Park in California’s Central Valley and on extremely clear days we get a great view of Half Dome that you can see in this picture.

Half Dome in Yosemite as seen from my families dairy farm

For a few more pictures of our family farm visit Pinke Post and why she would rather visit our farm than watch Oprah go Vegan for a Week.

Cow games – Follow the leader – Wordless Wednesday

Here you can see how much our cows love to walk on the rubber mats that we have for them.

Taking requests

Wordless Wednesday is a blog concept where a picture is posted and words are not the focus of the posting. We have decided to join in on the WW fun and started last week with “Can I get a hand for an itch?”.

Do you have a picture you would like to see?

For this week and weeks to come please send in you requests for various piuctures from around the dairy and we will do our best to post them. If you have a request just leave a comment to this post.

Can I get a hand for an itch?

My neck itches, can you offer a scratch?

Here is a post perfect for Wordless Wednesday because no words were used to get a helping hand.