Some days, you're just glad they're over. Phew, what a Saturday, and only one whole day into being newbie calf parents! After the euphoria of having two heifers born on the same day, came the down to earth bump of actually having to be responsible for these two little ones. The first lesson was: all the book reading in the world isn't going to prepare you for the actuality - as we say in the UK "a penn'orth of experience is worth a pound (sterling) of book learning". We had already learned that getting them to suckle could be hard, but Bessie's calf was not only reluctant, she was downright anti "even touching" the teat. So, after stuffing colostrum covered fingers into her mouth to encourage sucking, trying to push an uncooperative calf under the udder, and pleading and cajoling, came the decision to bottle feed. Well, if we thought the earlier attempts were difficult, trying to bottle feed her was even more so. This little girl was all stubborness, and presumably unexcited by her mother's milk! In the meantime, mom Bessie's udder is starting to resemble a small barrage balloon and we are panicking on another front now as we try to relieve that little problem. Well, all those demos we had, and all that reading did not help one iota when trying to milk a very uncomfortable, ouchy cow by hand. Bessie and Rosebud are sweet cows and very easy to handle under most conditions. This was not one of those conditions. However, we had the solution. Our brand new milking machine would relieve Bessie and feed the calf (by now we had realized that Annabelle Lee's suck was just too little for the bottle and we enlarged the hole, duh!). Ahh, such naive thoughts. Note: the worst time to learn how to use a milking machine is when you are trying to put it on the cow for the first time. So, it is 11pm, we have sheep wandering around the yard as we have taken their stall for the milking parlor, we have just finished the horses, the chickens are still out, we can't get the milker to suction and we have two cows with big, uncomforable udders, but we did manage to get some colostrum into Annabelle.
Triskelion's Champagne Surprise and Triskelion's Annabelle Lee
Day 3 was bound to be better! We have to thank Dr. Rodney Cole for his infinite patience in dealing with two distraught adults at different times of the day and in giving us great advice. He also recommended that we introduce ourselves to Robin and John Dodson (Goats R Us). By "introduce" we assumed that he meant call up and whine. We will be ever grateful to them for taking time out of their valuable Sunday morning to help diagnose the problem with the milking machine and take us through the whole milking process. We now have two contented Moms, two well fed babies, and two nearly back to normal adults. (Jorg's note: we are several years older).
And, we have the most gorgeous tasting milk, still a little full of colostrum but good, nevertheless. Like the shirt?
Triskelion's Mona Lisa
