Small Dairy Big Results l The Importance of Hoof Care for Herd Health

Hello everyone and welcome to Gearock Farms. In today's video we are going to be trimming hooves here on the dairy farm. We have a professional hoof trimmer coming that we've been working with for the past decade now so he definitely knows what he's doing and he's going to help us today keep the herd happy and healthy. This is always a pretty eventful day here for us on the farm. It's a good sign that spring is right around the corner and I know that the dairy herd feels a lot better after a day like today. All the girls are going to be getting their pedicure today. It's going to be a good one. It's going to be exciting. We got to move a lot of cattle. It's going to be an interesting one today. So thank you all for watching. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get to work here with morning chores so that we're ready for the hoof trimmer when he shows up. All right so starting off here we're getting the skid steer staged and ready to go with the hitch attachment on it so that when the hoof trimmer shows up he can use this to stage his chute in our barn yard instead of trying to back his truck in there just right. And you know it's kind of a tight space in general this whole yard is so having this attachment will make it a lot easier for him to get that chute exactly where he wants it. So you can see dad sanded everything really nice here because this is kind of where we're going to be working. In years past we've always set the chute up in here and that's still kind of the plan I believe. That gives us kind of a softer area to work there. Got plenty of sand laid out. We'll have some line bags ready too if need be. This is kind of going to be the main area today when it comes to the hoof trimming process. And for those of you unfamiliar with hoof trimming, I think hoof trimming to a dairy farmer is very similar to like going to the chiropractor or the dentist for a human. It's not life-saving stuff but it also is in a real roundabout way, a real long-term way if you really think about it. We're just, it's one of those things where it can be very important you know taking care of yourself. Wearing a good pair of shoes can really prolong the life of your body and it's very similar with cows. So trimming their hooves giving them a good set of feet to walk on is very important. So I think that'd be a good way to explain the significance of trimming hooves. All right we're about halfway through milk and we'll get dad's opinion on the eventful day at hand here coming up. My opinion? Yeah, is the cows need to be trimmed. You know just like all of us need to be trimmed all the time. It's been a long winter. Winter set in pretty early this year as far as the snow and ice and I don't think these hooves are wearing down like they would typically when you got more bare ground and stuff like that. Yeah a lot of them getting long, a few warts, you know that's just something we cannot run away from. So and right now before the mud, the ice pack has kind of melted down a little bit around the barnyard. We had to sand some stuff up but we're just hoping that if we get through everything without making something worse. Yeah and looking at the extended forecast their hooves should be able to stay pretty clean. It looks like it's going to stay pretty dry. Yeah so that's a plus too. Right until we get the wraps off and whatever you know but yeah that just working in that and usually when it gets warmer the concrete gets wet and it gets slippery. We're using right now we're using sand and I think that's way better in line but you know everything to keep traction. Everything's about keeping these cattle healthy and I think they'll feel better you know about it too. So typically we've been doing it right before we put them on grass but this year we're going to get a Yeah I'll get them through the rest of the winter and then they'll be ready for spring. So all right let's focus on milking. We got eight units on so we're trying to zip through milking so we got plenty of time to cater to hoofing. All right we wrapped up with milking. I got the wash going right now. Dad and I are going to be working on that afternoon chores while assisting the hoof trimmer as well. He just got here. After I get done with this wash here we're going to go prioritize getting him all set up and ready to go so that the dairy cows can start rotating through there. Like dad was saying we're going to take our time and prioritize keeping the cows calm especially when you're doing anything new like this with cows. You know even if they did it a year ago it's still different from the day-to-day. You definitely want to prioritize keeping everybody calm and you don't want to get everybody stirred up and worried. So we're going to keep the radio on and you know try to keep everything as normal as possible. So let's get the wash finished and then go help set up. There you go we got one group done and through already. Second group's in the holding area right now. They're really buzzing through them. It'll be interesting to see how many wraps and things like that we end up having to go through or how many got blocked but we'll see once we get there. All right we're loading feed now. Things are going really smooth when it comes to hoof trimming. They probably got through 20 cows or so. They're really proficient at their job that's for sure. They're definitely done in a time or two. Anyways we're about done loading feed here and the hope is we get back up there before they're done with this group that they're on so we can help rotate another group in and keep that process flowing for them. It works really well to have all of us when it comes to moving another group into that front heifer lot for them. And once a group five or six are in there then they handle it from there. Things are going smooth can't complain. It's a good day for it too. All right we have all the milking cows done and now we've moved on to the dry cows. We did start feeding up here in the barn. We all started shaking out some bedding here too so I'm going to continue cleaning up in here and then we'll go help them guys move the last group here. Just like that they're on the last cow of the day. We've made some pretty good progress that's for sure. It's only two o'clock or so and we started in around 10 so not too bad not too bad. I'm going to get this load of manure spread here and then we'll hurry back here and help them clean the rig up. All right we got all the cows back in the barn. All the hoof trimming is done for the day. So the total tally was 54 cows they did today for us which is awesome. They're definitely professionals. They move through those cows pretty fast and timely but also did a quality job at the same time. We got a lot of chores done in between sort groups and bring them new groups of cattle to work on. Out of those 54 cows they had 10 cows that needed to be wrapped which means that they had something that needed to be treated you know like a warped or something like that and then he wrapped them and then there was two of them that needed a block. Out of 54 that's pretty good I think and that tells us that the herd hoof health is sitting in a really good spot. And then doing something like this today just ensures that we we keep that going and everyone was pretty cooperative when it came to the cows. I think it was a pretty relaxing day. I think it helps a lot that the weather changed here everything kind of warmed up and there isn't a lot of wind so everybody's pretty relaxed. Out of the 55 we wanted to do there was only one that didn't want to go for us but that's okay. If they're that vigorous where they're fighting you trying to you know as you're trying to move them there to the holding area their hooves are probably in some pretty decent shape anyways. Thank you all for watching. Thanks for tuning in. Remember like, share, comment, subscribe. Huge shout out to all of you who have subscribed. We hit 100,000. Super happy about that. We couldn't have done it without any of you so thank you for supporting us. Anyways that's gonna be it. We'll see you next time.