Cows with Funny Names

I told you about our experience with buying cows recently for our new milking parlor system. In all fairness to the people with the nasty barn, they were renting because they too were renovating a barn on the family farmstead and due to the family emergency; that opportunity went away. I’m sure it would have been miles better than the rental. They hated having to sell out. 

Now, a couple years ago I started raising calves in our barn. We initially wanted heifers because we knew we were going to start up milking again, but with the cost of heifers at that time and peoples’ desire to hang on to them, we ended up with a few bulls in the mix and as sale barn calves go, they aren’t all that healthy when you get them for the most part. Me – I keep them at least a week and feed them colostrum and make sure they are healthy before they go. I have no control over what they might catch from someone else’s calves, just as someone else has no control over what any I buy might get from others’. We lost a dozen calves in spite of my best efforts to save them. I also ended up with some called Free Martins. These are calves born as twins to opposing genders. They tend to be sterile for some reason and we ended up with three heifers that were such. They, along with one we bought at about six months old (actually bred when we sold her) had to go. We held on to them until a few months ago when it was apparent they were not going to breed. The fourth one, a red Holstein we bought with a group from a cattle jockey (his job is to find buyers for herds of cattle, as opposed to a hauler who just takes them to market). She was nuts from the get-go but at the time we chalked it up to being hauled around. He had bought her originally and had his hand raise her and the others. He apparently didn’t realize (or maybe he did?) that she was wild natured. She caused so much trouble in the barn and tearing up fences once they were turned out she made the others a bit wild too. Of course she was NOT going in my new parlor. He bought Crazy back assuring us he could work with her. Later he said we were right- she's just nuts.

Crazy did have an odd habit that another one from her group, another red Holstein we named Dot also did following her buddy. They stood on top of the concrete footer the tie stalls were attached to and played with the pipeline that used to be in there. Dot still stands on that footer watching even though the pipeline has been removed. She is really big- not quite as big as Gertrude the Cowzilla, but we did end up with a handful of those heifers I raised that will give her run for her money in size. Dot is actually not that wild now that ‘Crazy’ is gone and she is in the barn again. I finally asked her in frustration one day, “What? Are you Humpy Dumpty? Get down!”

We have one almost completely white, of course named Whitie, that did not want to come back in (none of them did actually) but now is much more calm. Why not? We wait on them hand and hoof. Or is that hoof and hoof? We decided that since she is due first we should try to at least run her through the parlor to get used to it even though we won’t try to milk her yet. You’d have thought we were trying to kill her when we tried to back her out of that stall. She tossed and fought and at one point ended up completely backwards and then turned back around head first to the feed aisle without ever getting out of the stall. My husband actually giggled at her (trust me- this doesn’t happen). Once we finally got her out after about ten minutes of this foolishness, she went right in like knew exactly where she was going and right to where we wanted her in the parlor! When we tried to put her back of course she wouldn’t go. She balked at going back into her stall. She just stood there and stared at it. I finally told the cow next to her stall, one I named Cuddles (more on her in a minute) to turn and let her know it was all right to get back in the stall. I didn’t really think she’d do it, but what the heck. She did it! She turned her head and stared at Whitie a minute, let out a short incomplete moo and turned away. Whitie thought a few seconds and walked calmly into her stall. I looked at my husband, grinned and just shrugged. 

Cuddles is and has always been just the friendliest cow. I can take her head under my arm like a dog and pet her. I scratch her ears, her neck, talk to her. She sniffs me, licks me when I can’t get backed up fast enough, and moves when I tell her to – the right direction. I can get into her stall without fear of being stomped. She might steal my hat though. I’ve had a cow like that before.

Connie, short for Connie Butt Kicker, got her name because she does not like it when someone tries to clean her stall. She also backs way up when someone is front of her unless she is stealing a mouthful of silage from the wheelbarrow as it passes by. She’s real good at that! She got her name as a calf. My husband used to mess up Chuck Norris’ name when Walker Texas Ranger was on and so he called him ‘Johnny Butt Kicker’. Since cows actually use a bit of a round house kick, something she is very good at, I called her Connie Butt Kicker. If I call her name and get her attention she will move and let me clean it and put down fresh bedding, but if not; she will show you the business end of the shovel in a hurry. The jury is still out on whether she will make it in the parlor when the time comes. 

We also have one of the heifers that absolutely refuses to go into the barn. She literally turned and jumped the corral when we tried to get inside and there were four of us! She has strange markings being mostly white on one side of her head and just a wide black smear down her face on the other side. Obviously her name is Stripe. She used to be fairly calm. I don’t know what got into her but she has to come in soon since she is due as far as we know in February to calve. We need a vet to do a pregnancy check on the ones who aren’t obvious to gauge a time frame. Like a rebellious teenager; she doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend. 

We got one from that farm I discussed earlier who is also almost completely all white with a few spots. The people had another one really close in looks that was named Spot. Since the mister kept mistaking the two and his wife had to remind him ‘that’s not spot’ that became her name: Not Spot. She answers to it too. She’s pretty calm and even though her bag isn’t real big, she milks well and it is her first lactation so we’re thinking it will get better next go round. 

At the auction, somehow my husband managed to get three almost identical black or nearly all black cows. They are so similar in size and demeanor they are hard to tell apart. They all three cause trouble, even though they milk calmly for the most part, but they are almost always covered in their own doings, if you know what I mean. We got cow trainers put up mostly because of these three. It takes a while to give them all a shower before every milking.  The hubby named the one that is just about completely all black right down to her udder Pot because she is always the instigator and stirring the pot. The other two have partially white bags so can be distinguished from Pot. I had them named before I realized one had a white spot on its head and her name is actually Blackie. The one without the black spot is Kettle. Yep, couldn’t tell them apart any more than Pot could so we got Pot called Kettle Black. It’s a catchy way to remember it. One has fat teats and the other skinny, otherwise I couldn’t tell them apart from my angle in the parlor. 

We were feeding the milking cows the other morning after I was done cleaning the milk house and the heifers were singing or something. They kept saying in tandem Moo in a low hushed tone, almost chanting. I told my husband they were either doing yoga or meditating, or maybe they were anticipating their silage and singing the Campbell’s Soup commercial theme song: Mmmm Good! He said, “I think you’re right!”

                                                        Dot: thinks she's Humpty Dumpty

                          

                                                        Cuddles: thinks she's a puppy dog

                                                        Whitie: balky giant white cow

                   Stripe: doesn't want to leave the bull. It's cold outside, stupid. Come in to the barn!

     Dutchy: a/k/a Pig (from previous post). The face of evil, or someone read her Fifty Shades of Grey, because she is really into bondage! Belted Dutch with jersey red ears.

Selecting Cows for the Milking Barn

After six months of refurbishing our old pipeline system dairy barn to a parlor facility, (see previous posts) we are finally milking a few cows.

Christmas week my husband brought home cattle from an auction, one of which was due January first to calve. This was, as my son calls her, ‘Cowzilla’. We named her Gertrude. I am between 5’6’’ and 5’7’’ and this cow stands at eye level at the hip (her neck and head just add to her height). She is so long that she can’t fit in a single stall. My first question upon eying Gertrude was, “Why did you get this giant cow?” “She’ll be a hell of a cow when she calves,” he replied. I studied her a few minutes and then declared she couldn’t be comfortable in the stall he had her in; she’d need two stalls, and she was not going to make it to January first. He laughed. “I think she’ll go longer myself.” Uh-ha. First, she broke a water bowl trying to get up, using it as leverage. We moved her to another stall and fixed the broken line (she had twisted that sucker right out of the waterline.) I hung my head. “She needs a bigger stall,” I repeated. 

Next he discovered the cows actually preferred the other side of the barn, as in, they absolutely would not return to stalls we had them in and ALWAYS went to the other side. Simple solution. Move them there – including the giant Gertrude. (They still don’t go into the same stalls, but pretty much go to that side at least.) 

The next morning I learned I could milk all by myself as long as someone helped moved the cows to the parlor and back. I actually had to quit my job because they refuse to do this with one person (I was laid off all but one day a week anyway). Why did I have to milk by myself? Gertrude was very well stuck in the stall. Her front feet were sprawled through the head pipes, which are elevated on a footer about 8” high, her hip was wedged against a support poll and her head was caught under a divider pipe. I just don’t know how she did that. We tried for an hour until my husband finally called his brother for help so I could milk. They tried a prod, which I was about to use on them for being ignorant enough to think she could just un-wedge herself. Finally they cut the divider pipe enough to swing it off her head, which had to be done with a cutting torch that scared her half to death and left me in tears hearing her cry out. There really wasn’t anything else for that, but I was upset anyway. They had to use a come-along device to drag her off the support post and her legs out of the stuck through the pipes position. I don’t know how they finally got her up; her legs had to be near about numb, but they put her in a double stall (one the divider and support post had been removed from years ago) – where I wanted her in the first place. “You traumatized her enough,” I told him. I petted her great big head and scratched her ears. 

The next morning I washed her calf that was born shortly before we got in there (yes, as I predicted). It was in the gutter and she wouldn’t clean it so I loaded him in the wheel barrow and took him to the milkhouse where I sprayed and rubbed him clean with very warm water and blow dried him. My husband just laughed when he walked in and the little guy was looking up at me adoringly from my lap. I loaded him back up and took him to his own stall, fed him mama’s colostrum and put a nice heater-warmed blanket on him. I kept him a week before he went to market; for the moment, we only keep the girls (heifers).

Lesson One: Make sure the cow you buy will actually fit in your stalls. When Gertrude got stuck, sort of, again – her legs through the bars again, I propped her hoof (it was shaking from pinching a nerve) with my boot and spoke softly to her. “He’s going to get the prod again; you probably should try to get up.” He had been trying to twenty minutes. She made an effort to pull her feet back through and popped right up since she wasn’t wedged in this time. “I hate how you can do that,” he grumbled.

A couple other cows were smaller. I studied the guide page they had given him and highlighted the ones that he bought going by the auction stickers on their hips. Are you aware that these two have milking since February and April? The first one is bred, but won’t have a calf until July and the other isn’t bred at all. We had heard the term “Fresh a year” once at an auction which means they are not bred, they are near the end of their lactation and you won’t get a lot of milk out of them. Someone we were with (a Mennonite neighbor) even caught it and said, “That’s a cute way to put it.” They said it fast and hoped no one noticed. Something I noticed at the auction the week before, and had reminded him of before he went with his brother to get this batch, was the auctioneers lose track of the cows. They will read information from one cow when it is for another and conveniently not catch it until it sells. That’s what happened. Now the one that is due in July isn’t putting out much, but she’s milking and at least she’s bred. She’s Holstein and jersey cross. The only thing other than size that looks jersey is her red ears and a red stripe down her tail. I call her Skittles. The other one is Spanky and is not milking well at all and since she isn’t even bred, is slated to go down the street as soon as she can be replaced. 

Another one,(named Big Mama)is  almost as big as Gertrude, but she fits the stalls, walks with an odd gate. Since she was only three weeks fresh, we suspect she had some nerve damage when she calved. She comes out of her stall and will stand tripod on her two front feet and one back foot and stretched the other back leg out and shake her foot. She walks a few steps and repeats with the other leg. She does this all the way to the parlor and back. If she had done that in the ring, she would have a different home than ours. It’s comical, but it holds up the show and we aren’t sure what can be done about it. If she is suffering, we may have to ship her to slaughter after a clean bill from the vet just for humane reasons. 

Lesson Two: Pay attention to those stickers on the rump of the cows and match them up to the description sheet. You must, must, must get a description sheet, because that auctioneer will lose track and you will get a cow you didn’t mean to get or miss one you did. If you get a chance, go to the cattle area before the auction and look the cattle over for uniformity of utter, crossed teats, ¾ cows (meaning they milk on three of the four teats), visible foot problems, and other visible health issues, such as Big Mama’s odd habit of dancing to the parlor. It looks like a conga line when she gets other cows behind her. 

We found a few more at a ‘farm’ that was forced due to family emergency to cease milking. The barn was rented from someone who had not milked in almost twenty years and that place was in rough shape. The woman selling out told up not to judge the cows by the barn. You should, just a little. If the barn is in bad condition, it could cause the cattle to have illnesses – not necessarily outright diseases, but illnesses that are just plain trouble to the herd they go into that take a while to work out. This actually should be considered whether you go to an auction or a direct farm sale. It’s a little like going to school after months off and then bringing home every bug the other kids have. The cows were filthy with the exception of a few and we got the clean ones. Another problem with the rental barn is that they did not live on site so they noticed the bull messing around with a heifer (we got all young first or second calf heifers) and decided they were bred. They wrote them down as if they were, but two have come in heat since so we know they weren’t. We are with them over ten hours a day – sometimes longer if the water or silage freezes (topics for another day), so we catch it when they act goofy. We might miss the first time, but we’ll be looking for it the next. 

Now, one of the cows was named ‘Dutchy’. The people had gotten her as a calf from someone who had belted Dutch cattle and were trying for some reason to breed that out of them. They started over the years breeding brown Swiss and jersey into the blood line until they looked brown Swiss or jersey. Then the recessive genes went into gear and out popped a couple belted Dutch. We got one because she was clean and had a nice utter and uniform teats that weren’t short or crossed (a pain to milk). They added nonchalantly that ‘she has a little bit of attitude’. Don’t walk away from these cows – run, as fast as you can, pump your arms if you have to gain speed. We have renamed this cow ‘Pig’ because you have to hog tie her to milk her. She did well for the first week, being polite and nice, and then she almost broke my arm and my husband’s arm. Since we don’t have a ‘can’t kick’ device and have no idea how to use one in a parlor anyway, he throws a rope over her and ties her to the parlor posts so that she can’t kick as well. She still kicks. Dutchy is another one that will have to be replaced. I can't take a chance someone will be injured or the parlor (or cow) will be damaged.

In case you aren’t familiar with a ‘can’t kick’ device, there are two types. One is a sort of clamp that fits over both hips and tightens down so that the cow can’t move its hips (either one) to kick. Have fun clamping that down! The other one, which we had when we used the pipeline and stood or sat next to the cow in their stalls to milk them is shaped like a ‘C’ with one adjustable end to accommodate for length. It fit just under the fold when the leg and underside of the body meet and over the backbone. I have seen a cow knock that loose and break it, but usually it works. It has rubber caps on the ends so they don’t cut into the cow and they don’t injure them in any way.

Lesson Three: Pay attention to surroundings if buying directly off the farm and ask questions. Are they on a herd health program (vaccinations and such)? An auction may not have that information, but sometimes they do. How much time do they actually spend with the animals to notice whether they are bred or are they confirmed (a vet can do that)? Did they make any comments regarding the cows, such as a passing suggestion that they may have attitude issues? Get a veterinarian to check you cattle as soon as possible for pregnancy if they aren’t confirmed (auctions usually do this on sale day and will let you know) and start them on a vaccination program and worming program if you aren’t sure if they have been on one. One disease can wipe out your entire barn.

Something I have learned, and if you’re on a tight budget this can be an advantage, but if you need the milk; not so much,is  the mention that the cows ‘have not been pushed for production’. This means either the feed was poor or they weren’t fed a lot. Sometimes farmers feed only pasture or hay, not haylage, which is silage from hay. Some feed hay silage and corn silage, and may or may not feed dry hay. Others feed no grain or very little grain, or even a grain-based feed with no protein or minerals. Organic farmers feed this way a lot, without the grain. If the silage or dry hay is of poor quality, it affects the milk production and the quality of milk. One gets paid on quantity and other factors such as butterfat and protein; the higher the quality, the higher the pay per hundred pounds of milk. Not pushed for production may indicate poor quality feed or very little and they cows will not put out much milk. Unfortunately we are on a budget and that particular characteristic made them less expensive than other, better fed cattle. On the other hand, if the cattle are fed extremely high quality feed, making them milk in the hundred pound per day range, they also may lose production once they are brought to a new farm with good, high quality, but not as high as they are used to, feed. We have good, high quality feed, and feed a good grain and mineral mix. The high milk producing cows have come down a little and the low producers are trying to move up. Just the upset of going to auction and learning a new routine at a new farm stresses cows and cause a loss in production, and then add a change in diet. All sorts of issues pop up from milk loss to tummy issues (we’ll put that politely).

It doesn't make sense to milk more cows (thus taking more time) for the same amount of milk as if one milks fewer cows for the same amount of milk. It means higher vet bills because of more cows too, and if any feed is bought, even just grain with no minerals, the cost comes out higher because of more cows being fed. Just saying. 

 

Lesson Four: Pay attention to anything that may indicate how the cattle have been fed. It makes a difference in production and you may want to adjust your feeding plan to slowly bring up the quality of feed given to the cattle. More dry hay than silage for a few days and then move it up slowly over a week or so to more hay silage and introduce corn silage where there has been none at all a little at a time as you take down the dry hay, and add grain (if you’re going to feed it at all) slowly on top of the silage until you reach the rate you want for them. 

Are you buying cattle today?

Just Need the Cows Now

As readers may know from previous posts, we have been renovating our old barn to have a milking parlor (herringbone 8- which means milk 4 on a side at the same time in a herringbone pattern). This has been a long process as we have been doing the work ourselves with very little help. We did finally end up hiring someone to come for a few weeks to help with things that I am just not able to do or was working off the farm and wasn't able to help with. I can't lift the very heavy objects or go to high places, although I did suck it up a time or two in spite of the vertigo.

When we bought this farm in 1998 it was workable, but in bad shape. We have made repairs over the years but quit milking a few years later as milking under the pipeline with just one person (the hubs had started an outside job by then) was a difficult task and the kids were growing up and moving out. As a result of just using it occasionally to raise bottle-fed calves that eventually went outside to live, it went down hill like an unused home. The roof needed work, which we knew, just not how bad. The room that had been originally for the purpose of raising calves was in terrible shape when we bought it and my husband had used it to free-stall (let them run loose) the calves at one point,, promising to keep it cleaned up, but somehow didn't and wouldn't let me - since it was his mess! The outer walls were already rotted out at the bottom where it had not been constructed properly by whomever built it. There was a shed on one end where someone had put yet another poorly built wall to divide it off from the calf room. We had to shore up the roof and take out the two walls with this project.

Over the years, the winters had been hard on the floors of the barn and the milkhouse, which we thought was small, but since have seen much smaller and cramped conditions. The concrete was broken, literally, and heaved up off the ground. Apparently no one ever heard of re-bar! When we broke it up we found junk, actual junk, thrown into it to make it 'stronger'. It just made it harder to break up into pieces we could cart off. There are still a few aesthetic things that need done, but they won't stop us from being licensed to milk again. It's just for our peace of mind and remedy keeping the barn warm enough to keep the waterlines in the cow quarters (formerly where they were milked under a pipeline) from freezing. This has always been a problem.

We started out by demolishing the old milkhouse and breaking up all those chunks of concrete floor and outer pad (for some reason you have to have a porch-like concrete pad outside the milkhouse). We found where someone had another milkhouse built where the outer pad was - two previous layers. Talk about a pain to get out!

Then we poured tons of concrete for new flooring and porch, built a new milkhouse with an actual re-barred and concreted in foundation. (The old one- no). Then we demolished the that old calf-raising section, tore out that concrete, dug a hole for the parlor pit, lined it with plastic and Styrofoam sheeting and poured more concrete. There was a LOT of concrete work involved. We put up walls and the equipment and cleaned like crazy. We discovered that the people who sold us the parlor system (used- right out of their barn) were not completely honest honest about how well the system worked. HINT: If someone says it worked the last time they used it, ask if they sold parts off of it or if they were actually using all of it! We had to re-build or replace way more than we should have of it. We expected to replace gaskets, that is a given, but not electrical parts because they sold pieces out of it earlier, or they broke down and they just bypassed them somehow. We also discovered they had not actually washed the system, but rather rinsed it only, when they quit milking. That was really bad! I am the equipment scrubber and a lot of acid and elbow grease had to be used to get that old and rotted milk fat out of the system. You can shiver now! But it is clean.

Here are some shots, not previously shown, of before and after. Other pictures have been posted in previous posts.  There have been mostly shots from the milkhouse build so I'll concentrate more on the parlor here and finished inside of the milkhouse.

Not even kidding about how bad this room was. This is actually cleaned up some. The far right is where the re-entry walkway will be for the cows to go back into the barn. The old steel dividers and feed bunk are gone. They were really bad.

Tearing off the milkhouse.
Before the wall was knocked out. Still needed a little debris removal though.
  Knocking out the that rotted wall. The one on the right also got taken out.
Those walls are gone and the pit extends into the what was the heifer shed. The one wall is rebuilt (left side) and the other one is the original heifer shed wall. We did put up another wall between the far wall and the pit, and on the right side for the cow exit section.

Outside of the parlor. We did enclose the rest of the wall. We still needed access from the outside to that area for larger things that wouldn't make it through the other end. That open end is where the cows will exit the parlor and return to the living quarters. We put up tin on the outside to match the rest of the barn. The milkhouse got vinyl siding.
  

Inside the milkhouse. Plumbing cannot go inside the walls since they will freeze and access would be nearly impossible if need be. We put in a closet so the waterworks (pressure tank and heater) wouldn't be just sitting out in the open.
More milkhouse.

   Inside the parlor with the milkers in place!
Both sides from up-to where the cows will be.

 Parlor looking to the entry end of the pit. Ready to go. There are sliding doors at the opposite end of each side for the cows to exit.

It's been a long and hard road. We're looking for those ready-to-milk cows now to run through it. We have ten heifers that will be coming in in late January and early February.