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7 where s the milk naturally with not eating or drinking for 2 days thistle s milk production dropped to almost nothing i diligently milked her twice a day at 12 hour intervals for as much as an hour each time but for days i got only about 1 4 cup per milking after that her production began to improve slightly but it was very erratic i might get a quart at one milking and only a few tablespoons the next on top of that although she had no sign of injury or mastitis one of her teats gave only blood for the first couple of weeks it was gory and gross the milk pail looked like something filled at a slaughterhouse as thistle s production slowly increased the milk diluted the blood and turned pink so even after all my efforts the milk was still not drinkable i worked and worked and worked at it but it took weeks before thistle was giving even a moderately respectable amount of milk and even then it was not predictable at best she might give 2 gallons at a milking but the next day she might give only half a gallon this was a problem because we had intended thistle to earn her keep and help the farm make a little extra money by starting a cow share program with her but if i couldn t predict from one day to the next how much milk might be available there was no way to figure out what would be a fair split for the cow share owners so for now we have had to abandon the cow share idea and although she is rather costly to keep thistle is not able to help earn any income perhaps she ll do better next time around and if not there s always ivy who will be ready to have a calf in a couple of years challenge 8 bottle feeding because of thistle s nonexistent milk production in the first days after she calved we had to break down and buy milk replacer for ivy and i had to bottle feed her twice a day this was not a terrible burden ivy took to the bottle very easily and i enjoyed feeding her by milking thistle myself and then bottle feeding ivy i was able to keep track of exactly how much thistle was producing and exactly how much ivy was eating with all the problems they d been having it was good to be able to monitor them both very closely before ivy was born i had debated whether i would bottle feed or share milk with the calf i had weighed the pros and cons and decided to avoid the biggest potential share milking cons enthusiastic calf cutting up the cow s teats with her teeth and cow not wanting to let her milk down for her human milker if she knows her calf will be nursing later by raising ivy completely on the bottle but feeding her with her mother s milk instead of formula as soon as her mother was producing enough challenge 9 tendonitis alas even that painstakingly thought out decision was not to be the final one milking a cow is hard work especially for a novice especially with a cow whose production is poor so that you have to really keep working at her to get any milk at all twice every day 12 hours apart i would spend 45 60 minutes milking imagine using one of those hand squeezing exercise gadgets and doing roughly 5 000 reps per day with each hand 7 days a week it was a workout i lost 10 lbs in the first 3 weeks of milking my hands and arms ached like crazy i took soothing epsom salt baths i took advil every night i slathered myself in bengay from fingertip to elbow hoping to ease the ache long enough for the muscles to get stronger but the trouble was every 12 hours i had to go out and strain the muscles all over again they never had a chance to rest and heal when my fingers started going numb for hours at a time i knew something had to change challenge 10 share milking my solution let the calf take over half the work if i milked the cow every morning and the calf nursed every evening that would at least give my poor strained hands twice as long to recover before they had to milk again my cow owner friends assured me that leaving ivy with thistle for longer periods of time would allow ivy to nurse more often which in turn would stimulate thistle to produce more milk so for a couple of months i would turn ivy out to pasture with her mom right after my morning milking and let her stay until just before bed time this did ease the pain in my hands somewhat but it produced new challenges of its own for starters now that thistle had her calf with her she saw no reason whatsoever to ever come in from pasture calling and rattling her grain bucket held no enticement for her when i would go out to try to lead her in she would gallop in the other direction ivy having been bottle fed for the first several weeks of her life still thought of me as her first mother and thistle as her second mother so it was possible to catch ivy and lead her in with thistle following anxiously behind when thistle got wise to that however she started deliberately herding ivy away from me and teaching her to run whenever i approached bad bad habit challenge 11 where does the time go i had known that getting a dairy cow was going to be a big commitment and i knew that being a novice i would have a steep learning curve before i was able to truly settle into a good routine but i really wasn t prepared for the sheer number of hours and hours and hours and days and weeks and months it would take between the feeding watering stall mucking and bedding moving the cow in and out of pasture moving the calf in and out of wherever the cow was for her share milking time washing up and preparing for milking milking cleaning up after milking and taking care of the milk it was taking me approximately 3 hours per day 7 days a week of chores that i had not had before i got the cow in other words the cow took up more of my time than all of the rest of the animals combined and that didn t even count the time it took for me to actually do anything with the milk like making butter ice cream or cheese for the entire winter the cow became the project that ate my life i fell behind on all my business correspondence i fell behind on all my creative projects and sales for several months i did nothing but try to survive the onslaught of cow challenge 12 let down fortunately share milking with ivy did stimulate thistle to produce more milk it also allowed my tendonitis to ease a bit and gradually my hands and arms got stronger i have a killer handshake grip now and you should feel my arm muscles but true to form this advance didn t come without a corresponding challenge i was getting about 1 5 gallons of milk at my morning milking and ivy was getting the rest but thistle s production was still extremely erratic occasionally i might get 2 gallons more often her production might mysteriously drop to only half a gallon only to rebound up to three times that the following day for quite a while i didn t know what the problem was considering she was getting exactly the same food water and milking schedule every day i couldn t figure out what was going on i had read that sometimes a cow s production will drop when she is in heat but unless thistle was going into heat 4 5 times a month that was no explanation over time i saw another thing that concerned me just when thistle s production should have been peaking it was slowly ever so slowly decreasing instead it wasn t that she wasn t getting enough to eat in fact at a time when most cows are starting to lose weight thistle was actually getting fatter finally it dawned on me that she was doing just what the cons of share milking predicted she might do she knew she was going to be nursing her calf later so she was holding back and not fully letting her milk down for me but she had done it so gradually as the weeks went by holding back a little more and giving me a little less but always giving me some that i didn t recognize that s what she was doing discussions on online cow forums showed me a trick to get around this i would tie thistle in the milking area bring ivy in and let her start to nurse which would stimulate thistle to fully let down her milk then i would do my milking what glorious abundance of milk was suddenly mine before turning ivy out with her mom again ivy who had been getting way more than her share of the milk all this time was growing super fast according to my dairy cow weight tape the average weight for a 3 month old guernsey heifer is 177 lbs at 3 months old ivy weighed 300 lbs she did not like it one bit when i pulled her away from her mother so that i could do my milking she quickly grew to resent it very much and made sure to crash around in the adjacent stall making as much fuss as possible the whole time i was stealing her dinner challenge 13 udder injuries ivy s appetite continued to grow just as fast as she did by the time she was 3 months old she would nurse so aggressively i would regularly find scrapes on thistle s teats from ivy s teeth sometimes i had to be careful not to squeeze a sore teat the wrong way or thistle would stomp and let me know it hurt then one evening thistle came in from pasture with a full udder as if ivy had not nursed all day concerned about her overfull udder i immediately went and got my milking supplies but when tried to milk her she let loose with one hind foot slammed me a good one in the thigh and knocked me off my stool onto the ground alarmed by the racket she started kicking the bucket the stool and everything in sight i yelled at her and spanked her for kicking but i could see what the problem was ivy had bit one of her teats too hard gave her a big cut and it was extremely sore to the point that she hadn t let ivy nurse at all i was badly shaken and bruised from this unexpected battle and a little freaked out about having to go back and try again but leaving her udder unmilked was a sure ticket to mastitis so after several unsuccessful attempts to milk the sore teat by hand as i normally did two more large painful bruises from getting kicked and a disastrously failed attempt to use my kickstop device which caused thistle to go completely berserk i finally dug out the udderly ez milker i had purchased several years ago for collecting colostrum from my sheep according to most experienced dairy people i know the udderly ez is not really recommended for long term use because it uses direct suction not fluctuating suction which can put too much stress on the teat opening and eventually cause damage but in this case it was a lifesaver because it uses only suction and doesn t physically manipulate the sore teat i guess it didn t hurt as much so she let me use it without kicking twice a day i was able to get most of the milk out of that teat with the udderly ez while milking the other 3 quarters by hand as usual after a few uses i did see that the udderly ez was beginning to cause stress on the teat opening because when thistle let her milk down milk would start streaming out of that teat onto the ground something it had never done before it seemed to take forever for the cut to heal but eventually it did fortunately once this ordeal was over and the cut on the teat was healed up again i was able to stop using the udderly ez after several days of normal milking the teat stopped streaming milk at let down and went back to normal challenge 14 mastitis meanwhile the whole time this was going on there was also a problem with the opposite quarter from the injured teat i don t know what happened to it but on the same day that thistle came in with the cut on her right rear teat the left front quarter suddenly developed some hard places in it it didn t seem hot or sore at first but the milk production from that quarter grew even skimpier than usual and as the days passed the hard lumpy area got bigger and eventually thistle started acting like it was a little sore i read up on everything i could find about mastitis i massaged the udder with peppermint lotion or cayenne tea tree oil lard salve at every milking i added extra selenium and vitamin c to thistle s diet as a support preventative measure the quarter never got hotter than normal and the milk that did come out of it seemed perfectly normal with no lumps or strings at all i did the california mastitis test and got only the very faintest reaction from that quarter just the slightest thickening that quickly disappeared i sent a sample of milk to a nearby lab the results came back with a moderate somatic cell count but when they tried to test for bacteria to determine what was causing the problem their culture came back with no growth i bought a carton of the today mastitis treatment and treated the problem quarter for several days i was nervous about the idea of trying to squirt medicine up into the teat duct but it turned out to be easy and thistle didn t act as if she even noticed that i had done anything however the treatment didn t really seem to help so i left off and just continued with the peppermint lotion massages which did seem to help a little everyone told me that i should leave the calf with thistle because the calf s frequent nursing would help prevent or cure any mastitis that was brewing thistle would kick ivy off the cut teat but ivy quickly learned to leave that one alone and just nurse from the other three i had mixed feelings about leaving ivy on thistle after all this because she was still scraping up the healthy teats with her teeth from time to time and i was worried she would inflict another more serious injury but honestly i was a little freaked out after getting kicked so badly that first day and i figured if anyone was going to get kicked better the calf than me challenge 15 weaning it took several weeks but the injured teat eventually healed and the mastitis in the other quarter was slowly subsiding i didn t dare keep ivy nursing any longer for fear she would injure her mother yet again even though i hadn t planned to wean ivy at 3 5 months old now it seemed to be the safest course the trouble was a calf weaned before 6 months can t survive on just grass she needs grain but even though ivy was quite old enough to eat grain she didn t like it she wanted milk i let her transition gradually over a few days but ultimately i didn t want to risk thistle s udder any longer ivy would have to learn to like grain it was sad and funny watching her try to eat it for the first week or so her lips would get this tense disgusted curl to them while she would halfheartedly nibble on the calf starter grain it was like a little girl who had always feasted on cupcakes and ice cream for breakfast being suddenly forced to eat yucky old oatmeal she s such a little diva she made a huge production of how sadly mistreated she was of course fast forward a few weeks and now she leaps and dances all around with excitement when she knows i m bringing her lovely delicious grain silly girl challenge 16 foster calf but wait with ivy weaned and thistle s udder back on the road to health that left me once again having to take over milking twice a day sure my hands were stronger now and didn t ache quite so much as they did at the beginning b...