Dear Dairy Diary

Derek Fier
Parents: Kurt and Julie Fier
Taunton, Minnesota
14 years old

Editor’s note: Dairy Star is having dairy kids journal a day in their life on the farm.

Tuesday, Aug. 5

I woke up at 7 this morning to get ready to go to the barn. I ate breakfast with my family. I usually do chores with my younger brothers, Drew and Dane. We put our farm clothes on and then we went out to feed the heifers at our house. We have to feed the heifers before we go over to the main farm. When I got to the main farm, I put my boots on and got ready to push up the cows that didn’t go into the robot milker. We are in the process of changing and adding robot milkers, so some of the new cows do not know how to go through the robot area yet, so they need a little help. Then, once all the cows are done being milked, I opened up the gates back to the free stall area.

After we were done with the cows, I drove the Gator with my brothers to the other side of the farm to feed grain to the smaller calves that are out in the yard in hutches. I put a feed tub in the back of the Gator and filled it with grain for the calves. We have about 30 calves in the hutches right now. I took scoops of grain from the big feed tub as my brother, Drew, drove the Gator, and I made sure the grain pails were filled for each calf and checked to see which calves needed to have more bedding. We made sure to check if there are any calves who didn’t eat or drink or get up in the hutches. If there are any sick calves, we tell my dad so he can check on them.

Once the calf chores were done, we came back to the barn office, about lunchtime or maybe a little earlier. Most of the time, Uncle Kevin makes dinner. Today, he was on vacation, so we went home for lunch. After lunch, I came back to the farm and dumped milk buckets from the cows that didn’t go into the bulk tank. We use that milk for the calves in the hutches. Once we had enough milk, we went to feed the calves their milk. They all get a pail of milk each day, plus water. We filled water pails a little later when it was warmer out.

In the afternoon, we washed our Holstein heifers that are going to the fair this year. We have a barn for our show heifers. We led the heifers around to train them to lead properly. Then we fed them their grain and some hay because they need hay to build a good rib.

Then it was time to go get the cows again. At 3 or 3:30 p.m. we got the cows that aren’t trained to walk into the robotic milker pushed up to the gated area. There aren’t very many usually. We got them into the robot area, then opened the gates back up, and then went home to feed the heifers at my house again.

Since today is Tuesday, I was able to stay on the farm most of the day. We started to have weightlifting on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. We have a fall football camp that’s all week long during the fair, so I will be going from showing cows to playing football. We will practice every day throughout the school year, until about November, when we hope to go win that state championship again: 4-peat championship.

This summer I was on a Minnesota Storm wrestling team and we went to Utah the week before the Minnesota Holstein Association State Show. I went to Fargo two weeks ago to wrestle and that was a big national tournament. I went 1-2 in freestyle and then 1-2 in Greco style. I’ve never done any team stuff or any of that before, but it was really fun. I learned that I need to get better to compete with the guys who are at the national level. I go to wrestling practice with our club every Saturday. We used to practice on Wednesday and Saturday, but the Wednesday practice is done now because football starts. I wrestle every weekend or as much as I can.