Icicles

Today was herd health.  The vet came (an hour and a half late!) today but lucky our list was a fairly short one.   We finished with the milk cows doing pregnancy checks and cycle checks then travelled over to the Heifer barn at my FIL's.

Pen 5... the young heifers who are old enough and are ready to be bred... After we check the heifers in this group we swing the gate and let the pregnant ones out to roam with the general population. Then swing the gate back, round up a few heifers from the general population that are old enough and close to coming into heat and put them into Pen 5 until they become pregnant.

It has been very, very cold and this particular barn always seems colder than any of our other barns.  We have an overhead water line that has a slight leak and in this cold weather it has created quite the ice sculpture!  It has froze all around the gate and its hinges so we can't open the gate.

Here is a close up

and even closer

Karl tried to take a hammer to it and break it loose but other than upsetting the heifer standing next to the ice sculpture post he didn't budge much. 

So instead, after my suggestion, he unlocked the gate at the other end and slowly pushed and pulled on the gate. Soon we heard crunch! and big chunks fell to the ground.  He trimmed it off with the hammer and the gate was freed.

Not too far from it...  the overhead water line travels to the water trough.  It has a leak too and will overflow.  Its great this time of year cause then the line doesn't freeze but we get a lot of interesting icicle formations.  You have to watch your footing in the barn too or you will land on your butt!  It is a sloped floor and lucky it runs down the side where the average person and cow does not walk.

 They say its supposed to warm up and rain... so far we have seen ice rain but as of right now its still -3C (although they say it feels like -8C) and its nearly noon.  Apparently it is supposed to get up to 6C by the end of today.  Time will tell.