When we move calves into pens with headlocks, sometimes they are hesitant to use them. We started to hook their old grain buckets on the headlocks to encourage them to eat. We also took

We made these reels to wind up our polywire after we are done grazing our cows. They are made out of old shovel handles, small bucket lids, 18-inch ready rod, and locking nuts and washers. With

With a lot of calves and a lot of different calf feeders, it can be hard for everyone to keep track of what’s going on with each hutch. When a calf is sick, we wrap a few pieces of bright yellow...

Eye protection is important, especially when straw dust is involved. To make sure there are always safety glasses accessible, we took a refrigerator magnet clip and put it on our straw chopper

With lots of loose straw chaff to chop up for bedding but not a good way to transport it from the hay barn to the straw chopper, we created a funnel that fits perfectly. Using plastic bo

Moving the gutter grates behind cows in a stanchion barn can be hard on your back and messy work. To eliminate this, we welded together some leftover pipe to create hooks. These hooks fit easily

I quit buying the heavy-duty $300 bale rings because the skirts came off in one year. I started buying the $150 economy feeders without skirts

Calves don’t always finish drinking the water we give them. This means their water has to be collected and discarded before milk can be fed. We took a broken lawn mower, removed the eng

We always need a fork or shovel nearby to clean feed bunks or put hay in front of the cows, so we came up with this idea. It’s just a PVC pipe screwed onto the fence, and we slip the fork right into

I do a lot of maintenance around the farm and some of it requires PVC pipe repair. To keep the PVC primer and glue together, since they are both used at the same time, I took duct tape and taped both

Jumping onto the bed of my pickup truck to get a different hitch, chain, or whatever I might have on there gets harder as I get older. To make that easier and prevent me from having to climb up, I mad

When a newborn calf is moved into its individual pen in the calf barn at Endres Jazzy Jerseys, it is not ear tagged immediately. In order to keep calves correctly identified at the Lodi, Wis., farm, a

At Migliazzo and Sons Dairy of Atwater, Calif., milking towels are kept close by in these handy towel holders. The farm took 3-1/2-gallon plastic pails and cut a hole out of the bottom. Clean towels a

After having valuable saleable milk poured down the drain due to a simple error of not paying attention to overflowing bulk tanks, we decided to go back to the basics. We recalled the game “red ligh

At Cook Dairy in Pewamo, Mich., calves on pasture are fed grain using a homemade feeder. The feeder was constructed by slicing plastic barrels in half and securing them with a bolt. The feeder can be

Goma Dairy in Marlette, Mich., found that storing and freezing colostrum in plastic bags leads to a faster defrosting period

Wallman Dairy asked builders to pour the curbs with a curved top, rather than a flat one, so that feed and moisture will roll off of the curbs rather than settle on top of it

We bought this shelving unit from Sam’s Club that had bins of varying sizes. I labeled and organized all the boxes according to what they would be holding

I wanted to make our pressure washer more portable, so I put it on a wagon and added a 55-gallon drum and hose reel. I drilled a hole 2 inches from the bottom of the drum and installed a bulkhead fitt

Adding these welding strips of metal grating onto our skid loader attachments greatly improved traction and reduced the risk of falls