Farewell to Luna

On November 7th we posted about Luna giving birth to a stillborn calf.  We estimate it was two months premature.  We don't know what caused this to happen.  Luna was fat and healthy.  She delivered the calf and placenta and acted normally... until about a week later.  She began to stiffen and then she lost her appetite.  Her jaws appeared to lock tight!  We called the veterinarian to come take a look at her.  His diagnosis was tetanus.

Tetanus is an infection caused by a bacteria that spreads from the nerves to the brain.  It occurs many times after calving.  The symptoms are stiffening, a protruding tail, unsteady gait, and lockjaw.  This is not good.

The veterinarian prescribed an antibiotic...

A steroid and thiamine which we injected into the muscle on Luna's neck twice a day. 

We diligently cared for Luna day after day, giving her the injections, trying to get her to eat, drenching molasses water into her clenched jaws, but in the end, Luna's recovery just wasn't to be.  Saturday morning when I went out to do the morning chores,  Luna was down.  

When cows go down like this, it is almost never a happy ending.  We tried to push her, to pull her to her feet again.  Her neck was stiffened to the side.  She would kick, wanting to get up, but her body, ravaged by the infection, would not obey.  She wanted to eat and to drink, but her body would not comply as it was damaged by the toxins created by the tetanus.   

Rosie came to Luna's side, trying to encourage her, nudging her with her head to get up.  When Rosie saw it wasn't to be, she began to lick her.  It was a sad day.  Sunday afternoon at about 3:15 PM, Luna breathed her last and succumbed to tetanus.

The rainy, dreary day became even more dreary.  We'll miss ol' Luna, but this is life (and death) on the farm.  You work hard.  You play hard.  You rejoice in victories and you come to accept defeat at times.  2020 has been a rough year in many, many ways.  

But as the Good Book says, "Though the sorrow may last for a night, His Joy comes in the morning."  There is death, but there will also be new life.  This spring (hopefully) Rosie and Clarabelle will calf, ushering in new life to our little acreage.  Farewell, Luna, we'll miss you.

A Sad Day for Luna

Saturday while we were putting the hay in the loft, I noticed something not quite right.  Luna, one of our Jersey milk cows, was not acting as she normally should.  She was hunched over and when I walked around her, there was a long thread of blood mucous.  Then it became obvious.  She's in labor!  But it can't be.  She's not due until January.  I called Tricia over to check things out.

At that moment, Tricia told me that she could see a nose and a tongue.  In a few minutes of pushing, the head was out.  But something was dreadfully wrong.  The feet weren't coming out and the baby calf did not appear to be breathing.

Warning: Unsavory photos follow

Tricia got on the phone with the veterinarian to see if she could find one on call.  Luna had just gone into labor and would push and periodically get up and walk around and then sit back down again.  She had plenty of strength.  We decided to let her continue to push versus pulling the calf or calling the veterinarian out on a farm call.

In just a moment, Luna delivered the calf - a little heifer.  Dead.  Two months premature.  We don't know what happened.  This is the second calf that Luna delivered dead.  We are going to run some tests to try to figure out the issue.

Calving is normally a very happy, exciting time and this time, it was a time of sadness.  We watched over the next few hours as Luna came and looked for her baby, walking back and forth, bellowing loud, melancholy moos, calling for her little girl.  We were so anticipating a heifer.  We've had nothing but bulls lately, but it was not meant to be.

Cows that deliver calves, regardless if they live or not, produce milk.  Here we go again.  Later that evening, we found ourselves in the barn, milking the colostrum out of Luna and feeding it to the hens.  Luna kicked at me briefly while I was milking her, so I hobbled her leg.  She'll settle down, poor girl.

Our other two cows, Rosie and Clarabelle, should also be bred.  Hopefully, we see a happier outcome.  Meanwhile, on the bright side, we'll have fresh milk again.

We Hope It Will "Take" This Time

We were disappointed to see Luna go into heat again.  We had brought her down the road to be bred about three months ago.  A friend of ours has a registered Jersey bull and charges $100 - $150 stud fee.  The fee is guaranteed in the sense that if the cow is not bred, we keep bringing her back until she becomes pregnant.  The friend only lives about five miles down the road.  The close proximity is important to us because if the cow we bring to have bred is still in milk, we travel to her each day to milk her.

We track our cows' cycles and when we noticed Luna go into heat after having been exposed to the bull, we contacted our friend to schedule the services of his bull, loaded Luna up in the trailer and rolled north on Highway 26 to Hathaway, Louisiana.  We unloaded her from the trailer as the big bull came to check out the new girl. 

On Saturday we got a call from the friend with an update.  The bull and Luna stayed together for several days and although he didn't see the breeding take place, he saw signs of breeding on her tail.  After that the bull and Luna stayed on opposite sides of the pasture.  Hopefully a fertile seed was planted.  We made arrangements to go pick her up Sunday after church.  We hooked up the trailer to Benjamin's truck and made the short trip.

We retrieved Luna and the big bull came up to the fence to tell her goodbye after we got her out.

He had mud caked all over his head.  Bulls are notorious for rubbing their heads all over everything.  What a muddy guy!

When we pulled back up to the house, Luna was excited when she heard the cows at home moo-ing to welcome her back.  She lifted up one ear in anticipation.  I take that back about the cows welcoming her back.  They were probably lamenting her return.  Luna, although a runt, is the bully of the pasture.  She has lots of self-confidence and thinks she is big and bosses the other cows around.
 

We opened the gate and let her back into the pasture.  She glared at us and then trotted off to re-assert herself as Queen of the pasture.

We are hoping that she is bred this time.  One thing that worries us a little is that she is fat like a beef cow instead of a dairy cow.  We have been told sometimes that will affect their ability to become pregnant.  We've got the date marked on the calendar.  If she comes in heat again, we'll make the short trip back to try again.  If at first you don't succeed...

Driving Ms. Luna

Luna is our youngest Jersey cow.  She is small - smaller than the rest of the cows by a long shot.  We call her a runt, but she has the bossy personality that defies her small stature.  She bullies the other cows and goats.  It is amazing to watch.  Tricia and I often tell the other animals not to let her bully them around and remind them that she is smaller than them.  They don't understand!

You might recall that over a year ago, Luna lost her first calf in delivery.  In the process, we almost lost her, too.  We were able to save her, though, and kept her in milk.  When Rosie and Clarabelle calved, we "dried up" Luna, because it is hard to milk 3 cows for very long!  Last month, we observed Luna going in heat.  We marked down the date on the calendar and circled the date 21 days in advance.  It is time to get Luna bred.  We loaded her in the cattle trailer.

Although we have 3 registered Jersey bulls on the property, we want to introduce new genetics into our little herd.  We have a friend that lives about 3 miles north of us that has a new Jersey bull.  He is a big bull with grey coloration.  He asked us to bring Luna by his house and drop her off after church this evening.

Since Luna is a runt, we never brought her to the livestock shows.  I had forgotten about that.  When I went to load her into the cattle trailer, she didn't know how to load.  The others just jump right on in.  She didn't know how to step up into the trailer.  I asked Tricia to go get a bucket of feed to coax her up.  While Tricia was on the way to the barn, I pulled and pulled and was able to get her in the trailer.

According to our paperwork, she'll go back into heat this Thursday.  If things work as they ought to, we'll be able to pick Luna up and bring her back home next weekend.

If everything goes as planned we'll bring Luna home as a pregnant cow that will deliver in April 2020.  For now, and until Luna comes home, the rest of the animals on the farm are enjoying their peace and freedom from the barnyard bully.

A Sad Note for a Baby Goat

Annie has been being real motherly with her triplets.  She watches over them and takes care of them.  The barnyard is full of activity with all the animals on our small acreage.  We have 100 laying hens.  three milk cows, three bulls, one billy goat, two mama goats with 5 total kids.  At feeding time, it is quite a circus to keep everyone separated from the others' food and to keep the cows from stepping on the goats or the chickens.  We always have a hen or two that is walking with a limp due to being stepped on.

Tragedy strikes!

Several evenings ago Tricia fed Annie in the pasture.  Her triplets, that were less than a week old, were gathered around her as she ate from her trough.  When Luna (one of our Jersey cows) finished her feed, I walked her out of the barn, through the corral and into the pasture.  Big mistake!  Luna is quite gluttonous and ran straight for Annie's feed.  Fortunately, I was right there and caught her before she could gobble down the goat's food.  I walked Luna farther out in the pasture and held her.

After a time, I looked and noticed that Annie had finished her food, and I let Luna go.  Luna ran to the trough to see if there was any food left.  Annie's triplets were sitting in a group in the shade next to the barn.  Everything seemed to go in slow motion.  Tragically, instead of running to the food trough, Luna detoured and ran up to the barn, directly to the triplets and right through them.  They are too young to know to get out of the way of the large (not-so-smart) cows.

I watched in horror as Luna stepped right on top of one of the babies' backs.  Luna is not a big cow, but she still probably weighs 750 pounds.  The baby goat weighs less than 7 pounds.  The baby goat cried and cried and cried.

Tricia now looks back and tells us that what happened next shows the difference between boys and girls.  Tricia immediately ran to the baby goat, picked it up, and began nurturing it, and showing it compassion.  In contrast, I ran immediately to Luna and punched her.  (I know, not kind, right?) Russ picked up a dirt clod and threw it at Luna. We were angry and impatient with Luna's decision to do that to a defenseless animal.  Ironically, we weren't so kind to Luna, who is also a defenseless animal.

The baby goat that was injured was the doeling, the other two are bucklings.  Things did not look good.  She could not use or move her back legs.  Her hooves turned backwards and she could not stand on them.  We were just heartbroken.  I figured we would put her down, but Tricia wanted to wait through the weekend so "she could work with her."

Status Update and Prognosis:

The doeling (we need to name her, I guess) is nursing on her mom while laying down, unable to use her back legs.

Having her nurse requires putting her two brothers in a cage as she is lame and can't compete with her rambunctious siblings for her mama's milk.  They knock her over.

It is just real sad as she sits on essentially useless back legs.

A silver lining

Tricia has been performing physical therapy on the baby.  In Tricia's rehab center, the patient has shown some improvement!  Each day she is making strides.  She can now get up and stand on her own.  Although one leg looks lame and she just drags it, it appears that she is just beginning to try to take some first steps.

She has a LONG way to go and we still don't know the full extent of her injuries or prognosis, but it looks like we won't need to put her down.  Here is Tricia with the patient.  Tricia has patience and nurturing abilities that I just don't have.

Tonight we walked into the barn and the little crippled goat had gotten up on her own.  That's progress!  Tricia put her siblings in the cage and let the little goat nurse on Annie.  She drank milk while standing on wobbly injured legs.

We're seeing small improvement every day and we'll just have to wait a bit and see how things turn out.  We've learned a lesson through this, though.  We always talk about how it is good to have a variety of animals on the pasture.  Chickens eat what cows don't eat.  Goats eat what cows don't eat.  All eat grass and poop to fertilize the grass, which, in turn, grows more grass.  It is a beautiful cycle that God created.  It does, however, require some management as cows don't have much regard for their smaller brethren.  As the goats get older, they learn to stay out of the cows' way.  We learned from now on to keep the babies away from the cows until they get their 'street smarts.'  We'll keep you posted on our patient.

All Creatures Great and Small (and Medium Sized, too!)

I always have loved the James Herriot book, "All Creatures Great and Small."  I highly recommend it.  It is one of those books that you must read again and again.  James Herriot was a Yorkshire country veterinarian from the 1930's.  His book is funny, interesting, and inciteful.  One of the stories I recall is from Chapter 36 in which Herriot goes to work on the dairy cow of a poor farmer.  The cow has mastitis and is very sick.  Her fever is high and it is clear that things look bleak.  Herriot compassionately tells the farmer that he doesn't think the poor cow is going to make it and that maybe he should put her down so that she doesn't suffer any more.

The farmer told Dr. Herriot that the cow was the most valuable thing he had left and he was not ready to give up on her yet. He told Dr. Herriot to come back in the morning.  The farmer got a bench and sat down and commenced to milking, massaging the swollen, hard infected udder, and stripping the black, clumpy infection out of the cow.  When Dr. Herriot arrived in the morning, he found the farmer had stayed up all night to save his cow.  The farmer was exhausted, but the cow was feeling better and survived!

I tell you that because yesterday afternoon I went to the barn to milk Luna and found this!:

As seen above her two quarters on the left side were super swollen, sensitive and hard as a rock.  This was so bizarre as I had milked her out the day before and all was fine.  Mastitis is serious and things can "go south" quickly.  Here is a front shot of the udder.  If you would touch it, it was hard and tight.  When you touched it, she would kick.  She was not happy and neither were we!  In fact, she wasn't eating her dairy ration.  That is very strange for her.

We took her rectal temperature with a thermometer and found it to be 101.4.  That is fine for a cow.  So perhaps we caught this early.  By this time it was approaching 8 o'clock, so we came in and checked the fridge where we have antibiotics.  All of them were expired except for one.  The one medicine that wasn't expired is not labeled for use in dairy animals.  We had some injections that you inject directly up into the teat, but they were all expired, too.  Not good.

"I'm hot blooded, check it and see..."

We decided to roll the dice.  We'd do what James Herriot's poor farmer did and massage and milk the infection out.  Starting at 9 pm and continuing at 10 and 11, we went out to the barn hourly, milking her out.  We also heated up water and made hot compresses to put on the udder.  We didn't stay up ALL night long, but at 5 am, Tricia was out at the barn again and all through the morning, massaging...

Rubbing and milking...  An odd, opaque liquid came out that wasn't milk.  By the morning, though, the swelling was coming down and she was starting to pick at her food.  Tricia continued to work with her throughout the day, giving her molasses and then let her out of the barn to eat grass.

By the evening, the swelling was done considerably.  Still no fever.  Her appetite wasn't back to normal, but she was eating.  She was still super-sensitive on the front quarter.  After repeated massaging and stripping, we were successful in getting streams of infected material to begin emptying.

Eliminating this nastiness, like the farmer in Herriot's book, will make Luna feel better and save her.

While she is still not 'out of the woods yet, she is making great strides.  We've contacted our veterinarian and will use penicillin if she takes a turn for the worse, but for now, the regimen described in Herriot's book is working!  Speaking of working, I'm headed back out to the barn now to check on Luna and see if I can get some more infection out of her front quarter. 

An Update on the Cows

As I watch Daisy, Rosie, and Luna eating grass in the front yard on a gorgeous, albeit hot, afternoon, I realized that I hadn't given an update lately on what's going on with each of our four Jersey cows.  First, Daisy, the herd matriarch is getting up there in age for a milk cow.  She's eleven years old and for some reason hasn't been going in heat.  We want her to calve again and did some research on the Internet.  We gave her a vitamin A injection and brought her and Clarabelle down the road 5 miles to a friend's house who has a registered Jersey bull.

Two days later, the friend called and said that he observed his bull breeding Daisy and that we could go pick her up.  For some reason Clarabelle did not cycle and was not bred.  We left her for another 21 days for her to cycle again and we received word today that the friend's bull bred Clarabelle.  So if all goes well, we'll have two Jersey calves in late March or early April 2019!  Hopefully, Benjamin's truck will be out of the shop tomorrow afternoon and we'll go pick Clarabelle up and bring her home.  In a month or so, we'll have them palpated to ensure they are pregnant.

Now Rosie and Luna are still in milk.  We're milking Rosie mornings and evenings and Luna once a day in the evening.  We'll begin marking the date they go in heat so that we can bring them down to the friend's bull to be bred too.  Daisy didn't calve this year.  Rosie and Clarabelle both had little bulls, Junior and Astro.  They are growing and we'll likely put them in the freezer when they are big enough.  Luna had a stillborn bull calf and we almost lost her in the process, but she's recovered nicely.

An Update on Luna

Luna, our youngest Jersey just lost her baby calf last week.  Its head was positioned in a way that made it impossible for Luna to go into labor and deliver.  Our veterinarian made a farm call and pulled the calf.  Luna was in bad shape too - just utterly exhausted.  Dr. Fontenot didn't think she was going to make it, but so far she had defied the odds.

She is eating each day, but is moving real slow.  She's also lost a lot of weight.  Last night we smelled a foul odor and we think she has an infection inside of her.  We took her temperature and it was 103.5.  101 for a cow is normal.  So the fever confirmed our suspicions that Luna has an infection.  The discharge on her tail is also evidence of this.  I would assume this is normal.  The dead calf, the invasive pulling of the calf, bacteria getting inside of her...  All of this could cause her to get sick. 

Tricia went to the vet today and got 5 syringes of antibiotic that we are to give Luna subcutaneously for the next 5 days.  Tricia also did some internet research and came up with an idea to try to help Luna out.  if successful, this procedure should help clean some of the infection out.  Tricia purchased an enema bag and mixed 1 teaspoon of salt for every liter of warm water and mixed it in the bag.  She took petroleum jelly and lubricated the end of the tubing.

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

Then for the uncomfortable part, she inserted the tube into Luna's vagina.  I know this is not pleasant talk, but we're trying to save poor little Luna.  I'll admit I cringed a little watching this.

Then by holding the bag over Luna (at about eye-level), you let gravity do its thing.  Pretty soon, all the contents of the bag are emptied into Luna.

After just a little while, a thick, blood tinged discharge began pouring out.  It did not look pretty.  It did not smell nice.  We'll repeat the syringe of antibiotic tomorrow evening and will repeat the vaginal enema and check Luna's temperature again.  Hopefully, we'll have a good progress report to give you in a few days.

A Tough Day for Luna

Springtime means lots of babies around the farm.  We have two bull calves born less than six months ago, 51 two-week old chicks, the triplet goats born on March 3rd.  We've also posted about Luna, our Jersey heifer who was expecting her first calf.  In fact, just the other day we were posting about how it was going to be any day now that she would calve.

Well, she never went into labor.  Her udder was swollen and dripping milk.  Her vulva was swollen.  However, things just didn't seem right.  She stopped eating and became lethargic.  Tricia had intuition that things weren't quite right.  Yesterday morning Luna was laying on the ground groaning, but no baby was coming.

Tricia called our veterinarian to come do a "farm call."  He arrived quickly since his office is only a mile away.  Luna was worn out.  Dr. Fontenot was concerned about her.  He quickly began pulling the calf.  The calf was positioned correctly with the front legs poised to come out first, but the calf's head and neck was turned at an awkward angle and our veterinarian had to re-position the calf's head to deliver it.

Unfortunately, Luna's little calf was dead.  It was very strange in that the calf was a 100% registered Jersey and it was mostly white.  It was a little bull calf.  All of our calves this year have been bulls.  Tragically, this little fellow is dead.  We buried him in the garden.  Although very sad, our attention turned to Luna.

When I got home last night, Luna was in trouble.  She was down way out in the pasture and could not get up.  I brought a bucket of alfalfa and a drench syringe full of molasses diluted with water.  Pretty soon, we had Luna up and walking back to the barn.  I was able to milk her out and we saved the colostrum that would have gone to her calf and we froze it.  It is always good to have some colostrum frozen as "insurance" should you have a calf that didn't get any from the momma.  It is crucial that the calf gets it.

This morning before daybreak, I went out and checked on Luna.  She was down and groaning and was unable to get up.  I moved her to the sitting up position and was able to get her standing and eating some feed and hay.  Things are 'touch and go' with her right now, but I think she's made a good turn for the better today and I was able to milk her again this evening.

We will continue to observe her.  Sadly, we didn't get a calf, but if we can keep Luna healthy, at least we've got fresh milk.

Luna The Runt

Luna is our youngest Jersey heifer.  Something went wrong in the genetics I guess and Luna just never grew.  She is a runt.  She doesn't know she is a runt, though, and is very bossy, just like her mother.  Well, the runt is an expectant mother now.  The best we can figure, her due date is somewhere around the first of April.

We noticed the other day that her udder is beginning to swell up and that is one of the first signs that the big day for little Luna is approaching.

A few days later we noticed that her udder, while small in comparison to our other Jerseys, is swollen.  Not only is her udder swollen, but so is her vulva.  When they near their time to calve, the vulva becomes "flabby."

Here you can see Luna in the foreground and her mother, Daisy, in the background.  Daisy is much larger than her, but other than that, they are clones.  Luna is Daisy's 'mini-me!'

Even though Luna is a runt, I've been told that this doesn't necessarily mean that her calf will be a runt.  We'll have to wait and see.  Lots of babies around here this spring!

"Weighing" Luna

Luna, our little Jersey heifer, was born in late October 2015.  She is small in stature. We have a registered Jersey bull named "Chuck" on the herd, but we have had Luna separated from him until she was big enough to safely breed.  Chuck roams with Daisy and Rosie and Clarabelle.  We recently had our veterinarian make a farm call so that he could palpate the cows.  We found that Chuck had successfully bred both Rosie and Clarabelle.  Daisy was still 'open,' but we saw activity during Daisy's last cycle and think she was exposed.  Hopefully she is now bred.  We'll have to wait and see.

Here's the thing: Chuck is getting big and is starting to get mean and ornery.  He likes to hit you with his head when you walk out in the pasture.  Jersey bulls can be very dangerous and we don't want him on the pasture for much longer.  Our goal (and why we named him Chuck) is for him to breed all of our cows and then send him to the slaughterhouse.  This leads us back to the subject of this post - Luna.

As I was saying, she is small.  Tricia is concerned that she is too small to breed.  The only way to know for sure is to weigh her.  Since we don't have a scale, we use the next best thing - a weighing tape.  This tape has weight markings on it for Holsteins, Guernseys, and Jerseys.  The Jersey markings are the markings on the bottom row. If you look closely, the verbiage along the bottom says, "Lightest Jersey Breeding Weight."  The black line says that the lightest weight for Jerseys is 530 pounds.

You are supposed to put the weighing tape around her body right behind her front legs.  Then put the tape together and the weight is where the tape meets.  In this case, we see that Luna weighs 550 pounds.  She is 20 pounds heavier than the lightest Jersey breeding weight.  Although she is small, according to this, she can safely breed.

This is good news to us.  At some point next week, we will likely put all the cows and heifers together on the pasture.  The next time Luna comes in heat and if Daisy comes in heat again, Chuck can service them.  If successful, we'll have four baby Jersey calves within the next year, some coming as soon as in about 5 months.

Luna has been cordoned off it her own pasture up to this point.  Now that she is of calving age and size as confirmed by the weigh tape, we can introduce her to Chuck.

Tale of the Tape

During the months of December and January, we will be exposing all of our Jersey cows to our Jersey bull so that they all calve within a month of each other. Obviously, since both Daisy and Rosie have been bred numerous times, as soon as we see them come into heat, we've put them into the bullpen with Chuck, the Jersey bull.

The reason we don't just open the gates to the bullpen and let the cows and bull intermingle for the next two months is because of Luna, our Jersey heifer.  She is too young to breed.  Therefore, we keep her cordoned off away from the bull.

Clarabelle, our Jersey heifer, raises another issue of concern.  She's young and has never been bred before.  She was born in June of 2015.  Jerseys' minimum breeding weight should be 550 pounds, but how do we determine the weight without a scale? Well, there is a tape that you put right behind the front legs and it gives a pretty accurate indication of the animal's weight.

You loop the tape around and put it together to give you the weight.  The tape has markings for Jersey, Guernsey, and Holsteins on it.

The Jersey weights are shown on the very bottom of the tape and this clearly shows that Clarabelle weighs 620 pounds, so she is well above the minimum breeding weight of 550 pounds.  Now that we have that determined, we feel much better about putting the bull with everyone except Luna.

Clarabelle weighs 620 pounds

Here is ol' Chuck.  He's happy to be with the ladies as he hasn't been in the same pasture with them for months and months.  In a really strange turn of events, he ran to Rosie, his mother, and began trying to nurse on her!  Rosie began kicking him away.  That is a good thing as he is almost the same size as her and we don't want him drinking our milk.  He continued bothering her and she continued kicking her away.  Unfortunately, during evening milking, Rosie kicked and kicked as Tricia tried to milk her.  I guess she assumed that Tricia was her bull calf, Chuck, trying to get her milk.

Hopefully we'll get all the cows except for Luna exposed to the bull to be bred.  That will give us calving dates of September - October 2017.

Weaning Luna

Luna is our little heifer (Daisy's little girl) that was born on October 27, 2015.  She's 8 months old and past time to be weaned.  Tricia and I had been talking about it and finally decided to get the job done on Monday night.  Normally in the evening, we let the calves nurse and then separate them from their mommas so that we have the milk in the morning.  But on Monday night, poor Luna got no milk.  I milked Daisy while Luna stood at the gate and moo'd... loudly.  Something was wrong. This was not her normal routine.  What is going on?

Well, she was soon to find out.  We normally install what we call a weaning plate that makes it near impossible for the calves to get to their momma's udder.  We usually use a plate that you tighten down with a wing nut.  Here is a post about that style plate in this post: Weaning Clarabelle  Although we've used that weaning device numerous times, the crafty calves always figure out ways to pry it out of their nose.  Then when we go to milk the cows in the morning, we discover that the calves have robbed our milk.  (I'm sure they see it from a different perspective.)

This time with Luna we determined that we'd try a different style weaning plate.  At $2.65 it was half the price of the metal one.  It is made entirely of plastic and has pointed spines on it.

Calf Weaner

We held Luna securely and took the weaning plate out of the package.  It came with no instructions, so I figured that you twist the plate until the prongs separate and then install in her nose.  We'll give it a try.  As you can see, Luna is not exactly thrilled about this exercise.

"What are my people up to?"

After a couple minutes of me sweating, Luna mooing, and general chaos in the barn, the device was in place.  The nose is a very tender, vulnerable place on a cow. That's why you see a lot of rings in bull's noses.  I wouldn't like anything in my nose either.  Luna did not like this thing in her nose at all. She stomped around in disoriented fashion and at one point, went down to here knees.  No sir-ee. She didn't like this a bit.

Cmon Man!

Here is an up-close photo.  As you can see, the plate blocks her from opening her mouth to suck milk. It does, however, allow her to reach her head out, flatten the plate on the ground, and pull her head toward her to eat grass.  You'll also notice the points.  If/when she does try to nurse, the points will poke Daisy's bag and she'll promptly get a kick or a nudge to say, "Git!"

Testing a new-style (for us, anyway) weaning plate

In a few minutes, Luna seemed to calm down.  She still looked at me suspiciously, but overall, I think she was coming to grips with this change.  Growing up is tough, huh girl?

Normally, I would separate her, but now she is free to join the rest of the herd.  No more separating her each night!  This will save some time, although we'll now be milking Daisy in the morning AND the evening.  Luna promptly ran up to Daisy and tried to nurse, but it was to no avail.  The weaning plate did its job.  After a bit, she tired of trying as Daisy tried to console her by licking her on the neck.

It's gonna be alright, Luna.

As we left them together, Tricia and I wondered if Luna would pull a "Houdini" and figure out a way to get Daisy's milk or figure out a way to pry the nose plate out. We would know first thing Tuesday morning.  Well, Tuesday morning came and Daisy had a full bag of milk and sad Luna still had the nose plate in.  So far, so good.  We'll give it a while and report back to give a full review of the plastic weaning plate.

One benefit we always see when weaning calves is that the cream content of the milk goes up significantly.  We find this is due to the fact that the calf is getting all the 'hind milk' which is richer in cream.  Once weaned, we get all the cream.  That is a big plus for us!