Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

When you live on a dairy for very long the first thing you learn NOT to do is to name the critters. You never know when one is going to croak, or when you will have to get rid of them; either BEFORE they croak on you, or because they have some kind of problem. However, there are times when a name or a nickname just happens. This one calf came along back when I first started my calfkeeping gig here. My husband went by her house one morning and said, "That calf in the last house is sure fat and fluffy looking." And that is how Fluffy got her name. Fluffy just had her first calf this Monday. My husband was out there at 9 PM, stripped to the waist because he had to pull the calf. Fluffy was in no mood to cooperate, so it was quite the ordeal. He got her in the trailer, but she decided she didn't want to be messed with so she went after him and he had to climb the side of the trailer to get away from her. Anyway, he finally got a live heifer calf out of he. But she w...

For those of you who are self-employed I am sure you can relate to the whole insurance headache. My husband has a second part time job which insures us, but when our baby was born 7 months ago we decided to get her coverage from a different source. Then, since it worked so well, we decided to get it for me as well. Here is the abbreviated story on how THAT has gone: The fun began in June of this year. When he talked to the agent on phone to get a quote he, my Dear Husband, made me 2 inches taller than I am and got a quote for the Premium plan which was $236 p/mo. When I filled out the form I put my real height. Well, the agent calls back a couple days later and says when he turned the application in they had to adjust it because I am four pounds too fat for my height (well, he didn't say that, but that's what it comes down to; 4 lousy pounds) to qualify for the low rate Premium plan, and to keep it would be $262 p/ mo. DH didn't want that rate so he called in and said we wa...

Here is another interesting calf we had last year, I believe. This one was a bull, so we sold him, but he was funny. I think somewhere along the line he was missing a chromosome or two. My husband said the springs were just missing from his ears, but I think there was something more wrong. He always had his tongue hanging out, though calves will do that off and on, but he was pretty consistent with it. Also his tail was kinked up. You can see that it is kind of short, but when I felt it some of the bones seemed fused. Anyway, other than his appearance, he acted perfectly normal and the folks that buy our bull calves didn't seem concerned. I am working on more halfway funny stuff to post but there's so much that I don't know where to start. Just keep tuning in. Thanks for visiting. Calfkeeper

This happened last month. I thought it was an interesting case. Wed Aug 15th 2007 8:30 AM: Went out and brought new heifer calf and cow in from field. Not too sure how old calf was; umbilical cord sort of dried up, but calf still seemed damp. Left her with cow all morning ‘til maybe early afternoon, then separated them. Beautiful, normal calf. 6 PM Fed calf bottle. She slugged back the whole thing. Thurs Aug 16th5:15 AM (approx) Calf comatose. Or as near as I could tell. She was on her side, non-responsive, drooling, head on ground, eyes closed or just barely opened. I tried to feed her bottle but she only swallowed convulsively once or twice, then milk just drained from her mouth. 5:30 AM. Husband went out and looked at her. Drug her out of pen and out of the way to be taken to boneyard later after chores were all done. She was barely breathing and as I said, totally non-responsive.This was a real grief as the cow she came from is a great milker and to get a heifer from her was a joy....

Here's a break from my stories.... This is a photo of a calf born back in March of '05. The mom is a b/w Holstein and so was the bull. But both of her grandfathers were registered red Holsteins. With some lack of originality I named her Red Rosie. She is in with the bull to breed now. We are anxious that all goes well with her. It will be interesting to see if she has a red or b/w calf.

This takes longer to write and to read than it did to happen, but read on and laugh if you must! It started off as a regular, normal morning. I went out and did the AM chores as usual and was doing the wash-up after milking; where I run wash and rinse waters through the hoses and milkers. My husband, who drives a bus for the grade school, had left to start the bus and warm it up (he keeps it parked up by his mom’s place) and to check on his mother. I was in the middle of finishing the bleach rinse cycle when I took the plug out of the vat so the water wouldn’t go back up the intake hose and the milking hoses would clear out. As I leaned over to do so I casually laid my hand on the porcelain sink that we use to wash our hands; it is right next to the clean up vats. To my everlasting astonishment the sink just fell off the wall. Now, this is a large older porcelain sink and rather heavy. However, it didn’t go kablooie, it just kind of bowed slowly away from the wall, like it was...

Prior to my marrying a dairy farmer and moving to the dairy I was ignorant of the majority of happenings on one. I grew up in rural California where my father had a cow, but she was sold when I was about 5, so beyond the very basics I knew nothing about the day to day conditions or events of running of a dairy farm.. In downtown Portland, where I lived for 12 years before moving to Missouri, one doesn’t see many dairies beyond one called the Belmont Dairy which is actually a large grocery store with spendy lofts for rent on the upper story. There are many dairies in rural Oregon, but I was not fortunate to have visited any of them and picked up any practical knowledge. So once I became an adult what I learned about dairies I learned from the cow commercials I saw on TV when I visited my mom back in California; Holsteins are immaculate, live in lush, knee deep grassy fields, where the bulls yak companionably and the cows chit chat like a group of gals gossiping over a steaming latte...