Last Monday I started weaning our steer calf, Sausage. He was dragging mum down a little too much for my liking so put him in the cow yard and kept Lorray, mum, out. She has continued to hover around him and he is slowly starting to accept that he can't have mum's milk anymore. Was funny, last week after two days of mooing so loud and hard he ended up loosing his voice. He is smarter now and only very occasionally moos. That suits me just fine.
Since the calf was not having the milk, I had to start milking Lorray two times a day. I usually do this at 6am and about 5.30pm. She is usually waiting for me outside the shed, patiently. Gotta love that.
During the last week I have been getting between 5.5 and 6.0 litres on a daily basis. I am very fortunate that I have neighbours and friends that love raw cows milk as I can't freeze enough of it. On top of that I am using as much as I can. Will be getting Russell to get into the cheese making again this weekend and use up a heap hopefully.
One thing is for sure. I love milking that girl. She is so easy going. I just put down the bucket of grain and clean the teats, put on Dairysal and start away. The grains I use are just combo chook food and cotton seeds to promote milk production.
I am now wanting to use my special appliance, my electric single milking machine. I cleaned it out today and had it all ready to go tonight but the suction was not working. Therefore no pressure to suck from the teats. Will consult the manual again and see what I did not do right. For the sake of my very sore thumbs I hope tomorrow is a winner as far as milking with the machine is concerned. And I hope I also don't get too many kicks from her as she objects..... :)
Cheers Damaris
Since the calf was not having the milk, I had to start milking Lorray two times a day. I usually do this at 6am and about 5.30pm. She is usually waiting for me outside the shed, patiently. Gotta love that.
During the last week I have been getting between 5.5 and 6.0 litres on a daily basis. I am very fortunate that I have neighbours and friends that love raw cows milk as I can't freeze enough of it. On top of that I am using as much as I can. Will be getting Russell to get into the cheese making again this weekend and use up a heap hopefully.
One thing is for sure. I love milking that girl. She is so easy going. I just put down the bucket of grain and clean the teats, put on Dairysal and start away. The grains I use are just combo chook food and cotton seeds to promote milk production.
I am now wanting to use my special appliance, my electric single milking machine. I cleaned it out today and had it all ready to go tonight but the suction was not working. Therefore no pressure to suck from the teats. Will consult the manual again and see what I did not do right. For the sake of my very sore thumbs I hope tomorrow is a winner as far as milking with the machine is concerned. And I hope I also don't get too many kicks from her as she objects..... :)
Cheers Damaris
1 comment:
Did I tell you that we used to be dairy farmers in NZ? We milked 360 cows, towards the end of our share milking venture we had started to use natural health products for our herd. Homeopathic medicine specifically designed to treat mastitis in cows and we put apple cider vinegar into the troughs, it made a big difference to the health of the 'girls'. My eldest children work on the next door dairy farm and one of their bonuses is milk. We've been consumers of raw milk for over 12 years now with no ill effects, quite the opposite in fact.
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