Land Flowing With Milk and Honey

The lights are burning in the barn.  LuLu has been in milk for 14 months now.  We've finally weaned her bull calf, Nick, and he's in the back pasture that we call "the bull pen."  As the cows go into heat, we run them into the bull pen to be with Nick until after they've finished with standing heat.  Our goal is to get Rosie and LuLu bred and the big heifer, Elsie, bred for the first time.  

We're milking LuLu in the morning and at night.  She's not making a whole lot of milk, but we're trying to keep her cleaned out so that she doesn't get mastitis.  LuLu has been a pretty good milker.  Since Nick was weaned, she's making SO much cream.  Sometimes almost half of the bucket is heavy cream!

Here is our inventory in the fridge of LuLu milk.  It's all dated and we use the First in, First out method to make sure it doesn't go bad.  We get real creative with different things to do with milk when we have a good supply like this.

Cream rises to the top, so you can see what I mean about the rich Jersey milk from LuLu.  We skim the cream off the top and shake up the rest.  So delicious!

Lately, we've been making lots of butter and stockpiling it.  Butter freezes nicely, so we're building up stores of butter in the freezer.

We also have more fresh-churned butter in the fridge ready to slather on piping hot sourdough bread.

At some point here pretty soon, we'll dry off LuLu and that means we'll have a break from milking until the cows calve and freshen.  We're still milking Agnes, the goat.  Tricia plans on freezing some of her milk to make some goat milk soap.  We talked about milk tonight.  I've a story to tell you about honey, but I'll save that for another night.

Progress Report on LuLu

In the middle of the long, hot summer last year, LuLu gave birth to her first calf, Nicky.  Calving in the worst possible time of year wasn't bad enough.  We happened to be in a drought.  We had no grass.  LuLu was in stress from labor and delivery and had no strength.  We babied her and her calf.  We ran water hoses to try to keep one small patch of pasture alive with bermuda grass.  We drenched her with molasses and gave her a calcium supplement.  

In all truth, we thought that we were going to lose her.  Slowly, she rebounded.  She and Nicky, although stressed, made it.  This year, the grass in the pasture is growing as we've had lots more rain than last year.  LuLu is a small cow and isn't a particularly large producer of milk like our other cows.  We get between a half gallon to a gallon each day.  She seems to have perfected the art of holding back her milk for her calf.  She is able, somehow, to not let her milk drop for us.  She's real tricky like that.

It's hot in the barn so we keep the fans running while she eats.  That helps in two ways:  It cools us and her down and it blows the mosquitoes away.

You can see we have some hay twine wrapped around her rear end that holds her tail out of the way.  LuLu will show her annoyance at us, if you don't wrap her tail, by swishing us in the face with her tail.  Although that's not such a bad thing, it is not an enjoyable experience if her tail is wet with dew or urine.

We hobble one of her back legs to a cleat on the 4x4.  That keeps her from kicking the bucket.  We've learned that lesson the hard way, having milked mostly a full bucket and then having her kick it over and spill the whole thing!  Hence the old saying, "You can't cry over spilled milk."  She isn't the type cow to kick you to hurt you, so that's a good thing.

We are talking about weaning Nicky within the next month.  That will take some of the stress off of LuLu for the peak summer months.  Plus, he's a big galoot and able to make it on grass as he approaches his one year birthday.  We'll be focusing on getting LuLu re-bred and Elsie bred to yield spring calves in 2025.

Clarabelle's Bad Day

Have you ever had a bad day?  Most people would answer in the affirmative that there are sometimes days where perhaps one thing goes badly and then things keep getting worse - one bad thing follows another.  Clarabelle, our little seven month old Jersey heifer, had one of those days this last week.

For starters, Tricia had our veterinarian drop by for a farm call and give Clarabelle a brucellosis vaccination.  Brucellosis is a serious disease that infects ruminants and can be transmitted to humans through consumption of their milk.  Brucellosis is incurable and highly contagious and it is for this reason that when herds test positive, they must all be slaughtered.  Although there is no cure, there is a vaccination.  Our veterinarian came and administered the injection.  Animals who have received the brucellosis vaccination must get an ear tag, or in the case of a show animal, an ear tattoo to show that they are vaccinated against the disease. More information on brucellosis can be found At this APHIS link.

The injection is not a pleasant experience for the animal and neither is the tattoo. You can see the green dye in Clarabelle's ear below from her brucellosis tattoo.

Not a happy day

If you are wondering about the metal plate hanging from Clarabelle's nose, well, that leads us into the discussion of how Clarabelle's day continued getting worse from there.  Clarabelle was still nursing on her mom, Rosie.  Each day they spend the day together and she gets to drink Rosie's rich milk.  At night we separate them and Rosie makes milk all night for us.  Well, at seven months old, we wean our calves. That means that Clarabelle's days of drinking her mother's milk are over.

Weaning calves can meat separating them in separate pastures, but this sometimes causes undue stress on the momma cow and the calf.  We like to try to keep them together, but to do this, we put a weaning plate in the calf's nose.  That is what you see hanging in her nose.  There are many different styles.  Below is a primitive weaner that was used to wean calves.  You can see the philosophy of the devices. The device is placed in the animal's nose.  When the calf tries to nurse, the points irritate the momma cow and she won't let the calf suckle because it is uncomfortable.

Image Credit

Installation of the weaner is painless, though.  If you look closely below, you can see a tinge of orange in Clarabelle's nostril.  The weaning plate has rubber balls on the ends of each curved metal piece that is inserted in the nose.  Once in the nose it is tightened down by a wing nut, the rubber balls keeping the weaner from causing irritation.  It doesn't pierce the nose, but it still must annoy her.

Side view of the weaner

Not to mention the fact that she's now unable to get Rosie's teats in her mouth and drink the delicious milk.  She misses the milk and for the first few days, she'll moo and moo.

"Got Milk?"  NO, No I don't, unfortunately!

It doesn't take long, though for her to figure out how to stretch out her neck, extend the plate, and pull her head back across the grass or hay to eat.  Gravity, however, makes it impossible to do the same on Rosie's udder to get milk.

So all in all, it was a bad day.  An injection, a tattoo, a strange, uncomfortable device inserted into her nose, and then being cut off from ever drinking milk again! A bad day indeed.  Take heart, Clarabelle.  At least you're a milk cow and not a beef cow.!