Our Maker's Acres Family Farm: Leaping like calves released from the stall!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Leaping like calves released from the stall!

This morning when we went out to milk, we discovered Daisy and Rosie inside the barn. That might not seem odd, but we try to keep them out of the barn except during milking. You see, we've found that they are very poor housekeepers and tend to "mess up" the place, if you know what I mean. If we keep the gates closed and keep them outside of the barn, it stays nice and tidy - a necessity in a home dairy. Somehow, we (okay I) didn't latch the gate and Daisy pushed her way through the gate to be with her little calf. Apparently the peer pressure was too great and Rosie followed as well.

We have 2 cows currently in milk. We milk Rosie twice a day - once in the morning and again in the evening. For Daisy, we share her milk with a calf and milk her once a day with the calf getting the other milking. The calf is not Daisy's but an orphan and it took several weeks of work, but eventually Daisy adopted her and loves her as her own.

To rewind a bit, my dad and mom called me back in mid April and told me that a newborn Angus heifer had been abandoned by its mother out at the farm in Oberlin and was going to die unless we could bottlefeed her. They named her Blackberry, since she is black and they found her nestled underneath some blackberry bushes.

We took her in and tried to get Daisy or Rosie to nurse her as their own by holding them and forcing Blackberry to try to suck on their udders. Nothing doing. They treated her like dirt, kicking and head-butting the newbie away. We resorted to Plan B. The plan involved taking Daisy's milk that we've milked for personal consumption, putting it in a baby bottle (for calves) and feeding it to the calf. The idea is to get the smell of the milk on and in the calf. The mama cow smells her milk on the calf and it fools her into thinking that the calf is her own and then will adopt her. So we began the process.

Tricia and Benjamin bottle feeding Blackberry

Oh, did Blackberry enjoy the milk! Eventually and after much work for a couple of weeks, we were able to make the transition from bottle to udder and Daisy finally took Blackberry on as her own. What a relief. We were kind of worried about her for a bit.

Now, fast forward almost 4 months and little Blackberry is not the little fart you see below. She's a big calf, probably tipping the scales easily at over 200 pounds now. If we were to keep her with her mama all the time, we'd not get a drop of milk. Not good.

Milk. It does a body good.

So what we do is this: We leave the cow and calf together all day and then at around 6 pm, we separate them. We have a stall in the barn that you can see behind and to the left of Russ that we walk Blackberry into and close the latch. That enables Daisy to make milk FOR US from 6 pm that night until 5 am the next morning. Daisy eats grass for the rest of the afternoon and enjoys the break. Sort of a "Mother's Day Out" program we've instituted on the farm.

Blackberry is not dumb. She knows what's coming at 6 pm each day. She is very reluctant walking into the stall. There is much moo-ing (if that is a word) and gnashing of teeth! She knows that she is confined to a stall until the morning. She longs to see her mama and longs for the nourishment she provides.

Five o'clock in the morning arrives. The alarm clocks go off in the Sonnier household and we sleepwalk to the barn. We can hear Blackberry moo-ing many mornings. We walk in and turn on the lights, tell her good morning and round up the cows for morning milking. Blackberry gets up anticipating what is coming. Once I finish milking Daisy, I untie her, put up the buckets, move the milking stool out of the way and... open the stall! You ought to see her go. Blackberry rushes out and almost runs over me! She is so happy to leave the stall! Sometimes analogies on the farm just reach out and beat me on the head. I'm weird like that. I got to thinking about the following from the Good Book:

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. - Malachi 4:2
If you can see the excitement that Blackberry exhibits, you'd know the vivid description that the verse is conveying. Sheer joy. Reckless abandon. There is coming a day for believers in Christ when all the lawlessness, all the oppression, injustice, violence will be over. All the worries of this world, all the tears, the sickness, the loneliness, the despair, the death - all of it will be no more. This will be a breath of fresh air, TRUE hope and change brought about by our Messiah, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The best part is that it will go on for eternity! The unrestrained joy of believers at that time will be similar to Blackberry being freed from the stall, released to go be near to the Provider, released from confinement, joyfully running and jumping around! Keep the faith!