Random Thoughts on a Thursday

"The preacher man says it's the end of time

And the Mississippi River, she's a-goin' dry

The interest is up and the stock market's down

And you only get mugged if you go downtown"

That's the opening lyrics to "Country Boy Can Survive" by Hank Williams Jr.  I've been thinking about that song a lot while driving, trying to digest bad economic news, rising consumer pricing, and a severe erosion in the purchasing power of the monopoly money in our wallets.  Somehow we've gotten ourselves beholden to Big Politicians, Big Bankers, and Global Puppetmasters that pull all the strings.  I'd like to just ignore it, but it greatly affects everyone, especially if you find yourself on a fixed income.

But, you know, the Lord's in control.  There's an old hymn that has lyrics that are much more optimistic than 'Ol Hank's song.  It goes like this:

Many things about tomorrow,

I don't seem to understand;

But I know who holds tomorrow,

And I know who holds my hand.

God's given us sound minds and I believe we're to use them.  They're saying that food shortages, or at least even more increases in food prices, are on the horizon.  Might be a good idea to put a few things in the pantry.  We've got eggs!  We eat a LOT of eggs in our house.  But we're in the dog days of summer and the egg production has plummeted like the value of 401-k's.  This was all we collected from the hen house (and all their other hiding places) yesterday.  Slim pickin's, indeed!

Tricia has been dry canning rice and also beans in the oven at 200 degrees for an hour.  If you do it right, it'll be good for 20 - 25 years stored like that.  It kills any bugs and/or eggs in the rice and beans.

One thing we WON'T have in a food shortage is milk.  Yep, we dried off both of our milk cows.  We have been milking for a year and four months straight.  It is time for a break - for both us AND the cows.  Our plan is to bring both milk cows to be re-bred and then in late fall, we'll bring both of our heifers to be bred for the first time.  So we'll be without milk for almost a year!

The milking stalls are lonely and it is quiet in the barn now in the mornings!  It gets so hot in the summer milking in there, even with the fans blowing.

One thing that we'll save money on is dairy cow feed!  When the cows aren't producing milk, we let them just eat the grass in the pasture.  The sweet feed in our feed room is gonna really last now.  The local feed store is going to miss us!

We'll just have to remind ourselves that God is in control.  We should pray and we should take action by preparing and planning and planting.

As We Near Drying Off the Cows - An Experiment

In four days we will be drying off the cows.  In dairy-speak that means we stop milking them.  You'll probably hear us talk about that a lot.  We've been milking for over two years straight without a break, and we are ready.  When we bring the milk inside, we pour it from our stainless steel pails into gallon-sized glass jars.

Those jars are immediately refrigerated and the cream rises to the top.  I remember being young and my teachers would always tell us, "Work hard, prepare yourself, for the cream always rises to the top."  That saying may sound strange to some, but it is a truism.  The cream is the best part of the milk.  It is the thickest, sweetest, best part.  After it rises, we take a big spoon and skim off the cream, putting it into a pint-sized jar.  We use that for our coffee, and for ice cream, and for whipped cream and butter.

But soon, we'll have no more fresh milk for a while.  For how long?  We don't know.  We haven't had the cows palpated yet to see how far along in their pregnancies they are.  We were talking about what we were going to do.  Sometimes, in the past when the cows were dried off, we wouldn't even buy milk.  We would only buy cream. 

Tricia reminded me that my Mom had given us a neat thing that was from Bumby, my grandma.  It was some little glass jars to freeze sweet cream in.  See the photo below?:  Freezer Creamer - Always have cream for unexpected guests.  Thaws while your coffee brews.  Slips into your ice cube tray.

There are six little jars with lids on a tray.  I couldn't find a date on these, but I think it is a neat family heirloom.  We are going to see if we can successfully freeze some cream using Bumby's antique sweet cream jars.  (One is missing because I'm about to fill it.)

I simply filled the jar with sweet cream from Clarabelle's milk from earlier in the morning.  It doesn't get fresher than this!

I placed the little cap on top of the jar...

And I placed it in the freezer.

I pulled the little jar out a bit later to find that the cream had completely frozen. 

I think our experiment was successful, but the proof will be in the pudding.  We'll thaw out and drink in our coffee this weekend.  If it is good, we'll make more, and we'll ration the remaining sweet cream for special coffee time!  I hope it works.  The last time we dried off the cows, we tried to freeze some milk.  I was not impressed.  Once it thawed, it had a different texture and consistency.  I was not a fan.  Perhaps this will be different.

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.

Drying Off Daisy (with Mastitis)

Daisy, our oldest Jersey cow and the matriarch of the herd, is pregnant and will be calving in a couple of months. Her due date is November 3rd.  We like to dry our cows off two months in advance of them calving in order to give them time to rest and to allow the cow to expend all her energy on developing the calf rather than producing milk.  It was high time for a rest for Daisy.  She's been in milk for a little over two years!

We were only milking her once a day, and she was only giving us around 3/4 of a gallon per day. Her milk is very rich with a high butterfat content.  Now in drying off a cow, if they are producing less than two gallons a day, you can pretty much just stop milking cold turkey.  They will dry off with no problem.  If they are producing more than 2 gallons a day, then you have to gradually dry them off. This was going to be easy.

Except we noticed a problem.  The muslin cloth that we use as a filter caught a clump of discharge in the milk.  You can see it in the photo below a little left of center.  This is infection and could be the beginnings of mastitis.  You don't want to play around with that - especially when we're drying her off and won't be milking the possible infection out anymore.

Mastitis?

Penicillin is an antibiotic that we're going to use to treat her.  This is really out of the ordinary for us. We hardly ever use antibiotics, but we want to get this under control.  Penicillin has a 48 hour layoff period after the injection where you must throw away the milk and not drink it.  Since we're drying her off, it is no problem.

The dosage is 1 ML for every 100 pounds, given for 3 days.  We want to ensure we give her the proper dosage, so we got out the Dairy weigh tape.  You place the tape around the animal, right behind the front legs, pull it together, and it will tell you what they weigh.  The Jersey line is the one at the bottom of the tape.  Holstein and Guernsey lines are on the first and second lines, respectively.  The tape showed that Daisy weighs a little more than 928 pounds, so this told us that we need to give her somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 1/4 ML of penicillin.

The weigh tape

While Tricia cleaned up the injection site with some rubbing alcohol and gauze, I drew the proper amount of penicillin in the syringe.

Filling the syringe

This is an intramuscular injection than is to be given in the neck.  You jab the needle all the way in at a 90 degree angle, pulling it out just a little to ensure that there is no blood in the base of the syringe.  You don't want to inject into a vein, as that is highly dangerous.  

Once you've seen no blood, you go ahead and inject the antibiotic into the neck muscle.  Daisy is not good with needles.  She snorted and moved around a lot.  We did our best to hold her, but even though she was tied down, she was a little hard to control.

She was happy when we were done.  We'll continue to give her two more doses of penicillin for the next two nights.  We will also check her bag to ensure that they are not hard or hot.  That would suggest mastitis.  After two days, all looks good but we'll continue to stay on top of it so that she doesn't get sick.  In about two months, Daisy will give us a little calf - hopefully a heifer to befriend Clarabelle.

Drying off Rosie

Rosie is one of our three Jersey cows who will be calving first and we think the earliest date of exposure to the bull puts her due date about June 18th.  She's been in milk for around one and a half years and that's a long time for her (and us). Generally, a practice that we do, is to dry the cows off exactly two months before their delivery date.  That means we stop milking them. This gives them a much needed vacation from being milked every single day, twice a day. It also gives us a chance to have a break as well.  The cow needs to build up her stores of energy and use that energy for growing the calf in its final two months before birth and also to build up her strength for calving.

The first thing we do is gradually go down on the minimal amount of dairy ration that we give them during milking time, switching from a higher protein, nutritionally balanced ration to sweet feed only. This reduces the energy content of the feed they use to produce milk somewhat, and results in a drop-off of milk production.  The cows primarily eat grass, though.  As mentioned earlier, we gradually stop milking over a week time period.  On April 11th we stopped milking Rosie twice a day and dropped to once a day milkings and followed that practice for a week.

Milk production is based on demand. Where she was previously producing 2 gallons a day, when we went to once a day milkings, her daily production dropped to 1 and 1/3 gallons.  At this point (after a week on 1 milking per day), it was safe to stop milking her entirely.  Tomorrow will mark a week since she's been milked.  It's been nice to sleep 30 minutes later each day!

Rosie eating in the side yard by the potatoes and corn

It is very important to keep a close eye on your newly dried off cow.  The udder will swell with milk. I'm sure it is uncomfortable for the ole girl.  There is a chance that the cow could get mastitis and you don't want that infection to set in.  This is more of a danger when the cow is producing much more milk.  Actually, different publications I've read state that if the animal is producing a daily volume of milk that is 2 gallons or less, you can just stop with no problems.  The cow's body signals the mammary glands to stop producing milk since no one is drinking it.  Over a few weeks, the udder will shrink back down.  Until then, we inspect her every day.

Each day we feel Rosie's udder, each of the four compartments, to ensure that they are soft and not warm.  A hardening of the bag or heat tells you that something is wrong.  As you can see in the photo, her bags are somewhat swollen, but they are not hard and although they were full of milk and tight a few days ago, they are softening over the past couple of days.

Rosie in the process of drying off after about a week of not being milked.

So now it's only Daisy that we're milking once a day.  Daisy will be calving around October 31st, so we will repeat this process with Daisy on August 31st.  Then we'll get ready for Amy to have her first calf around December 23rd.

For now we'll relish our time off.  Milking one cow once a day is not a big deal and provides a little downtime while still giving us access to the delicious milk we enjoy drinking and turning into butter, cream, kefir, and cheese.  Once Rosie calves and freshens, we'll have an abundant supply of milk again, but for now, we'll enjoy the break - or use that time to get the Spring garden in!

Palpation Results

We have 2 registered Jersey cows named Daisy and Rosie, along with a registered Jersey heifer named Amy.  All of them have been exposed to a registered Jersey bull.  Both Daisy and Rosie were exposed to Bully, our bull that we just sold a couple of months ago.  As far as Amy is concerned, once Bully was gone, we had to take her across town to a friend who has a registered Jersey bull.

So we're a couple of months past the point that they should have been bred, so it is time to find out if they are indeed pregnant.  We haven't seen any of them go in heat in a couple of cycles, but we want to know for sure.  Tricia called out the veterinarian whose office is only about a mile from our home and asked for a farm call.  A farm call is a house call - the way the old-time "people" doctors used to do where they'd show up with their black bag and examine you at your home.

Well, our veterinarian arrived, but not with a black bag.  He came with shoulder length rubber gloves to palpate the cows.  Rectal palpation is the cheapest, easiest way to determine if your cows are pregnant.  After putting on the gloves and lubricating them, the veterinarian puts his arm into the cow's rectum and begins manually evacuating feces to make room to go deeper.  Not an enjoyable job!  Once room has been cleared, the veterinarian locates the cervix and then moves farther to the uterus.

The veterinarian feels for a small oval floating in fluid or a fetus.  If the veterinarian doesn't find that, the cow is 'Open' or not bred.  To determine how far along the cow is in pregnancy, it takes lots of practice.  I saw on a website that a common guide for aging the fetus is:

• The size of a mouse:  2 months
• The size of a rat:        3 months
• The size of a kitten:   4 months
• The size of a cat:       5 months
• The size of a puppy:  6 months
• The size of a dog:      7 months

The gestation period for a cow is roughly 280 days, so its about the same as in humans.  We like to know pretty close to the due date because our cows are in milk. We like to dry them off 2 months prior to calving so that they can use the energy/nutrients in developing the calf versus producing milk.  So what is the verdict?  Were they pregnant?  Look at the picture of Rosie below.  What do you think she's telling you?

"I'm Pregnant!"

Based on size, we assume that Rosie was bred by our bull, Bully, on September 11th, and that puts her calving between June 18th - June 28th.  Daisy was also pregnant and based on size, we think she was also bred by our bull, Bully on January 24th, and that puts her due date somewhere between October 31 - November 10th.  Amy wasn't palpated, but she hasn't come back into heat and we think she was bred by our friend's bull on March 8th, putting her delivery date between December 13th and December 23rd.

Back to the drying off process.  We are currently milking Daisy once a day and Rosie twice a day. According to things we've read, if your cow is giving less than 2 gallons of milk a day, you can simply quit milking them.  Milk production is based on supply and demand, so they'll simply dry up. You must be careful, though, and inspect them as you don't want them to get mastitis during the process.  You simply feel the bag for heat and hardness.  We're going to be conservative and rather than quitting milking Rosie 'cold-turkey,' we are going to go down to once a day milkings for her for a week and then stop.  We'll start with the once-a-day milkings this weekend for her and that will put Rosie dried off for exactly two months prior her earliest due date.  That coincides with good grass growth in the pasture, putting Rosie in optimal condition at the point of calving.

2 pregnant cows and a pregnant heifer!  Exciting times, indeed!!!

We're back!

Well, the Sonnier Family has returned home from our annual family vacation.  This year we went tent camping in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park for a week. We escaped for a week in the mountains, leaving sweltering 100 degree heat and humidity and escaping to highs in the 70's and lows in the low 60's. It was truly refreshing and I'll tell you a bit about the trip over the next week or so.  In addition to making some great family memories, we also learned a lot, believe it or not.  It was great to get away, but as it always is, it was great to be back home.

How, you might ask, does a family get away from a farm in which we're milking two cows and a goat everyday?  Not to mention taking care of two dogs, two cats, two turkeys and 60+ chickens?  Two words: Good Friends!  It also takes a little planning.  A couple weeks prior to leaving for North Carolina we started the process of drying off Rosie.

You left me high and dry

Rosie had been in milk for about 9 months.  Sometimes we'll keep milking the cows for a year and a half, but since Rosie will be calving somewhere around November 3rd, we wanted to give her an opportunity to put the energy that she's currently using to produce milk - into developing her calf for the last trimester.

Since milk production is based upon supply & demand, for a few days we stopped milking twice a day and went to once a day milkings.  Then we stopped milking completely.  If the cow is producing less than 2 gallons a day, you can do this.  If she's producing more than 2 gallons a day, you have to milk her down a little bit to take the pressure off.  Rosie was right at two gallons and we watched her closely for several days.  Her udder was pretty tight after the first day, but after a couple of days, her bag began to loosen, confirming that she was indeed drying up.

Well that solves the issue for one cow.  How about the other?  Well, unlike Rosie, whose calf was stillborn, Daisy has a calf, Bully, by her side.  Normally we share the milk with him.  He gets the milk all day until a little after 5:30 pm when we separate him from Daisy.  Daisy then makes milk for us all night and we milk her at 5:30 in the morning and then put Bully and his Mom back together.

Bully will get ALL the milk while we're gone!

While we were vacationing, Bully simply stayed with his Mom all day long, getting double the amount of milk than he normally does.  He kept Daisy milked down.  This made the old boy very happy and enabled us to get away without Daisy getting engorged and possibly getting mastitis.  It worked beautifully.  When we returned, we simply separated Bully and began teaching him to share again!

But what about Nellie?  Well, we have the same system with Annie that we do with Bully and we could have used the same method and left Annie and Nellie together all day during the week.  We actually have some good friends who volunteered to milk Nellie for the week, so Tricia put on goat milking training for a few days and our friend fed and milked Nellie all week!

What about us?

Instead of putting Nellie and Annie back together, though, it is now time to wean her.  I'll separate Annie from Nellie by putting her in a separate pen.  We'll have to start milking Nellie twice a day, but Annie is eating grass now in addition to milk and she's getting big - too big to still be on Mama.

The cows and goats were in very good hands while we were out.  Another very good friend came by the house twice a day and fed and watered dogs, cats, cows, the calf, goats, turkeys, chickens and gathered eggs  for us.  Family members checked on the house while we were gone.  What a blessing it is to have good friends and a loving family!  Our family enjoyed the vacation immensely and it wouldn't have been possible without them.

Tomorrow, I'll share with you about the art of blacksmithing!

Drying Miss Daisy

Daisy is our oldest Jersey Cow and the 'boss' of the barnyard.  The old matriarch of the milk stall will be 6 years old in June.  You might call her the "Dairy Queen."  She has given birth to Stryker, our little Jersey bull, who we'll be putting up for sale shortly.  Jersey bulls are notoriously mean as they get older and I don't want to have a safety issue out on our pasture.  Stryker is 1 year and 5 months old.  She also gave birth to Romeo, another bull calf who had a heart on his forehead:

Romeo, Daisy's other little bull calf

We're praying Daisy gives us a heifer this time.  We have been milking Daisy for about a year and a half now.  Milk production peaks at about 4 months after birth, but they'll continue to produce as long as you milk them, but the volume drops off.  Daisy is an interesting case.  Cows have four teats on their udder and she only produces milk out of three.  When we were weaning Rosie, her half sister, we put Rosie and Daisy together in order to separate Rosie from her mother, Buttercup.  We affectionately called Buttercup, 'Mama Cow."

Well, Rosie began to nurse on Daisy even though Daisy had never calved and was not in milk.  This ended up ruining one of Daisy's teats.  This was a valuable lesson that we learned - one of those expensive lessons you learn by making mistakes.  In a commercial dairy, this would have rendered Daisy useless and she would have probably been sold since her production would be only 3/4 of what it could have been.  Well, at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we believe Quality > Quantity.  Daisy produces wonderful, rich, creamy milk.  She's a gentle cow, too, and has won Russ belt buckles and many ribbons with her friendly demeanor.

Russ & Miss Daisy

We are now beginning the process of drying Daisy off.  You see, Daisy is expecting a calf in early May.  We always dry off a cow 2 months prior to her calving.  We do this for several reasons.  First, Daisy needs a rest and so do we.  We milked her once a day for the first six months after she calved as we shared the milk with her calf.  When we weaned Stryker at six months, then we started milking her twice a day and we've done that for the last year.  We're all tired!


I need a rest, people!

This rest allows Daisy to 'take a vacation' and, most importantly, build up quality colostrum. Unlike a human baby, the calf doesn't get any antibodies through the placenta. It only gets them through the colostrum the first 24 hours when its gut is permeable. If you don't dry off your cow before she calves, good colostrum never builds up and you will end up with a sickly or dead calf. Finally, drying the cow off allows the cow to concentrate all that energy that would be used to produce milk into growing her calf.

Generally, if the cow is producing less than 2 gallons a day, you can just stop milking without concerns of the cow getting mastitis and having problems.  Daisy produces right at two gallons.  Our plan of action is as follows: This week we'll only milk her once a day versus two times a day.  Cows produce based on demand, so the reduced demand this week should lessen production.  Next week we'll completely stop milking her, but will keep an eye on her to ensure her udder doesn't get hard or hot. 

She'll rest up and so will we as Daisy directs all her energy toward her baby due in May!  Well, we're still milking Rosie, so not total rest for us, but time to direct some of our energy into preparing the Spring Garden.