Monthly Barn Report: October

Monthly Barn Report: October starts with very good news as our electrical plan was approved by the power company! Wasting no time we dug the trench that day and got the conduit laid and wire ran. That was such a relief. Still no power, but very nice to finally be moving forward with the process! The rain showed up right after our trench inspection on October 4th. So while it was perfect it was dry for getting it dug and the lines laid it was going to be a mess filling back in. I just got used to mud covered floors from this point out!    The rain did have perfect timing for pouring the tank foundation on October 3rd though. It held off till after the pour was completed that morning and meant we didn’t have to add more water after the first fill to make sure it cured correctly. It was fascinating to watch the huge crane pumper truck work. It was a bit of a frustrating morning for the tank crew as the concrete company was having issues and couldn’t keep up. Luckily the weather was cool and it wasn’t an issue in the long run, but it’s never fun to have that stress.  DeLaval was still making progress with the noticeable gating around the robots. October 4th their entire crew was here to install the JOZ feed pusher. With the help of the lead JOZ installer from The Netherlanders they learned how to install  from start to finish. Being a new product for our DeLaval dealer it was great to have the help from lead JOZ installer. The feed pusher is pretty much a giant rumba that travels the barn keeping the keep pushed up in front of the cows. Pictures don’t do it justice, you can check out a link here. Construction on the robot rooms really started coming together by October 11th. The white plastic and windows went up by the 15th making it feel like we really might milk cows in here some day! The raceway was completed and somehow I got suckered into helping paint it. It had it get done before they started laying pipes the next week. Let me just say I’m not a fan of heights! So if you ever visit make sure you notice the raceway. Actually on second thought, don’t, it really was not an easy job and we didn’t do that good! 😉 There was a great view from on the top of the robots rooms and from the lift, I will say that. Notice all the mud in the background of the picture? Once the rain started in October, it didn’t stop. In fact by the end of the month we had set rainfall records with 11.19″ and 26 days of recordable rainfall. To say the whole site was a muddy mess would be a complete understatement. Progress continued to happen throughout the barn in October, but a lot of it was items you couldn’t really see happening. The things you could see were fun to watch come together. And it was a good feeling to see so many crews hard at works.  We end October on a very lucky note as a tree came down just feet from the wall forms for the manure tank. While the wet made quite a mess, we were counting our blessings and dancing in the downpours! With the Monthly Barn Report: October and the inevitable rain, although we weren’t expecting that much. It was hard to shut the cows in from pasture in their old barn when we had so been hoping to be ready in the new robotic barn. That was a hard one for us to swallow and rather disappointing. Not that there is anything wrong with our current facility, but knowing the new barn is just there waiting. With every thought to each way we can improve cow comfort for our Ladies. It would have felt much better to meet our perfect deadline. Deep breath and keep moving on into November.