My Very First Digital Continued
After Morgan's Bath, we ate and Tony shows off his superior Daddy skills. *tsk tsk* The kids room is a mess. It's amazing how quickly that happens...
I attempt to get a picture of Morgan's outfit (that is entirely her pick, btw) but she turns her nose up at the camera, away from me.
Abby LOVES the wagon. You can just make out her "happy and expectant" face, here. She's actually doing this cute little rocking-back-and-forth thing she does when she's excited. We are getting ready to go into the barn and see if Jim needs any help.
But First!! Morgan (lil diva that she is) issues an executive plea:
Evening Swing-time! Morgan loves the swing more than anything else, hehe.
Aaah, come on, Mom! I don't WANNA be on the ground!!! Put down the stupid camera and pick me up!
Ok, this next section probably requires a bit of explanation:
We have five groups of cows, here. There are the yearling bulls (which have all been sold, as I understand it, to Parable Farms, which is the farm my parents live on), the heifers (which are last years calves), the calves, the dry cows (ones who aren't being milked right now, most of which are pregnant and expecting before too long) and the cows that are freshening (which means they are currently being milked). Now the dry cows are all out to pasture right now but they have to be brought in at night for grain rations, which takes place in the feed-stall. Usually the feed stall is occupied by the fresheners so we feed the dry cows while the fresheners are being milked. This means that when the fresheners are finished being milked, we have to push all the dry cows back out to pasture, being careful not to allow any of them to mix. That's how the evening started, with us pushing the dry cows out of the feed-stall.
As you can see, there is really no actual "pushing" involved, most of the time.
After you, Ladies! Tony is in the feed-stall shooing them out from behind. I stand in the Y gate so as to keep them from going that way and mingling with the fresheners.
Last out of the stall is our resident bull. He is mostly blind and about as sweet as can be, if a little shy. He always amuses me. In this picture, you can see him doing the cow-version of picking his nose. He is very fond of Jim and Jim has to be careful because a bull trying to give you a hug is, uh, well it can be hazardous to your health!
While dh shoos all the dry cows down the chute and into the pasture, I go back into the barn and see if I can give Jim a hand.
These ladies are done and can go into the feed stall. I'm just making sure they go into the feed-stall and not just wander around the room. They don't really need much encouragement, they know what comes next: GRAIN!!! And believe me, the LOVE their grain. Notice the red on the cows teats? It's a special solution put there to help prevent mastitis. The cows teats are treated before and after milking, though the solution that's used before milking is wiped off right before milking begins. This is not only to prevent disease in the cows udders, but also to make sure that there is absolutely no cow crap or bad bacteria in the milk.
After shooing the first group into the barn, I let in the last group to be milked. Jim has already started the girls on the right, here, and is setting up the girls on the left, now. Notice he wears rubber gloves while working with them. Every precaution is taken not to make the cows sick. This is an USDA Organic Dairy Farm, so these cows are not fed antibiotics nor are they fed RBGH. There are grass (or hay) fed girls. (they get very little corn, generally as a treat, and grain is something most dairy cows need to keep production up. We are looking at cows that produce well on hay only, but afaik, "looking into" is the operative word, here.)
Ah, sweet relief to the ladies! You can actually see the milk in the clear parts, right underneath the silver bits on the udders. This thing works pretty much exactly like an electric breast-pump...just on a grand scale! Some of these cows give 3 or 4 gallons at a milking!
Ok, the part of the day I look forward to every day:
That's a bottle! The youngest calves need to be bottle fed for a few day so that they learn to use an artificial nipple. It's funny to me that when human babies are bottle fed, it's usually formula. But we don't feed calves formula, that's to expensive AND it's bad for the cows. They get raw milk. Of course, for the first 24 hrs, the calf gets colostrum straight from mom. After that, she gets milk out of the bulk tank, which is basically everybody's milk all at once. I'm not sure of all the reasons why we pull the calves off the mothers but I do know that trying to milk the fresheners with calves running all over the place would be very difficult, if not impossible. I think, also, pulling the calves off the dams is supposed to help their rumen's develop more quickly (the first "stomach" where the hay ferments).
I'm trying to do them both at once because the big brown and white one is a bully. This is a calf that is an entirely different breed than any of the others we have. It is this breed that supposedly produces at peak production on only hay. This would be wonderful for many reasons so I believe Doug is expecting a few of this breed to be born this year. We'll see how they do.
Also, the brown and white one (we'll call her Bess) is a greedy shmeedy. The lil one (who is actually small even for a Jersey calf) takes almost twice as long as Miss Greedy-Pants to drain a bottle. Morgan absolutely loves doing this. She can't hold the bottle by herself yet because a) when they are full, they are too heavy for her to hold up for any length of time and Calves really need to have their heads up while eating (it causes the milk to bypass their rumen and go right into the last stomach, where it is absorbed the most efficiently) and b) Bess (Miss Greedy Pants) will push very hard on the bottle, rather suddenly (typical calf behavior, it causes let down on their dams) which would possibly knock Morgan over. She helps me, though, and that's awesome. She LOVES the calves, of course (who wouldn't?).
Interestingly, cows do not have any top teeth in the front of their mouths. And the teeth they do have are very flat. So even if the calves had it in mind to bite Morgan or myself, it wouldn't hurt. As it is, the calves know Morgan brings the milk and will come up and suck on her fingers (and whatever else they can a hold of...last night I had one suckling on my wrist and another on an elbow while I fed the newest bull, not pictured here as he wasn't born yet).
Unfortunately, despite the five or so pictures I took, this is the only one that didn't come out blurry. The calves who have learned an artificial nipple well, get fed off of the bucket. They seem to prefer this and I think it's because they can all eat at the same time. It's fun to watch, they all get their lil tails going at the same time. Cute cute. This lil heifer here in the foreground is quite smart. She's small and so doesn't get her fill as quickly as the others because she eats slower. So when the other cows are done, she will shove her nose into the bucket, tipping it up, while she's suckling and get all the rest of the milk that way.
After the morning feedings, there is usually a bit left in the bottom of this lil feeder bucket. It's not uncommon to find a barn cat in there, with nothing but their butt showing, taking care of the leftovers. :P
The sun is going down, the work-day is coming to an end.
Bedtime Nursies.
Tony checks his mail at the end of the day.
Nick is home and relaxing after a long day in the sun.
Morgan watches Scooby Doo before bedtime (she actually fell asleep on the couch not too long after I took this picture).
The kids are asleep and it's time to relax. It's too nice outside to want to be in. We can hear the frogs in the evenings now. I wish I had a camera that could take pictures of the stars!!