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Meet Our Herd: Piper

1/27/2017

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If you have been following us on Facebook or Instagram,  you have probably seen photos of a cute little black and white cattle dog named Piper. Despite being a dog, Piper is still very much a part of our ‘herd.’ Piper is a ‘working dog in training.’ She is chock full of energy and wants to be helpful.

All of that energy is hard to channel though and when we don’t have enough work for Piper to do, her extra energy and inherent curiosity can really get her in trouble!

​I tend to be pretty hard on Piper, but as I am writing this, NP is gone on a business trip (he will be back before it is published) and I have to admit that Piper is kinda nice to have around …
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She has been my ‘gate watcher’ & ‘steer-keeper-out-of-the-wayer’ and just plain companion as I wrestle hay bales, buckets of grain, and fresh bedding through gates and across pastures. NP’s patience and the time he has put into training Piper is really starting to pay off. It is nice to know that I can set Piper at an open gate and tell her to ‘watch it’ and not have to worry about the cattle getting out while I make multiple trips in and out with hay bales or wheel barrows full of bedding. She is also good at pushing the cattle back to give me space to work in the pasture. The cattle are a curious bunch and like to investigate anything and everything that is happening in the pasture which can make it hard to get a task accomplished! Piper particularly loves this ‘steer-keeper-out-of-the-wayer’ task! She can be a bit over zealous though and the next step in training is to reign in and channel her enthusiasm! Part of the problem is that she doesn’t get to do this task nearly often enough. This is compounded by the fact that the steers learn in pretty short order to back off when Piper shows up!

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NP and Piper 'horsing around' on the hay pile :)
Piper keeping the steers out of the way as NP works on the waterer
#workingdoglessons
**click on each picture above to see the full image**
Come this Spring though, we will begin a more intensive rotational grazing program with the cattle and Piper will have more opportunities to ‘round up’ the herd and move them from pasture to pasture. I think Piper will really enjoy this job!

Piper also provides us with a great source of entertainment. She has really been enjoying this snow! When you watch her go bounding and jumping through it - you can see how much fun she is having! In the warmer months, she loves to play in the water. She also enjoys ‘herding’ chickens. Bear in mind, she would much rather be eating them but so long as we are around, she knows she mustn't! So, she contents herself with attempts at herding them and it is quite the show!

Piper is a young dog and I expect she will be with us for many years to come. Keep on following along here and on FB to see what she learns and how she continues to help us out on the farm!
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Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

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To learn about more of our herd, check out the “Meet Our Herd” posts on our blog index!


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Abby had Twins!

1/26/2017

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If you've been following us on Facebook, you know that we have been preparing for our milk cow, Abby, to calve. What we weren't expecting was that Abby would have TWO calves! And both heifers at that! Talk about growing the herd ;)
Abby licking her calves clean after giving birth
Warm & Dry!
Abby had her calves early Wednesday morning during the snowstorm that we had. It is common for cows to calve during inclement weather - I've heard it's due to the atmospheric pressure changes but who knows for sure? Abby did a great job of cleaning her calves off and I helped her finish the drying process. Luckily, Abby did decide to have her calves in the shelter of the nicely bedded shed we provided her instead of the muddy pasture!!
After moving the calves safely to the side, I milked Abby to harvest the life giving colostrum. We then fed the calves each an overflowing half gallon of the liquid gold (read more about colostrum here) and moved them to the hutches that will be their homes for the next 2 months. Once the calves were good and dry we also put blankets on them. Between the blankets and the deep straw bedding in the hutches they should stay cozy and warm! You can read about why we use calf hutches here. I was thankful to have my dad on hand to help feed, bed, and move the calves! Between the snow and being pregnant, it would have been challenging to do by myself!
Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm
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Meet Our Herd: Lily

1/13/2017

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Isn't she cute?! Like I mention in the blog, Lily doesn't have a number yet. The orange tag in her ear in this picture was to help keep flies away during the Summer.
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In my blog post Numbers Vs. Names, I explained why all of our cows get numbers for names. Lily is the exception. Lily is over a year old and does not have a number yet.

Why?
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Laziness.

For whatever reason, we opted not to tag Lily when she was born. To be honest, I dont think we had the proper tagger at the time and since she was the only heifer without a tag we didn’t worry about it. Luckily, Lily has not (yet) befallen any of the terrible things that I tend to believe will happen to animals with names. We have since acquired the appropriate tagger and Lily will soon be getting an eartag with a number to go with her name!

Lily got her name because she was due to be born on my birthday. She was a couple of days late but NP still dubbed her Lil-E which morphed into Lily.


The other unique thing about Lily is that she is 26147 (Abby)’s 3rd calf. And the 2nd heifer born at Brun Ko Farm. Lily is 15 months old and was featured in a FB post last week when I bred her following a dance NP and I attended. You can read more about breeding cows in this post). We will be watching Lily closely here this next week to get a feel for whether or not she ‘settled’ or got pregnant at that breeding. If she didn’t settle, Lily will show signs of heat and we will breed her again. If we don’t see signs of heat then we will wait a few more weeks and then check to see if she is pregnant. Fingers crossed for good news!


Lily spends most of her time with our older steer group as she is close in age to them. I imagine she experiences all of the same things as a girl with more brothers than sisters! She falls right in the middle of the command chain and certainly knows how to look after herself. She isn’t the boss of the group but she doesn’t let the boys get the best of her either! She is not nearly as friendly as her half sister 26160 was but she is getting used to being handled by NP and I.



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Lily "Ma! No pictures while I'm eating!" All of our cattle get a grain/protein mix and all the hay they can eat in the winter. In the summer they get a smaller portion of grain and 24 hour access to pasture.
Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

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Preparing the Bees for Winter

1/3/2017

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This picture is from Spring when we first got the hive but it shows NP giving the bees protein patties and the chicken waterer to the right holds the sugar water. In the winter, NP uses either just plain sugar or a candied version instead of sugar water.
Soon after honey harvest, NP started preparing the bees for winter. Honey bees are not native to Iowa and our cold winters can be tough! Luckily honey bees adapt well and they do some of their own winter prep work too! Bees prep for winter by kicking out the drones, aka the male bees. The drones serve no other purpose than to fertilize the queen and so rather than feed the extra mouths through the winter, the workers bees kick the boys out! Bees are also really good at self regulating the temperature inside the hive. In the winter they keep the hive between 93 & 96 degrees Fahrenheit. They do this by forming a cluster and flapping their wings and shivering.  Because bees need to stay warm it is also important to not open the hive on cold days! NP uses a guideline of 50 degrees F or warmer.
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Although bees are pretty good at taking care of themselves, honey bees are not native to Iowa and they need some help from us humans. We leave a good amount of honey with the bees as this is their food for the winter. However, NP also supplements the honey supply with sugar and protein patties. He also put a mouse guard in the opening of the hive. A mouse guard reduces the size of the hive opening so that mice can’t get through it. Mice are always looking for a warm place in the winter and what better place than a protected hive full of yummy honey?!  Bees can actually kill mice but they really need to conserve energy through the winter months so a mouse guard really helps!

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The thin wooden strip underneath the white hive box is the mouse guard.
Close up of the mouse guard showing the tiny hole that the bees use to enter/exit
This tiny hole is at the top of the hive and acts both as an exit/entry for the bees and as a vent for excess moisture.
NP supplements the bees with sugar over the winter. The top box with cedar chips is for ventilation/moisture control.
NP tied thin insulation to 3 sides of the hive to provide extra protection from the cold
In this location, the trees and buildings protect the hive from the winter winds!
Remember all of that heat the bees generate by wriggling their bodies? Well, all that work also creates a lot of moisture inside of the hive. This can be a real problem if the moisture can’t escape. Beekeepers have several methods of helping the bees with this problem. NP and a neighboring beekeeper got together this fall and they constructed moisture control/ventilation boxes. These boxes have a screen on the bottom and are filled with cedar wood chips. The wood chips absorb the moisture from the hive and the moisture then escapes through holes drilled into the side of the box.

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The screen on the bottom of the box allows the moisture to move from the hive into the cedar chips.
The boys showing off their hard work!
Enjoy!
Brun Ko Farm

If you liked this blog - check out our previous post about honey harvest!
www.brunkofarm.weebly.com/blog/honey
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    Emily Paulsen

    Just a woman with a passion for the animals, the land, and feeding people!

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