Getting into A Good Routine

Life contains routines.  Since we are limited by a finite amount of time, it becomes important to become efficient in what you do.  It is true in a work setting, in personal projects, and even things on the farm.  We were already milking two goats twice a day.  Adding in milking LuLu once a day, as we share the milk with Betsy, her calf, and that's a lot of additional time to daily chores.

We milk LuLu in the late afternoon.  So far she hasn't gotten into the routine of coming to the barn to be milked.  But she will.  Right now we have to call her and walk way out into the pasture to get her and walk her to the barn.  Betsy will follow her on some days.  Most days, she's spirited and will run around and go exactly where you don't want her to go.  She hasn't figured out the concept of walking through an open gate yet!  It normally takes two people to get them both in the barn.  You may ask, why even bring Betsy into the barn at milking time?  It's important to have Betsy beside LuLu in the barn as LuLu will get nervous if her calf isn't beside her.  Furthermore, she won't drop her milk for us. 

In the past several afternoons, we haven't had to walk quite as far out in the pasture and Betsy has become more of a willing participant.  They're gonna get it.  It's a function of showing them that there is a reward for them doing what we want them to do.

The second routine is milking.  Even though a cow has been milked before, they have to get back into practice.  First thing, in the photo below, you see Betsy positioned by LuLu's head.  That way it comforts LuLu.  She's not worried about her calf.  She's a good momma.

Once we have LuLu in the milking stall and Betsy in place, we hobble one of LuLu's back legs.  This keeps her from kicking.  We pour the feed in the trough and start milking.  To hand-milk, it generally takes about 20 minutes.  This presents a problem, because LuLu is impatient.  If she finishes her supper, she backs up in the milking stall, making it hard to finish milking.

Over the past several evenings, LuLu has settled into a groove and stands still when she finishes eating.  It has to feel good and relieving to have her udders emptied from all the pressure of a full bag.  Routines are a part of life and as we go, we fine-tune the processes to see if we can make things better, more efficient and timely.  Some things we try and it doesn't work.  In that case, we revert back to the old routine.  But we're always looking for a better way.

I know you may be thinking that a better way would be to purchase a milking machine rather than milking by hand.  That day may come as we're getting older, but what we find is that any time you save by milking mechanically, you gobble up that time saved on the back-end in sterilizing the equipment.  For now, we'll stay with hand milking.

How in the World Did we Begin Milking Cows?

If you've been following our blog, you know we milk cows.  We started down this path many years ago.  I know that I might have talked about, at some point or another, about the genesis of this decision, but for some reason, (perhaps to justify to myself), I'll attempt to explain again today.

To begin, I've shown below LuLu, one of our two Jersey heifers.  She's a pretty little thing.  She's healthy and playful and looks to be a great addition to our mini herd going forward.

To the left of LuLu on the other side of the bale, is Rosie.  That's LuLu's mother.  She's getting up there in age.  Clarabelle (not pictured) is the mother of Elsie (not pictured) and she's getting up in age as well.  Our intention is for LuLu and Elsie to replace Rosie and Clarabelle on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.

LuLu was born on 6/14/21 and currently weighs 440 pounds.  Elsie was born on 4/7/21 and currently weighs 514 pounds.  About every other year, Rosie and Clarabelle give us calves.  When they are bulls, we raise them for a year and a half and then take them to be processed.  They provide meat for our freezer.  Grass fed, no hormones, no antibiotics, and about as natural as you can get, although not organic.  When the calves are heifers, we generally keep them, but have sold them on several occasions.  There is a good market for Jersey cows.  Their milk is rich, having the highest butterfat content in relation to other breeds.

So what made us start this?  Although I was raised on a farm, we didn't milk cows.  Tricia was raised in a city and certainly didn't milk cows.  Prior to getting cows, we got laying hens and daily collected fresh eggs.  It was always a great thing for kids.  I recall my children going out to the chicken tractor with a basket and collecting eggs.  It was a fun thing.  But milk cows?  Tricia and her quest for health, was the catalyst for this decision.  She wanted a milk cow and, well, I got her one.  Buttercup, who we always just called "Mama Cow," (with a calf by her side) arrived and was greeted with much excitement.  One day later after milking, or attempting to milk Mama Cow, Tricia cried, saying, "Can we do this, Kyle?"  Many years later, we're still doing it, so the answer was in the affirmative.

But let's go back and expand on the why.  We had a number of health issues in our family that Tricia researched in the area of gut health, and determined that drinking raw milk provides beneficial bacteria to the gut as well as other nutritive benefits.  Pasteurization heats the milk, killing off good bacteria along with the bad.  We didn't want to do that.  There are many people who are like-minded and seek out raw milk for the exact same benefits.

While we are talking benefits, let's talk about more of them.  Milking cows is a pastoral, peaceful thing.  Many mornings, especially cold, rainy mornings, we don't want to go out there and milk, but once you get out there, you are glad you did.  The cows are glad to see you.  The barn is cozy.  The routine is relaxing.  We hand milk, and that takes about 20 minutes.  When you sit on the stool and begin to milk, it is the PERFECT time to pray.  While the milk squirts in the bucket rhythmically, we talk to God, thanking Him, confessing our short-comings, and calling out our family member's and friend's names in prayer.

A family cow is a great way to teach kids responsibility.  They need to be fed and watered.  They need to be cared for.  Our kids showed livestock.  The nice thing about a dairy cow is that the cows are a continuous project.  You show the same animal year after year.  A bond is made between the child and the animal and a tenderness and sense of care results. 

Having fresh milk is a benefit in the kitchen, having fresh cream for coffee or whipped cream or butter making, having milk for drinking or making ice cream or sour cream, being able to make kefir or cheese, having the by-product of whey for lacto-fermenting.  It is a life long endeavor and we still learn things.  The book, "Keeping a Family Cow," was a great resource for us when getting started.  Living in a small rural town, there are many families that have dairy cows that are a library of knowledge when we have had questions or problems.

There are some drawbacks, to be sure.  Cows don't take weekends off.  Or holidays.  They have to be milked every day.  Vacations must be planned.  Excursions or day-long family events are always planned with the question, "Do we milk before we go or after we come back?"  We've milked many times very late at night.  Although it only takes 20 minutes to milk, you must come back to the house from the barn and pour the milk and sanitize the bucket and rag we use to filter the milk through.  Cows are hard work.  They can be stubborn and hard-headed.  They step on your toes.  They swish a urine soaked tail across your face from time to time.

Cows and calves sometimes die.  As they are around for more than a decade, you develop a sort of friendship with these gentle animals and it is hard when they die.  But that's life.  The positives definitely outweigh the negatives.  We try to live a simple life and milking cows hearkens back to the rural, family farms of times past, and I like that.

Our plans in the next several months is to wean LuLu and Elsie and, when they are breeding age, bring them and their mothers down the road to a neighbor that has registered Jersey bulls, for them to all be bred.  Then the cycle begins again!  It is a journey, for sure.  If anyone has any questions, post a comment below, and I'll be happy to try to answer them.

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.

Late For Breakfast

Dateline: 19 October 2019 7:38 AM

During the week, it is still dark when I leave the house on the way to work.  On the weekends, we sleep a little later before heading out to feed the animals and milk the cows and the other morning chores.  Once the sun rises, the roosters crow and all the hens leave their roosts and head to the gate to wait on us.  They have very small brains, but they KNOW at which gate their people will come through to bring them breakfast.  We're enjoying a nice cup of coffee and don't mind if the animals wait on us for a little bit. 

They wait impatiently at the gate until I arrive.  I gently push them out of the way.  My hands are full - two milking buckets, a bucket full of water with two clean rags, and my cell phone as I'm on call all weekend.  Many times when I lift the gate latch and open the gate, a hen will dart out.  This is frustrating.  I'll set the buckets down and go chase the errant hen.  I'll make her promise to never do that again and once I have that assurance from her, I'll toss her back over the fence.

I walk toward the barn, opening the gate.  By this time, the two mama goats along with their kids notice my arrival and come running to the barn.  The cows look up and slowly make their trek in from the pasture to the barn.  Before the cows arrive, I open the nesting boxes.  We close them all at night so the hens don't poop in them.  Then I go into the feed room and mix up everyone's feed, adding minerals to the buckets and then I open the feed troughs.  These are sealed each night so rats don't poop in the feed troughs.

By this time the cows are at the gate.  I feed the Aussie the bull and Buckwheat the goat and then I feed all the hens some hen scratch mixed with laying pellets.  This gets them out of the way.  I learned the hard way that if you let the cows in before feeding the chickens, the cows will step on the chickens and you'll have crippled chickens.  Distraction is key.

The cows are let in the corral and into the milking barn.  They are washed up and then milked.  It takes approximately 20 minutes per cow to milk them out, including washing.  The goats are fed and then everyone is let out of the barn.  The lights are turned off and we go inside to pour milk and wash buckets.  It takes about an hour from door to door.  It is a lot of work, but it is peaceful - especially when the weather starts getting nice - like now.

We're always looking to make our process more efficient.  We've solved our mud issues around the barn.  The rat problem we were having is way better than it used to be.  I guess our main issue right now involves the hens.  One (or some) of our hens has developed a very bad habit.  They are eating eggs in the nesting boxes.  The broken yolk gets on the other eggs, creating extra work when packing up eggs in cartons.  We've read numerous ideas on the Internet on how to stop this.  So far, nothing has worked.

There is an old saying that "You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet."  That's true, but many of the eggs that are being broken are being eaten by the chickens - not us! 

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. 

Milk Cows on Winter Vacation

Do you ever feel like you just need a vacation?  Time to get away?  Today we loaded up Bessie (our friend's Jersey), Daisy, Rosie, and Bully into the cattle trailer and drove them an hour and a half away.  They'll be on vacation until early January. Cows need vacation too.

All packed up for vacation

Having milk cows is truly a wonderful thing and we've never regretted getting the girls.  One thing that anyone with dairy cows can tell you is that having milk cows ties you down somewhat.  Milk cows need milking every day, even on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  When you have a special event and end up getting home after midnight, guess who's standing by the gate moo-ing and waiting for you to get changed in your 'milking clothes' and go milk them?  Yep, you guessed it.

It's nice to have a break every once in a while and we have a friend who needs some extra milk and has agreed to keep the girls for a week or so and milk them for us. So we packed them up (cows don't carry much luggage - just some hay and a sack or two of feed) and left after church today to bring them on vacation.  We also brought Bully.  Bully will romance some of our friend's cows while on vacation.

When we arrived at their vacation spot, it was truly a sight to see.  The property overlooks the river and there are other cows, goats, chickens, peafowl, rabbits, dogs, and horses to pal around with. The cows exited the trailer and ran around to familiarize themselves with their new surroundings, just like we do when we are in a new and different locale.

Our little farm seems very quiet right now with all the cows gone.  Well, not all of them...  Amy is still here.  She's a little perturbed about not being able to go on vacation.

Amy's pouting since she didn't get to go on the road trip

Tonight when we arrived back home from dropping off the cows, we changed clothes and quickly headed to church for our potluck supper in the fellowship hall. When we pulled up to the house after the potluck, ordinarily we'd have to change clothes and go out and milk the cows.  Tonight we didn't have to!  We welcome the little break from milking.  But we already miss the girls and it'll be nice to have them back home.  Vacations are always nice.  It is great to get away, but it's even better to get home.  I wonder if cows feel the same?

The Milking Plan

Each cow that goes into milk is different.  So far we've had a few struggles with Maggie as she had ketosis.  I explained that in a previous posting.  We cleared that up by feeding her alfalfa and supplemented with some calcium carbonate.  In a few days - presto!  She was better.  We were fighting a concurrent problem with her in that she doesn't like us to be milking her and so she kicks.  Hard!  The Kow Kan't Kick apparatus, I'm pleased to report, works amazingly well and we've been able to begin to start milking her once a day in the afternoon when I get home from my "real job."

While we were working out the kinks, we were just feeding the rich milk to our chickens.  Boy, do they love it.  Egg production has doubled, although I can't attribute it solely to Maggie's milk in the diet.  The weather has gotten nicer with highs in the 80"s and lows in the 50's.  Ahhhhhh....  Anyway, we look forward to drinking Maggie's milk.

Things were going swimmingly until a few days ago.  We milk through a muslin rag that acts as a filter to catch any cow hair, mosquitoes, etc. that might otherwise fall in the milk.  I normally squirt the first few squirts out of each teat on the ground to clear out the plug and any bacteria and then start milking into the milk bucket covered with the 'filter.'  I noticed that there was a little plug of milky-like substance that the rag caught when I first milked the back teat on the right hand side.  This is an indication of the beginning of mastitis.

Not a huge deal, but one that you want to stay on top of.  We don't like to use antibiotics on our animals, so the protocol we use is to ensure that Maggie is milked out.  I think that the problem was that we were milking once a day and leaving Lili on her for the rest of the time.  At this age Lili is just too small to empty her.  In other words, Maggie is making too much milk for her to handle right now.  So we began to milk Maggie out twice a day AND leaving Lili on her as well.  We also went back to feeding the milk to the laying hens.  They're not complaining!  In only two days, the milk cleared, letting us know that we caught it in time and our diagnosis and treatment worked.  Sometimes things work out.

I walked up on the cows and thought this would be a nice Mother/Daughter photograph, except for the fact that Lili wasn't cooperating and proceeded to life her tail and pee.  Cows have no modesty, I tell you!

Not a flattering pose, Lili!

Just yesterday, we put Maggie on the regular milking plan which goes like this:  We wake up at 5:15 and trudge out to the barn.  Lili (Maggie's calf) and Bully (Daisy's calf) have been separated from their momma's since the previous afternoon, so Maggie and Daisy will be full of milk.  Here is little Lili in her stall where we lock her up away from her Momma for the night.  

Solitary Confinement

Doesn't she look sad?

I'm so lonely sitting here in the dark.

The first several nights that we separated Lili from Maggie, Maggie mooed and mooed all night long - and then mooed some more.  Tricia said, "Kyle, I bet the neighbors absolutely hate us."  Tricia got up a few times in the middle of the night to go let Maggie get close to Lili to give the neighborhood some peace and quiet.  I got up once, I think.  I sleep hard and Maggie's mooing doesn't wake me up.

Back to the morning routine, we wash Maggie & Daisy and give them a little feed and milk them.  We also feed Rosie outside the barn.  She'll be calving in November, so we'll be milking her in a month or so.  Tricia then milks our Nubian Dairy goat, Nellie.

If we had bees, I'd say that we live in a land flowing with milk and honey.  I still think Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is like the Promised Land, but it is just a land flowing with milk!  We have a good friend who provides us with local honey, but it doesn't come off of our land.

Well, since the earlier photograph was ruined by Lili misbehaving, I figured I'd get a shot of her while she's on her best behaviour.  Here she is:  

Awwwww!  Look how cute!

She's about as cute as they come, resting in the grass.  That is a really moooo-ving picture.

Kow Kan't Kick

Milking a cow that has never been milked is always a wild card.  You just don't know how things are going to go.  Maggie has been difficult to milk due to her really small teats in the back and the fact that she moves around a lot and kicks.  Our other cows have kicked, but they're generally not a kick meant to hurt you, but one to just push you away.  Maggie's kicks are more forceful and one I don't want to be on the receiving end of.

We figured that we'd better do something about that before someone gets hurt.  We ordered a product called Kow Kan't Kick.  Kow Kan't Kick looks like some kind of a Medieval torture device, but it doesn't hurt the cow at all.

Kow Kan't Kick

The first thing you want to do is put some sort of a cushion on Maggie's back.  The apparatus may hurt her if it rests on her backbone with no cushion.

Cushion for Maggie's backbone

Then you position it right in front of the cow's pin bones and angling back to where the ends are right about where her "arm pits" are.

Positioning the ends in place 

Now while holding it in place, you start turning the crank to tighten it up.  The crank causes the bottom part to tighten up.

Tightening down on the device

You can see how tightening is starting to lightly pinch the cow on the very bottom.  This doesn't hurt the cow, it merely compresses the muscles the cow uses to lift her leg and kick, rendering her unable to do so.

It is time to try it out to see if she'll be able to lift her leg and kick when I start milking her.

Getting the milking bucket in place

Other than not wanting to get kicked while I'm milking, the other thing I'm trying to avoid is having her kick over the bucket full of milk.  After spending time and energy milking her the last thing you want to happen is for her to kick the bucket, tip it over, and lose all the fresh milk on the ground.  There is an old saying that "You can't cry over spilled milk."  Let me tell you that after milking a cow, if she kicks the bucket over, you feel like crying!

I'm here to tell you that the Kow Kan't Kick device works and works perfectly.  I was able to milk Maggie without her lifting her leg or kicking at all.

Success!!

We finished in no time and Tricia began loosening up the crank to pull it off of her.  We were very pleased with this purchase and plan on continuing to use it.

One other interesting thing that I wanted to show you about Maggie is something on her bag.  You can easily see that the front teats are longer than the back ones.  It was difficult to milk her back teats at first, but now that her bag is not swollen due to giving birth, it is easier to milk her.  

The other think is that if you look between her front and back teats, you can see a little "button."  When Maggie was born, she actually had 5 teats.  It looked odd and I did some research on it and found that this is not uncommon and that the fifth teat is not connected to any milk gland and should be clipped off with some sharp clippers as soon as possible and that is what I did.  It didn't hurt her at all and I just dabbed some petroleum jelly mixed with iodine on the location and it healed up nicely.

Can you see where Maggie's fifth teat used to be?

Now that we've gotten Kow Kan't Kick to help us milk Maggie, we'll begin using it and will start milking her in the morning just like we do with Daisy and Rosie.

Difficulties milking Maggie

We're having a few problems milking Maggie.  First, she moves her feet around a lot.  This presents problems as she inevitably kicks the bucket of milk.  Then she'll move her feet close together and it is next to impossible to get your hands on her teats to milk them.  If you try to pull her legs out, she kicks.

Maggie is making things difficult

We tried to hobble one of her back legs like we do when we milk Daisy and Rosie, but she was having none of that.  She went absolutely berserk.  We took the hobble off before she hurt herself or us.  We're going to order the following contraption from a Jeffers catalog.  It is called Kow Kan't Kick, and is designed to clip over the cow's back and crank tight to control the muscles that control kicking.

Kow Kan't Kick

Problem #2.  Her back teats are very, very small.  They are so small that you can't get your hands around them to milk.  What you have to do is 'strip' the milk out using your thumb and index finger.  This characteristic is intentionally bred into animals as short teats are a positive attribute in commercial dairy cows as they use mechanical milking as opposed to hand milking like we do.  Short teats fit more easily into the milking cups.  They don't fit in my hands, though, and this increases the time of milking considerably.

Short teats in the back

The final problem is that Maggie is has Ketosis.  This is also called Acetonaemia.  It is appropriately named because her breath and her milk smells like acetone (nail polish remover).  This is a common problem with milk cows and is due to a lack of  glucose (sugar) in the blood and tissues.  Glucose is produced by the cow from carbohydrates eaten from the pasture.

In the last trimester, glucose is shifted toward producing the calf.  Once born, lactation starts and glucose is needed for producing milk sugars and fats.  This draw on the animal's stores of glucose is such that the cow becomes hypoglycaemic (low blood sugar).  If the carbs are not adequate in the animal's diet to meet the glucose needs, the cow will start to rob glucose from their bodies' stores of fat.

We're treating her by feeding her extra carbs, giving her extra hay, alfalfa, and feed.  We'll watch her closely and if she doesn't improve, we'll give her a series of Propylene Glycol drenches.  Maggie's mother, Rosie was also susceptible to this every time she calved.  One of the things that can also cause this is if the cow is overweight at the time of calving.  Maggie was fat, but not overly fat.  Maybe I'm just biased, though.

Ketotic Milk

Meanwhile the milk she produces has to be discarded.  It is not dangerous to drink this milk.  It just has an unpleasant odor and taste.  (The chickens don't seem to mind it, though.)  Maggie's making things difficult, but that is just one of those things.  We'll keep our eyes on her closely.