The Power of Attraction

Ol' Rosie girl's milk production has been coming steadily down lately.  She's making less and less milk and that's really odd.  Daisy only has three teats and she's giving more milk that Rosie.  Rose Ethel has always been our biggest milk producer, while Daisy's milk is richer, with more cream in her milk.  Something's going on with Rosie and we can't quite figure out what it is.  She's eating well and there is still plenty of grass in the pasture for her to graze.  She's not sick or acting strangely.  Heat does seem to affect her more than the other cows and she spends a good part of the day laying in the mud in the shade, but she's always done that. What could it be?

I call Tricia, "Theory Woman" sometimes, because she always has a theory about everything.  Of course she has a theory about Rosie's reduction in milk.  And here it is: Some things are attracted to one another like a magnet to steel.  Some things put together just make a good pair like peanut butter and jelly, rice and gravy, and red beans and rice.  Some attractions are deleterious like that of Samson and Delilah and David and Bathsheba.  While yet other attractions are good and natural, but the timing is not quite right.

Tricia thinks that prior to building our "bull pen" that you see below that cordons off the bull from all the cows, Chuck escaped and bred Rosie.  At that time we were trying (unsuccessfully) to keep them separated by just using an electric fence and that is about as effective as a screen door in a submarine. Chuck got out one night and Tricia saw he and Rosie together while she was in heat.

We are not positive that Rosie is bred, but Chuck did break through the fence at the time when she was in heat and she may have been exposed.  We also haven't seen her go in heat since then.  Finally, a reduction in milk production is a natural occurrence for cows that are bred.  We're going to take a blood test from Rosie and send it off to confirm just to be sure.  Tricia counted back and if she was bred, she'll calf in April.  There's no other bull, so if she's bred, you're looking at the guilty party:

Incarceration

If she is indeed bred, is it the end of the world?  No, it's not, but our goal was to have all of the cows exposed to Chuck in December or January.  In so doing, they would all calve at once.  This, we've learned from experience, is just a lot easier to manage.  It also means that we would dry them off at the same time, giving us a break from milking.  Oh well, we will just have to give Rosie a pregnancy test and if we have an April baby, we'll have an April baby...  And we'll chalk it up to a lesson learned - the power of attraction between a bull and a cow is too much for an electric fence to hold back!