Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Channeling His Inner Milkman

Even though we don't live on a dairy farm, my Farmer has had to channel his inner milkman a couple of times during this calving season. 
Sometimes a heifer needs a little help getting this motherhood thing figured out and a baby needs a nudge after entering the real world from the warm confines of its mama. Such was the case with a heifer and her calf. The baby was having trouble getting up, even after the mama had cleaned it off. So we put the heifer in the head gate and Randy milked it.
Just like with human babies, it's important for the bovine baby to get the colostrum - the first, nutrition-rich milk - from its mother. Once Randy had the milk, we poured it into a calf feeder.
A little teamwork from Randy and Robby got the warm milk into the calf's tummy via a tube.
That's the boost it needed. Mother and baby are doing well.

(Note: This happened earlier this month, but I hadn't gotten it posted yet. All but four of the heifers have calved now, and we are more than halfway through calving out the cows.)

4 comments:

  1. Colostrum is like gold! We had two new calves this week, and both of them amazed me at how well they drank so soon after birth! (We feed them colostrum from a bottle after we milk the cow) I always get nervous when we have to milk a first calf heifer for the very first time. Your husband and mine must have nerves of steel!

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    1. Absolutely! I'm always nervous about it. But the head gate and the panel really have helped the safety of the process.

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  2. Replies
    1. Yes, I love this time of year, watching the baby calves run in the pasture. Such cuties!

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