Well Rancho De'Hadley has been really busy the last few weeks. I will try to bring everyone up to speed.
We bought 20 cows from M y M ranch last week and have been very very busy trying to get everything ready to start milking. The ranch we visited was a real big professional operation, using a pass though machine milking studio, a feed lot feeding system, artificial insemination, etc. The owner and employees were very nice people, and will visit us tomorrow to see how we are doing.. One of the cows had a a beautiful female calf yesterday, and we are expecting another tomorrow.
We begain construction last week and the milking parlor is almost finished along with the feed lot. We started on the feed storage room today. I also have a herd of workers planting new grass for the cows on the property too. In the mean time we are trying to keep all the animals fed and healthy (no small task).
We are calling all over looking for the right motor for the grass chopper (not grasshopper, those are much smaller). Down here they grow a type of grass that grows 10 or 12 feet high. It is cut and hauled daily to the chopper, and then feed to the animals. The grass field we rented is 3 km away over a rough road so we bought a horse (Mr Ed, no I havent heard him talk yet) and a mule (Bonehead, when you meet him you will understand the name). This frees me up from a 20 minute drive and wrecking the truck driving for grass every day. Instead I have a full time guy who rides over, cuts grass, hauls it back, all day long. A cheap labor pool really changes the economic dynamics here. It is far cheaper for me to hire a full time guy, and buy a horse and a mule than it is for me to drive it myself with a truck.
well I am having the time of my life and I have about 20 more things to do when all these are done. I will try to keep you all posted.