Last evening my husband treated me to a nice Chinese buffet at The Hilltop, our local pub and we each had a large beer. The place was jam packed as it always is on a Friday night. They usually have a Happy Hour between 5 and 6 pm and you can buy a pitcher of beer cheaper during that hour but the Happy Hour was over when we got there. Luckily I had blog earlier than usual for no reason at all.
Today the hoof trimmer came back to finish trimming hooves and I watched for a short time as he did his job with great efficiently. He backed up his truck and trailer in the back shelter and set up his contraption ( I don't know what he calls it and I was not about to ask him). The area was scraped clean and my husband spread some fine saw dust on the ground in case some feet bled a bit if they have some wounds or abscess or something. Very quickly he opened the back gate of his contraption and arranged the large leather supporting straps with chains and the first cow walked in, he closes the back gate and pressed a button and the cow is hoist off her feet and the side where she leans against becomes a flat bed and she is turned on her side and he takes his electric rotating rasp tool that looks like a rotary grinder and in a couple of minutes he's done shaving a layer off the hooves. He take another tool to clip a little more. Depending on the condition of their hooves or if they have an injury or other foot problems, he wraps the feet. He trimmed 67 cows and off that number he wrapped 15. This is done twice a year and our cows have a very good record of healthy feet. Very important when ones weigh 1200 pounds and over.
I managed of putting a little time cleaning the shed this afternoon but had visitors and then had to get back to work at the farm. This job is taking me a little longer than I thought it would but most of my son's stuff that he had in storage is at his house. There are still some stuff that I can't lift by myself and will need to get some help with it.
I did some more laundry and even though the sun was shining and there was a nice breeze, I didn't had enough time to hang my cloths outside. I also managed to hook about 20 minutes after supper. And since I had a request to show my progress, here it is.
I need to fix the left skate. So far I haven't needed to dye any wool for this project but my white and blue dyed wool is in limited supply.
Have a great weekend and thanks for reading my blog. JB
