Sasha's calf arrived!

Finally, after a long, long wait, Sasha's calf arrived!

The Boy went out to do afternoon chores and found Sasha pawing the ground and, in his words "looking like a zombie cow". By the time he got back outside with the camera, the calf was on his way to the world and bingo, it was all done! Fortunately The Reluctant Farmer had picked up the kids early and everyone (except me) was home for the big event and everything went smoothly. Sasha didn't want anyone too near her, and bellowed loud objections to everyone ... but by the time I got home, she'd calmed down quite a bit. And, maybe all the time I spent brushing her and talking to her while she was pregnant helped, too, you never know.

So with my shepherd's crook in case I needed self-protection (mother cows can be very irritable), we got Darth out of the way (he's the yearling who's headed for freezer camp this fall) and Sasha and her baby settled into the barn where it is relatively peaceful (I say relatively peaceful because Cherub the Incredible Escaping Sheep is still penned up in there, and she bellows periodically to ensure that we don't overlook her).

Poor Sasha had an absolutely huge udder: it was so full of milk it looked like it must hurt, and her teats were more than double their usual size, poor girl. The calf could barely get a grip on one of the teats to get a drink, but once in the barn, where Sasha felt calmer, he got a good long drink, with cream running down the side of his face and everything.

Sasha seemed much calmer once the calf settled to nurse, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to ease her poor swollen udder and get a bit of that excess milk for our bottle lambs. I put a rope around Sasha's neck to keep her from turning around and bashing me with her horns in case she disagreed with my brilliant idea, and bravely climbed into the stall with my metal bucket. Sasha just put her head down and ate some hay, had a drink of water, and gave a half hearted swipe or two of her back hoof when I first gripped that swollen teat ... but in no time at all the milk was flowing into the bucket and her udder was returning to a more reasonable and much less engorged appearance.

I got about half a bucket of rich milk while the calf drank his fill, and when he finished, I quit too. Sasha was not bothered by the whole procedure, although once her calf wandered off she insisted on being let loose!

The precious first milk went into bottles for the two bottle lambs who guzzled it down like it was the best thing they'd ever tasted! I'm so glad to have fresh milk for them ... that was the plan all along, but of course, we needed Sasha's cooperation in the matter!

We'll be very careful in taking milk from her at this stage of the game - the calf gets top priority, but it's better to relieve the excess than leave her in discomfort (and risk mastitis). I checked with a very helpful lady who runs a Dexter Dairy in New York and am following her advice about taking care of Sasha and the calf in these early days: we can take a little from Sasha so long as it's not so much as to leave the calf hungry. Shared milking is a great strategy for us!

So we have a lovely purebred Dexter bull calf here ... now he just needs a name!

I hear bellowing outside, so I'd best go check that all is well. I think Darth is trying to figure out why Cherub is in his spot in the barn and he's locked outside.

Milk Progress

Okay, I know, you're probably tired of hearing me rhapsodize about milking the cow. But really, it's exciting. Honest. It is.

This morning, I milked for 15 minutes, two handed, into the bucket held between my feet ... and I got nearly a litre of milk. And, I got most of it into the bucket (the first few days of milking, I had soaked knees).

Progress, I tell you, progress!

Milking Routine

We're on our way with an actual morning milking routine!

Sasha and Darth are penned up in the evening ... I put hay in their stalls, and they agonize over going into the stall, knowing that I'll close the gate behind them. Eventually their desire for hay overrides their desire for freedom, and in they go.

The Reluctant Farmer has made some changes to the milking stanchion for me, so I can reach in and get to the business end of the cow more comfortably. There's also a very clever 'tailgate' at the back: a bar can be raised up to let Sasha in, and in the 'up' position, the bar latches into a regular gate latch, so you can push the bar up and latch it into place. When you need to drop it down, you just reach up and press the latch release, and down it comes. Very slick! This keeps Sasha from backing out of the stall, and keeps her positioned so I can easily reach the udder.

At the moment she still moves her feet around a fair bit while I'm milking, so I'm milking one handed into a bucket that I hold in place with my other hand. I figure eventually we'll get to where the bucket can be set down and I can milk with two hands, but this is working and that's exciting enough for now. :)

Yesterday was the first 'milk into the bucket' day, and we got about a cup of milk. This morning I got at least twice that amount, with only 15 minutes in the barn. Sasha is really quite cooperative about the whole thing. Even the washing that has to be done before milking commences doesn't seem to annoy her in the least.

Once I come back inside, the milk is poured through a cloth filter into a clean glass canning jar and put in the fridge for the day. We tasted our first fresh milk last night - and it was amazing! It tastes like ... well ... like milk! Very fresh, clean and creamy (we didn't separate the cream out ... most of the cream comes at the end of the milking, and I didn't milk long enough to get to the rich stuff). Yes, we do know how to pasteurize the milk, but given that our cow is healthy, grass-fed, and free from mastitis, and that none of us have compromised immune systems, we're choosing to drink the whole fresh milk. It sure tastes good, and there are many advantages to raw milk (when it comes from healthy cows milked in a sanitary environment, of course).


There it is... the first bottle of milk!

The whole process is just so amazing. I mean, sure, it's nothing earth shattering or stunningly scientific, but when you wrap your hand around the teat and feel it fill up with milk, then hear that stream of milk rushing into the steel pail ... there's something really incredible about being involved in that.

A cow of my own. Fresh milk in a pail.

That, for me, is a dream come true.

Milk!

This morning, Sasha was in her milking stanchion eating the morning ration of hay, and I figured I should try again with the 'get used to me handling you' stuff.

Sure enough, she didn't flinch at all.

So ... I wrapped my hand around a teat. No reaction. Well, no guts no glory ... so I bumped up, wrapped my fingers around the teat, and voila! Milk squirted out!

Yay! I milked a cow!

I pulled off a few squirts of milk, just to get her used to the idea, and left her alone. Soon, we'll be able to gather that milk in a pail and then ...

Does that make us real homesteaders? :)

Dairy Cow Breakthrough

The cows are in the barn!

We got the fences in place so that we can bring the cows up to the barn at night. We have them in a shared pen for now, and will separate them as soon as we put another row of bars between the two pens (the calf can jump over at the moment, it's too low).

Tonight Sasha was in her milking stanchion eating hay, and let me rub her sides and her belly, and even touch her udder. She didn't even change the rate of her chewing.

We are one step closer to milk!

Milk Cow Update

Sasha the milk cow and her calf, Darth Vader, have lived with us for about a month now. When they first arrived, they were okay with people being near them, but were really quite skittish. We spent lots of time just standing near them in the pasture, wandering around and picking rocks or just being nearby and talking to them. We tried taking them hay cubes, but they had never seen them before and didn't realize they were food, so that didn't really work. Long grass pulled or cut from the ditches was a big hit though - it didn't take long for them to walk up to you and eat it right from your hands.

After a little while, they would let us scratch their foreheads (the flies are awful and really do bother them especially around their eyes and at the base of their horns), and eventually they figured out that hay cubes are yummy ... we call them cow candy.

The Reluctant Farmer has been diligent about visiting them daily and helping the cows to realize that the bucket holds the hay cubes. They now come running if they see you with a bucket, and will eat the cubes right out of our hands. They are willing to be scratched all along their heads and often on their necks as well, although if you move suddenly they'll still bolt and run. They'll come to a call though, if they think you have cow candy, so this is a huge step forward.

This week, my inlaws are coming for a visit and to help with the construction of the new barn. My father in law lived or worked on a farm for much of his life, and I'm very interested to hear his input on keeping a milk cow and how to best design the interior of our little barn. We've measured out the space and put stakes in the ground to help envision the layout, but there's nothing like first hand experience to give perspective to a plan.

I am hopeful that once we have barn pens and a milking stanchion in place we can get Sasha and Darth trained to come up to the barn at night, and we can start training Sasha to stand in the milking stall and be handled ... then it's just one more step to milking! Darth is still nursing, so Sasha is still in milk, and I'm hopeful that we will be able to start the milking routine before the spring calf arrives. It's early to know yet, but she's calmed down so much already, I'm really quite hopeful that we'll be able to do the remainder of the training sooner than I'd initially thought.

There go the last of my marbles...

Well, now I've gone and done it.

I bought a cow. And a calf. And the cow is bred to calve in the spring.

Yes, clearly I have lost the last of my marbles.

Now, you have to understand that cattle scare me. Oh, I like cows in the abstract, and I love it when the man who leases the land across the road brings his cattle out to eat the summer pasture - their lowing and lumbering walk just makes me feel peaceful. I enjoy milk and cheese and beef. However, when we're at the 4-H fairs I go the long way around so that I can keep plenty of space between myself and any cattle - they are just so overwhelmingly large and powerful. The fact that someone's calf always gets loose and there's 1200 pounds of meat on the hoof racing through the aisles doesn't do much to allay my fears.

And then ...

Well, and then I started to think. That's always the beginning of trouble.

The Reluctant Farmer mentioned plans to build a barn on the back of the shed, so that we'd have a place to put sheep out of the weather during lambing season and a sheltered spot for various outdoor things.

This led to more thinking: a barn would be a place to milk a cow. If you have a cow for milking, you have calves for beef. If you have calves and a milk cow, you can do what's called shared milking where the calf nurses freely all day, and you separate cow and calf at night ... so you only have to do morning milking, and if you are away for a day or two, the calf will milk the cow for you meaning that you aren't tied to the farm the way you are in a traditional twice-a-day milking schedule.

And then I found a Dexter cow/calf pair for sale right nearby.

And last but not least, The Reluctant Farmer agreed that this made sense.

Good heavens.

Our new cattle are Dexters. Dexter cattle are very small (under 700 pounds, which is just over half the size of a full grown beef cow) and they are considered ideal for acreages due to their size and efficiency. The cows can sustain a calf while still providing enough milk for a human family as well. You can keep a cow/calf pair on as little as an acre of good pasture, and cows and sheep share pasture really well as they prefer slightly different sorts of grasses and they do not cross-infect each other with the various ailments that afflict livestock.

Our household goes through approximately 312 jugs of milk each year, at four litres per jug, and we eat about 260 pounds of beef annually. A Dexter cow will give us at least 270 jugs of milk each year, and 455 pounds of beef, with the input cost of pasture in summer and hay in winter. We are already outside feeding sheep, and so tossing hay to the cows as well adds very little to what we are already doing. Milking is an added chore, to be sure, but the numbers make the decision obvious: the projected value of milk and meat from this investment (after deducting the annual cost to maintain the cows themselves) will mean more than a thousand dollars off the grocery bill every year. I ran the numbers several different ways, and consistently get that result ... it's amazing.

For that kind of payoff, I think that taming a cow, training her to milk, and donating a bit of time every day to the task of milking is easily worth the effort ... never mind the satisfaction and sheer goodness of having home grown milk and grass-fed beef to put on the table.

So, without further ado I am pleased to introduce you to the newest members of the Apple Jack Creek Farm: Sasha the soon-to-be-dairy-cow, and her steer calf Darth Vader.







Sasha & DarthVader













The great Lord Vader himself, looking regal


















Sasha, showing off her figure