From shaving the udder to makin' some butter

When Rosie gave birth to little Amy, for the first 36 hours we let the little girl get all the milk.  We want to make sure she gets the colostrum to give her a great start on life.  Then we start thinking about milking Rosie to get the milk for us!  First, we had to take care of some business.  Rosie has very long hair growing on her udder and when I started to milk her, it would get in the way and I would inadvertently pull the hair while milking. Now that's gotta be uncomfortable for the old gal!

So as soon as I got home from work the other day, I put on my work clothes and headed out to the barn with my clippers to give Rosie a shave - just on her udder.  I put her in the milking stall and pretended to be a barber.

It is 'no-shave' November but Rosie is not participating

She was remarkably calm during the process and that's a good thing.  I definitely don't want to slip up and nick one of her teats.  That would not be a good thing.

We normally give the cows a shave all over just prior to the Livestock Shows, but Rosie needed her bag shaved early this year.  It is a time-consuming process as you have to get in all the nooks and crannies, over veins and around teats.  Thick white hair was falling on the cement below her as I shaved.

Once I got one side done, I went to the other until I was complete.  Now milking is going to be an easier process.

So now we're milking Daisy twice a day and Rosie and Maggie once a day.  That equates to a lot of milk. Tricia has started to make some cheese and I'll show you that process a little later.  We're also making butter.  We use a lot of butter around our house, so having extra butter on hand is nice.

We normally fill a quart jar with cream from the cows, let it come to room temperature and just shake it until butter forms.  It only takes about 7 minutes for the butter to 'break.'  We find that is easiest and allows for a very quick clean-up.  However, we had a good bit of cream on hand, so we pulled out the old-fashioned butter churn.  Russ was in from college and volunteered to make some butter.  The churn has wooden paddles that spin when you crank it, churning the cream until it thickens into butter.

Antique butter churn with wooden paddles

In no time at all we had a good amount of rich, yellow butter.  I would estimate that this is over a pound of butter.  We quickly made two pounds of the good stuff.

No food coloring here - just natural, delicious yellow butter

Butter keeps good in the fridge and will actually freeze well wrapped in wax paper.  The by-product of making butter - buttermilk, is great for making biscuits.  Our chickens like to drink it as well.

All we need is some homemade biscuits now.

Store bought butter just can't compare to this stuff!

So we shaved the udder and then made some butter.  Gettin' things done...