"Moo"ving On...

 Yes, Emily IS back to puking again.  We've gotten her to a pediatrician who ran some more bloodwork and is collecting ALL the info from doctors, two hospitals, and I was able to get a bit from her orphanage.  The plan is for her to be seen by a pediatric GI.  Hopefully they will be able to get to the bottom of what is causing this.   In the meantime, she is puking and sleeping at home.  It's hard to watch a busy, happy, noisy toddler morph into a silent, listless, puking baby.  Prayer would be great!

But time moves on and so does farm work.  We began milking in the new parlor last night.  I took a lot of pictures on Friday night.  Kenton opened all the gates and let the cows in to snoop and get somewhat comfortable with things before the big day.  Warning: Lots of barn pictures, mostly for Dennis and anyone else who's interested.

The cows are coming from the freestall barn.  We opened this fence and put up some temporary gates.

Davis helped by leveling out the new opening.

Jamison and dad put up temporary gates.

Kenton put foot baths on the right, palpation rails in the middle, and the regular walkway on the left.  There are gates that swing both ways all over the place so that cow flow can be changed easily.

The cows will come through the walkway, in the gate, and under the crowd gate.  

Once the cows are through, the gate drops down, bells ring (think really annoying alarm clock), and the gate moves forward.  Ideally the cows will move forward as the gate does.  So far we have not seen this actually work.  

There are stalls on both sides. Someday, hopefully very soon, the cows will move this direction on their own.  (I have pictures to show how this has actually worked out so far.)

  

The cows will move through this area and go into stalls on either side. (Bad picture,  I know.)

The cows will pass through this area into the stalls where they'll be milked.  

Milking area, notice the butt pan on the left.  DO NOT QUOTE ME!!! but I think the individual indexing allows the gate in front to push the cow back to the appropriate spot so the milker can comfortably reach the udder and to reduce...hmm....unwanted splatter.  

The cows' heads poke out these gates.  Last night most of them acted as mean as Jamison tried to look.

It's a double ten parallel parlor.

 Those gates lift up mechanically to release cows when they are done milking.  

The kids were having a good time swinging on them.

Emily was not very happy that mama put her down where there was a dog roaming.

However, an old track phone and total (misplaced) trust in her sisters to protect her from the toddler-eating monster distracted her.

Once the cows are done, they are released and return to the freestall barn through the return lanes on either side.  

It's amazing how clean it looks in these pictures.   The real fun might be up tomorrow.