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Going mobile …

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Another exciting day on the farm be it that it lasted almost 12hours. Even the weather turned out nice with rain postponed to (all day) tomorrow. By now the routines have really kicked in and communication in russian is at least sufficient to get the job done. Finally we got our vehicle assigned – a chevrolet niva.
We kicked off the morning by judging the level of pushout in the barns. Cows are picky and try to eat only the seedy & mineral parts of the silage. Like cherrypicking. The remainder is then pushed into the middle and is pretty much waste. The better the silage is mixed in the first place, the fewer will will rejected. Farm economics 1+1 i guess.

We verified the mix through shaker box tests later on. As you would expect, the %-age share of larger silage components increase in a before and after comparison. New silage looked better than yesterday and dry matter readings were decent at 26%.

By 11am we had the keys for our vehicle. Not the fanciest car on earth, but fit for purpose. Really helps to cut down the endless farm walking tours and helped me to quickly pop home to pick up some chocolate that i would have dearly missed later in the day.

Afternoon was reserved for ketosis check-ups and the usual walk around the barns. Few injuries we noted, mainly business as usual. IT issues slowed us down a bit though (IT delivers FAt-Protein estimates per cow/milking session). Blood tests have to wait for tomorrow, as the vet was out on the cow show. Out two models hit the full house. No1 & no2 in the regional contest. Well done ladies. Expected no less!

Modifications of the cow carrousel: An Israeli engineer arrived in hadely’s car (a slightly upgraded and germanised Niva version) to fix the ID-ing of the cows during milking. So far the system gets 90%+ right. Should be 99%+ and hopefully we’ll get there by next week. The company (AFI) sent their best man. Interesting guy. We had dinner together and for the coming few days i’ll shuttle hin from/to the farm.

Good spin on the fields: harvesting today was subpar. The chief agri guy said the combine malfunctioned and so we missed a good weather day. On our last check in the evening re progress we enjoyed a really good spin around the field. Simole car the Niva, but fun.

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