Last calm days before the calving chaos begins.

Good afternoon everyone, welcome back to our channel. Sorry it's been a while since we last uploaded and it's been raining every single day for the last like two weeks plus I've been pretty sick but the sun's out today I'm feeling much better so why not make a video. It is about two o'clock. These cows have been on grass since eight o'clock. I don't think I'll have to take them off until like five o'clock which is great. You can see how relaxed Marshmallow is. Such a pretty girl. We still have only had one cow calve however there is a couple that look close so I will show you them. I'm just hanging out with the cows now checking for any health problems and yeah now that it's getting closer to Will is busy finishing off the calf shed this week so we will make sure we either show you progress on this video or the next one. It is so nice to see the cows so happy and relaxed. They're back on the dairy platform now. The standoffs here are so dry compared to the ones the runoff so it's so nice they don't have to go in mud and it will continue to stay that way without the rain. My cows told me it was illegal if I didn't stop and pet them while I was in the paddock. There's Nutmeg, Toffee Apple, then we've got Cinnamon and Peanut Butter here but they are not as friendly so I won't annoy them. So Carrot Cake is actually the first of mine and Will's cows due. She's due on the 7th of August in just 21 days. Let's have a look at her udder. She's just a heifer so she's never calved before. Getting a nice little udder on her. Can you move your leg? Can't really see properly. Good girl. So the farm owner's heifers are actually due to start calving on the 1st of August. They put the bulls out with the heifers a week before they started AI with the cows and there is actually a few heifers that look very close to calving so I will try to find them for you. Here's one of them here, this sweet little Jersey heifer. She's actually my favorite heifer out of all the farm owner's heifers. She's hanging out with Popcorn. Fun fact, Popcorn and 221 are actually both Procellaris granddaughters. Anyways, look how big her udder is. She looks so uncomfortable. I'm guessing she'll calve in the next week. I have walked around the paddock twice and cannot find the other heifer that's close to calving. I swear she's in there. I seen her walk in the paddock this morning but yeah she's even closer than 221 to calving. Look what I just spotted out on the wrong side of the fence. Brown sugar. That is so naughty. Yeah just kidding brown sugar's never naughty. She's in here as I had her up at the cowshed giving her a pedicure. Her hooves were really long and overgrown so I trimmed them all for her. Hopefully she's feeling better. She's actually starting to spring up quite a bit. It's because she hasn't calved in three years and when they've had a big break like that they udder up a bit more like heifers. Yeah she's not due until the 22nd of August. She's got a couple mates in here that were lame but I've looked at their feet and they're all better now so the three of them will be back with the herd tomorrow. I am with the calves now. Well I guess they're yearlings considering they're nearly a year old and 2025 calves are about to be born. I was checking to see if they need standing off yet and they don't but we may as well say hi to the pets. So this girl here is Millie. She is Marshmallow's granddaughter. I'm sure you can see the resemblance. Got Gravy behind me as well. She's Popcorn's daughter. It's one of our girls Domino. We have 23 yearlings in here and then three carryovers as well. All ours have pretty pink name tags like Betty there. So we stand the animals off at night on a nice stony area just to prevent them plugging up the paddocks. So the calves have straw on their standoff and the cows get silage. Guess what time it is now? Milking time! Hold up the cows aren't even here. Let me just... Magic! Now let's milk her. So the vacuum pump is working now so we can milk her through these cups. The milk goes into a test bucket. So her milk goes through these cups down this tube and into the bucket. While she's milking I obviously have to film TikTok. Let's go. She's all finished milking so take the cups off and we can see how much milk she did. That's probably about 13 litres. Spray her teats with the iodine based teat spray so she doesn't get mastitis and then they are good to go. Number two is just her paddock mate who's been lame so she doesn't need to do anything. As you know calving is approaching so I'm getting little jobs done to prepare for that. One of them being making up these little collars to put on the calves. So when a calf's born put this around their neck just like that and then say carrot cake had me. You'd and then yeah cows and calves won't get mixed up. It can be pretty confusing to identify what cows had what calves so yeah these really will help out. I thought I would show you guys one of the calf sheds. So this is right near the cow shed. This is where the calves will come when they're first born. Will was busy last weekend putting fresh sand in it. It is crazy that yeah in just a couple weeks there will be calves in here. So as you can see I am sitting on these big 200 litre drums. This one contains acid and this one contains teat spray. They are things we have to supply as contract milkers. I would just like to say thank you to West Coast Young Farmers for selling us these at such a good price. It really helps out when we're just getting started in the industry. These are very expensive to buy retail so we saved a bit of money which is great. Here's a better look at the drums. So that's acid for cleaning the vat and plant and the teat spray. Spray the cow's teats after you're re-milking so they don't get mastitis. Now let's go and see if the cows need taking off grass and we will give them some ice cream jelly tip the best flavour out. Just kidding it is not ice cream it is magnesium chloride that goes in their water trough. So we start giving cows magnesium about two to three weeks before they are due to calve. Cows can't store magnesium but it is very important like they need magnesium. If they are lacking magnesium they can get what we call grass staggers which yeah can be deadly and then also to absorb calcium the cows need magnesium. So to prevent them getting milk fever we've got to give them magnesium. It's all a little bit confusing for me to explain but yeah giving them magnesium will stop them getting a metabolic problem so we've got healthy cows at calving time. These cows have a whole load of silage to eat on the standoff so they'll be super happy. It has been so nice to have a whole day without rain like you can just instantly see in the cows that they're happier which is exactly what we want leading up to calving. Happy cows happy Chloe. Anyways my work day's pretty much done. I will lock these guys in give them their magnesium stand off the calves when they need it plus do a couple of fences and then I've got to go to the supermarket and get some cream as I'm making butter chicken for dinner yum yum yum. Anyways I hope you enjoy this video and the next one there might be some calves. Bye guys you can go now bye bye bye