The cow is here!! Betty landed here at the farm at 9:30 this morning! Alas, I've been gone almost all day, so I'm just now getting around to telling y'all about her...
The day started of pretty interestingly as I was informed that she had not yet been milked for the morning. My family and I needed to leave in less than an hour, and now I was suddenly graced with the responsibility of milking a new cow! So she was placed in my "milking parlor" (fancy name for the cleaned up feed room that now has a cow stanchion in it), and I got to work with the help of the lady who brought her.
That poor cow... It turns out that she has a severe case of edema in her udder, so it is ROCK hard. :( It's hard to milk her, and it's uncomfortable for her; so I'm hopping now trying to get that cleared up. But despite the edema, and her tiny teats, I found her very easy and pleasurable to milk. After an hour of milking (the edema really slowed us down), we had 4 1/2 gallons of milk, and that cow was still ridiculously full... Six gallons a day? Hmm, I'm thinkin' it's more like 8 gallons. This cow knows how to produce! I looked in the bucket of milk and smiled. It was such a lovely yellow color, and there was so much of it! By Jove, I think I'm hooked!
I knew right from the start that she couldn't remain "Betty" seeing as I already have a "Metty", so after thinking about her new handle pretty much all day I came up with it.
She is now Hazel. :) My pretty little Hazel cow.
Don't get too far, friends. We're just getting started here... I have plans up this sleeve of mine. Hehe.
7 comments:
And what is edema? And can you get rid of it? And how did she get it? Can you tell I know next to nothing about dairy cows?
Hazel! It fits her... looking forward to hearing more.
What a pretty color! Is edema like mastitis?
Edema is an accumulation of fluids in the udder. It is NOT at all like mastitis, and the milk is perfectly fine to consume. Basically, her udder is severely swollen, and it just takes time, lots of udder massages, and treatments to get the swelling to go away and the lymphatic system to perk back up. It often occurs in a first freshening cow who is about to calve, but can also happen if she is not milked out completely for a series of days (which is Hazel's case). When I first saw Hazel, I thought she just had a really droopy udder, but I was moderately okay with that. Now I realize that her udder is normal, but the edema is what caused it to swell like a water balloon! I've gotten some of the edema to go away in the top of the udder; now I'm working on the lower half of the udder.
She's pretty, and you're such a good mom:) Sounds like lots of massages will be the ticket. Will you make some cheese?
Oooh yes... there will be cheese. ;) Lots of it.
That's interesting about the edema; I've learned a new thing today - so I guess that could happen to sheep or goats too? And the 6 gallons finally filtered through my brain - that is a LOT of milk!
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