Singing to Amy (How We Got Amy To Let Down Her Milk)

If you follow our blog, you'll know that Amy just had her first calf.  He's a little bull calf that we named "Chuck."  Chuck is a healthy little fellow and is doing just fine. Right now we leave Momma and baby together all day.  Soon we'll separate them in the evening and begin milking Amy in the morning. Right now, Chuck can't empty out all of Amy's milk, so I'm milking Amy out in the evening so Amy doesn't get mastitis.

30 minutes after 'Chuck' was born

Here is Chuck one day after being born.  Once he dried off, he's more of a brown color than a reddish-brown.  He has lots of personality.

Chuck at one day old

We have two stalls in the barn.  Each evening at about 5 pm, we bring the cows in the barn for feeding and we separate the calves from the Momma cows.  Clarabelle, Rosie's heifer, goes in the big stall for the evening:

And Luna, Daisy's heifer, goes into the little stall that we have the goat milking stanchion in.  If you look closely, you can still see the green ink on one of Luna's ears from when we tattooed her ears.  It will rub off soon.  You can also see one of the scabs on her head from where we recently de-horned her.  We've got to do the same with Chuck this weekend.

"Green-eared Luna!"

Speaking of Chuck, here he is.  We don't have another stall for him in the barn. We'll have to remedy that for when we start separating him, but that is on my project list.  Anyway, that was a long, rambling introduction to the reason for the post - milking Amy, and how we get her to drop her milk.

Poor Chuck - stranded outside (Rosie's glowing eyes in the background)

The first thing we do in the evening is to bring Amy into the barn, leaving Chuck outside.  This makes her a little nervous, but she's okay with it for the most part. Chuck will come up to the barn gate and look in and then he'll dash off, tail high in the air - funny to watch him run.

When Amy's in the barn, we clean her up and get ready to milk.  Initially, we hobbled one of her legs and she milked perfectly fine, but then began to kick. Fortunately, we have a device called Kow Kan't Kick.  We posted about it in this previous post.  You can click on that hyperlink to read details about the nifty contraption.  

Kow Kan't Kick in place

With the device in place, her udder cleaned up, and lubricant put on her teats, we're ready to start milking.  The Kow Kan't Kick tool makes it next to impossible for her to lift her leg.  Properly installed you don't have to worry about her kicking at all.

Ready to Go!

But there's one more problem.  As I start milking, the process of separating her from her baby along with the stress of clamping the device on her back, causes her to be filled with anxiety.  Cows like things to be serene, slow, and steady.  All the excitement has caused Amy to hold back her milk.  I discover that there's very little milk coming out.  Cows can be very cunning and hold back their milk for their babies.  You can do several things to get her to drop her milk.  First, you can clean her udder with warm water.  This will relax her.  Then, you can imitate the calf and bump her bag.  This bumping action is what the calf instinctively does with its head to cause the milk to drop.

Finally though, I found the thing that worked.  Alone in the barn, I began singing to Amy.  I picked the first song that came to mind, a country song by Tim McGraw called, "Just To See You Smile." As I belted out the chorus:

Just to see you smile

I'd do anything that you wanted me to

When all is said and done

I'd never count the cost

It's worth all that's lost

Just to see you smile

And then, an amazing thing started to happen - Amy's milk started dropping!  The more I sang, the more the milk dropped, filling her udder.

Amy let down her milk!

As I sang to a cow in the barn at 7pm at night, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at what someone would think if they came walking by.  You can't argue with success, though.  Singing to Amy made her milk drop, but I'm not sure if it made her smile...