Milk Fever?

I don't know the creator of this cartoon, so I have to give credit to Tim S. for sending it to me.  Fortunately, our cows don't take our temperatures when we go out to milk them.  Good thing, too, because we have to do this at work.  We're certainly not wearing masks around our cows.

We have 10 more days of milking cows.  We've been milking for a year and a half now - every day, two times a day.  It is time for a break - both for us and for the cows.  We have had our cows exposed to bulls during their cycles and we think that they are all bred.  Their gestation is nine months and then they'll calve again and then we'll have milk again.  That is called "freshening."

We will enjoy the break, but will miss the milk, cheese, homemade ice cream, kefir, and all the other benefits of having a family cow or three giving us milk.  When the cows are dried off, we'll take some time off to relax, but we have other animals, a big garden, and other projects we'll be working on.  Come spring time, if breeding was successful, we'll have new calves on the ground and will be back in the milking business.

We'll talk more about the drying off process at some point in the next 10 days.