Drying Miss Daisy

Daisy is our oldest Jersey Cow and the 'boss' of the barnyard.  The old matriarch of the milk stall will be 6 years old in June.  You might call her the "Dairy Queen."  She has given birth to Stryker, our little Jersey bull, who we'll be putting up for sale shortly.  Jersey bulls are notoriously mean as they get older and I don't want to have a safety issue out on our pasture.  Stryker is 1 year and 5 months old.  She also gave birth to Romeo, another bull calf who had a heart on his forehead:

Romeo, Daisy's other little bull calf

We're praying Daisy gives us a heifer this time.  We have been milking Daisy for about a year and a half now.  Milk production peaks at about 4 months after birth, but they'll continue to produce as long as you milk them, but the volume drops off.  Daisy is an interesting case.  Cows have four teats on their udder and she only produces milk out of three.  When we were weaning Rosie, her half sister, we put Rosie and Daisy together in order to separate Rosie from her mother, Buttercup.  We affectionately called Buttercup, 'Mama Cow."

Well, Rosie began to nurse on Daisy even though Daisy had never calved and was not in milk.  This ended up ruining one of Daisy's teats.  This was a valuable lesson that we learned - one of those expensive lessons you learn by making mistakes.  In a commercial dairy, this would have rendered Daisy useless and she would have probably been sold since her production would be only 3/4 of what it could have been.  Well, at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we believe Quality > Quantity.  Daisy produces wonderful, rich, creamy milk.  She's a gentle cow, too, and has won Russ belt buckles and many ribbons with her friendly demeanor.

Russ & Miss Daisy

We are now beginning the process of drying Daisy off.  You see, Daisy is expecting a calf in early May.  We always dry off a cow 2 months prior to her calving.  We do this for several reasons.  First, Daisy needs a rest and so do we.  We milked her once a day for the first six months after she calved as we shared the milk with her calf.  When we weaned Stryker at six months, then we started milking her twice a day and we've done that for the last year.  We're all tired!


I need a rest, people!

This rest allows Daisy to 'take a vacation' and, most importantly, build up quality colostrum. Unlike a human baby, the calf doesn't get any antibodies through the placenta. It only gets them through the colostrum the first 24 hours when its gut is permeable. If you don't dry off your cow before she calves, good colostrum never builds up and you will end up with a sickly or dead calf. Finally, drying the cow off allows the cow to concentrate all that energy that would be used to produce milk into growing her calf.

Generally, if the cow is producing less than 2 gallons a day, you can just stop milking without concerns of the cow getting mastitis and having problems.  Daisy produces right at two gallons.  Our plan of action is as follows: This week we'll only milk her once a day versus two times a day.  Cows produce based on demand, so the reduced demand this week should lessen production.  Next week we'll completely stop milking her, but will keep an eye on her to ensure her udder doesn't get hard or hot. 

She'll rest up and so will we as Daisy directs all her energy toward her baby due in May!  Well, we're still milking Rosie, so not total rest for us, but time to direct some of our energy into preparing the Spring Garden.