Learning to Share

We have a little process for sharing milk that has served us well over the years and I'm not sure I've ever explained it.  When our cows calve and our goat kids, the babies need the colostrum for the first few days to get their antibodies and nutrition.  After we're sure that the baby is off on a good start, we begin separating the mama from the baby in the late afternoon.

All that night the momma makes milk.  But this milk is not for their baby - it's for us!  We're out in the barn before dawn, usually between 5 and 5:30 and promptly milk the cows and goat.  Once we're done milking, we release the calf and the doe to their moms.  They get to drink the milk all day long - from 6 am until 6 pm when we separate again.

Here is the process:  Between 5:30 and 6 pm, we head out to the barn.  Nellie sees us and comes running.  You can hear her bell jingling as she trots curiously up to us and into the stall that contains her milking stanchion. 

Suppertime for Nellie

Annie, her little doe, comes following behind her, butting us in the back of our legs with her horns.  We're going to have to do something about them.  They're almost 3 inches long now.  So we grab Annie by her collar and move her into the Goat Barn doubling as a Chicken infirmary and secure the door. 

This is her bedroom for the night and she perches herself up on top of one of the chicken brooders that I store here when we're not brooding baby chicks.  In the morning, she's ready to be let out.


Annie's bedroom

A little sidebar on the brooders - Do you see the one to the left of her?  The one she's not sitting on?  The boys and I had to pull that one out of there as Annie completely demolished it after I took this picture.  Goats like to climb and that brooder is more than a few years old.  She smashed it flat, the little trouble-maker!

Annie's mugshot (trying to look innocent)

As far as Daisy and Rosie, we call them in for the evening milking and they go into their respective milking stalls for feeding and/or milking.  Since Rosie doesn't have a calf on her, we milk her in the morning and in the afternoon.

The girls eating their supper

Daisy's calf, Bully, follows behind his momma and we separate him into his stall where he'll spend the night.  Tomorrow morning after milking Daisy, we'll reunite them for the day until we separate them again for the night.  It has happened that we've forgotten to separate them OR the calves get out or get access to the momma.  In those cases, we don't get any milk that day as the babies gladly drink their share AND ours!


I don't like to share...

When we wean the calves or goats, we separate them 24 hours a day.  Then we have to milk twice a day as milk is produced on a supply/demand basis.  We'll be weaning Annie sometime next month.  We'll also be
'drying off' Rosie next month to allow her a couple of months prior to calving to use all her energy in growing her calf (and not producing milk).  Ol' girl needs a rest - and so do we!


Maggie is sad

This here is Magnolia Mae and she feels left out.  While Daisy, Rosie, and Nellie are eating supper, she stands just outside the barn door and pouts.  She gets no feed - only grass.  At Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, you must be contributing to the farm economy to eat anything other than grass/hay.

But hang in there, Maggie, your time's coming.  She'll be calving after the first of the year.