Cows on the brain...

I woke up this morning thinking about cows. Well, more truthfully, I was thinking about what to do about cows.

You see, we have Brigid the mama cow who is dreadfully late having her baby and I am beginning to think she might be experiencing a hysterical pregnancy. I need to call Andrew the AI guy (that's the artificial insemination specialist in cow lingo) and see if we can get him out here to see what is what. My problem with calling Andrew is that then I will know that she isn't pregnant and that it will be almost another year before we have a baby cow and fresh milk again. The thought of that makes my heart go thump. I have been so excited about this calf.

I think I just don't want to know the truth. I keep giving Brig the benefit of a doubt and waiting another week. This is sort of like the parent who doesn't want to face the facts about their child flunking out of high school. Denial doesn't do anyone any good at all.

I gotta call and I gotta call on Monday.

Just for the record, Brig sure looks fatter than when he was here last November and stuck his hand way up in there while she was kicking about as fast as she can kick! And let me tell you, that guy has lightening quick reflexes.

Anyway, after pondering the Brigid pregnancy dilemna, I moved onto Gilly, her baby. He'a a big fat oaf of a cow. Big and fat, that is, for a dexter cow. They are much more petite than the usual cow which makes him the perfect size for us. He's happy to hang with people, cows or sheep and has even made friends with the goat. He's always in a chipper mood and is ever curious about what is going on the other side of the fence. Gilly is just a great guy. He's the kind of guy you would have for a drinking buddy. You can tell him anything and he never tells a soul.

I really need to call the butcher regarding Gilly. But he is such a sweetheart. He eats raspberries straight out of my hand without getting a bit of cow spit on me. He lets me scratch that hard spot right between his horns without ever flicking me with them. He follows me wherever I go and I don't even have to bring food. He's my baby and he knows it.

Gilly will be our first cow that we raised from day one, much less had butchered so that call is a big deal. It's on the board for next week too. It takes the butcher a long time to get out here because of hunting season so I need to get on his list. Sigh. Guess I should be glad for the list.

Once I got done fretting about Gilly and the butcher, I only had Joey the Jersey steer calf to worry about. Only, he's no worry at all. Growing like a fat little piglet, he has a plump round belly and there's barely a rib in sight. Which after knowing him as a four day old is reassuring. He was one scrawny little guy when he first arrived. Our job with him now is to love him up, feed him a couple times a day and wait. I figure the more love we can pour into our food the better it is for all concerned. So far that theory holds. We'll see after the butcher comes for Gilly. But in the meantime, I love watching Joey bounce around the fields chasing bees and butterflies. The only thing odd about Joey is he still thinks Gilly is his mother.

I know I sound like I anthropomorphize everyone around here. It's true, I probably do. It's just that my animals ARE like people to me. They have personalities. They respond to my emotions, and I respond to theirs. I love them and I know they love me too. It might make me less of a farmer but I can't help it. I talked for the cats when I was five. So did my mom, maybe it is genetic.

Anyway, getting back to the cows. The problem is what to do about Brigid and that hysterical pregnancy situation. It would be fine to have the AI guy out again and get her pregnant for real this time. But I don't want to wait nearly a year for fresh milk again. Raw milk from your own cow is the BEST. And if you do it like we did--milking once a day and keeping the calf with the mom--it isn't even so much work. About a half an hour a day, maybe an hour if you have a cow that gives more milk that Brigid does. That's not a bad exchange for all the peace and relaxation milking provides. I swear, milking is better stress relief than a massage. And it's free, if you don't count buying the hay.

Here's a picture of me milking Brigid last winter when Gilly was a medium sized little guy.

Thinking about Brigid's new baby makes me excited to make kefir and cheese again. If she isn't pregnant (which is the rational conclusion any logical person would have come to by now), I don't want to wait another year. This thought led me to the shocking realization that I have been nursing fantasies about getting a new milk cow, a bigger one with a bigger udder. A cow that gives more milk.

I feel so disloyal. When we were looking for Brigid we knew nothing about cows except that they were BIG and had brown eyes. I read about breeds and got all interested in Dexter cows because they are known to be good for small holdings like ours. Dexters are small cows that give a managable amount of milk, produce just the right amount of meat for a small family and are good at pulling. (Not that I could ever figure out how to get Brigid to pull something besides me when I naively think I can lead her around.)

So when I saw the ad for a Dexter/Kerry heifer who was pregnant by a Dexter bull and about to give birth, I thought perfect. And she was. I even loved her name. The only downside with Brigid was she wasn't halter broken (now there is a story for another day) and she was more than a little wild. We've tamed her (mostly) and we love her to bits but all the things that made her so attractive a couple of years ago as a first time cow owner, make me long for a different cow today.

I want big, I want milk, I want babies with some extra meat to sell.

See, I like making cheeses and kefirs and yogurt. Right now when (if) Brigid's milk comes in, with the way I want to milk her, we don't get enough milk to make all the things on my list. I keep dreaming about a pretty Jersey or Guernsey cow who'll give me oodles of creamy white milk full of butterfat. My friend Jacqueline has a Jersey/Brown Swiss mix and she has cream frozen in chunks in her freezer. That's enough to give a girl serious cow envy.

The problem is we don't have enough space for too many cows. So I have to think about this carefully. How much is making more cheese worth to me? Is there room for two mama cows around this place? These are the questions that kept me in bed. And so far, I don't have any answers. Only a list of cow chores. Guess I better get at them.

Joey's sucking on what?

It was quiet out in the barnyard this morning. When I went out at 9 am to feed Joey (the 6+ week old Jersey Bull calf) all the animals were still laying around. Brigid (the soon-to-be mama cow) and Gilly (her 17 month old first child) were on opposites sides of a fence backs touching. Joe, whose mama lives on another farm, was alone in the cow pasture asleep by another fence. Even the sheep, the early risers of the bunch, were still laying down under the barn awning.

I like quiet mornings when not much is happening yet. The stillness feeds something in me as surely as my breakfast does. As far as I can figure there isn't enough silence to be had.

We don't keep usual farmer's hours around here. Since we aren't farming for a living we figure it is just as good to feed everyone at 9 and 9 as it is to feed them at 6 and 6, or gasp, 5 and 5. I am sure that somebody who knows more about these things would argue but so far our leisurely mornings work for us. And nobody is starving to death out there so I figure it is working for the animals too.

Joey came to us by way of a favor. Though now, 6 weeks into this adventure I am not exactly sure who the favor was for. My cow mentor George has a beautiful herd of Jersey and Brown Swiss dairy cows who reside in that famous of all dairy towns Carnation, Washington. They are gorgeous girls, all well loved by George. Modern science allows him to make sure that 90% of the calves born to his herd are heifers (girls) that he can raise to be the new milkers. Joe, was part of the unlucky 10% destined to leave George's comfortable farm by way of the butcher. Unfortunately for Joe when he was born, George's mom was in the hospital for something ominous and his wife's mom was due to be admitted the next day for surgery. Feeding a calf that wasn't going to help out the herd added unnecessary work to an already chaotic situation. Hence the call we received that nice morning in late June..."You guys want a Jersey bull calf?"

Being a softie at heart (both for people and animals), I didn't take a lot of convincing. Steve took even less than me. Aidan, smart boy that he is and knowing that the lion's share of the work was going to be his, had a list of objections. Poor boy, we barely even listened.

From the outset, I knew that Jersey's don't make the good meat cows. They tend towards the scrawny side and take a long time to flesh out. Their meat is marbled with yellowish fat that is not well considered by the average American eye. But what the eyes don't know is the meat tastes wonderful and the calves are sweet-tempered.

Now that he is settled in on the farm. Joey is considered a happy addition by all concerned. Even reluctant Aidan has been won over by the sight of a happy calf dashing across the pasture for his bottle or a few pets. Every morning and night we feed Joe his bottle. It's actually fun. He's so appreciative, and grows so fast, it is hard not to enjoy the process.

Farmer George told us to buy a bag of milk replacer and start feeding him grain as soon as he would eat it. I couldn't do it though. We've done well with raising our other cows on grass and their mama's milk. It doesn't take too much thought after reading the ingredients of calf milk replacer to realize if you feed a calf that stuff your soon-to-be grass fed, organically raised meat is going to have its formatives weeks spent drinking GMO infused milk.

One look at that bag of milk replacer had me running to the store for real milk; which, trust me, is NOT the most economical way to raise a cow. At first I was buying organic milk but at $5.89 a gallon (and he drinks a little over a gallon a day) I quickly switched to non-organic whole milk from Costco that I topped off with a half a cup of cream to make it more like the cream heavy Jersey milk his mother would have given him. I get it, processed GMOs in liquid form, but somehow it was the compromise I could live with.

Joey likes his milk, so apparently it is a compromise he can live with too. I am sure he would rather have non-homogenized, non-pasturized raw milk sucked from his mother's teat, or worst case scenario straight from the milking room at George's. But George lives a half an hour away and his entire supply of milk is promised to Darigold. So we all have to live with this compromise. I do admit to calling George and asking via his message machine if we could buy fresh, raw milk for Joey. He didn't return my call, which I was sure his way of politely ignoring me when I do something that he thinks is crazy.

But getting back to Joey. Every morning and night we heat his Costco milk on the stove and carefully pour it into his bottle, which is almost the size of Delaware--see the picture which I can't seem to put here and is instead at the top of the post. Joey happily jugs our concoction down in about 47 seconds, stopping once or twice to catch his breath. By the end, his nose is covered in a creamy white froth and his doe eyes are the essence of contentment. Every once in a while he drinks too fast and chokes. But that doesn't happen very often. Usually he is done so fast he hasn't gotten his requistite sucking time satisfied and goes off in search of Gilly. Gilly though, is never far away as he is more than a little bit envious of that delicious smelling bottle we offer Joey day and night. "Where's mine?" his little baby cow eyes seem to ask as he looks at us from inside a giant cow sized body.

Gilly misses his milk a lot. We recently weaned him off of Brigid so she would be ready for her soon-to-be-born calf. We still have to separate them or he would try to nurse once again. So when Joey comes sniffing around hoping to 'nurse' for a few minutes longer on Gilly's sadly missing boy parts, Gilly is very indulgent. Who knew cows had such empathy. For awhile, Aidan thought that Gilly had grown an udder until he figured out what was what and became thoroughly disgusted. Oh well, life on a farm.

In the end, Joey is growing like a weed. When we got him he was the size of our dog Charlie and now (less than 7 weeks later) he is about the size of a six-month old deer. Here's a picture of him somewhere in between those two sizes. Gilly is on the ground next to him, guarding his privates from wildcat nursing calves.