Northern Farmer

In yesterday’s post I talked about my family milking a few cows – currently three to be precise. Much of the family is very fond of dairy products, milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, etc. Much of our effort goes into milking and taking care of our cows. My oldest daughter, who is 15, typically does morning milkings and I do evening milkings, with the children putting out hay and filling water tanks. About a month ago, a neighbor brought us his one cow to take care of while he was gone on vacation for a week. When she was at his farm, fairly often a teat would get plugged and you would have to work to clear it. He came back from vacation over 6 weeks ago and we still have her, so it looks like we will end up taking care of this cow all winter. Last night I went to filter her milk and watched as her milk clogged the filter, bringing that sinking feeling in my stomach. All day my mind has been working on ways to get her cleared up, and on thoughts of what the cows could be missing nutritionally. A couple of weeks ago she had a boat of mastitis, but we thought we had it cleared up. The previous go-round of mastitis seemed to be cleared up by feeding garlic cloves hidden in apples. Some days she was getting 20+ cloves. When we milked, the milk came out smelling like garlic. (A friend who gets milks from us called us up one day and was asking why the milk taste different. We had accidentally given her some “garlic” milk.) We are again back to feeding garlic. Our cows have access to salt and kelp, plus a supposedly good mineral supplement. We don’t feed grain. I am giving them selenium yeast, a yeast grown on a medium that is high in selenium. I am contemplating getting “sea solids” from SeaAgri, which are high in trace minerals, but the price and lack of availability (read shipping cost) is making me think twice. If there are any experienced dairymen out there that have a suggestion, feel free to comment. I would prefer to not see my neighbor’s cow get messed up on my watch.

Our other cows and animals are doing well. The 6-8 inches of snow that fell last Friday is almost gone and the temperature has moderated into the high 30s to low 40s. We have a couple of cows on pasture on a neighbor’s property. These cows have been grazing through the snow. They have been content and don’t bellow at me when I check on them. This is a new experience for me. Usually we have run out of grass before the snow comes. This year we managed to stockpile enough grass so that we may go another few days before I have to bring these cows home. My guess is that by early next week we will have to get them home. Fortunately cows do not fit in passenger cars, so no chance of messing up my car or my wife’s car.

Jim V

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Jim V. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.