Our beautiful housecow Marmalade has had her calf! It was so exciting. She was born on the last day of school before the school holidays, and unfortunately we were all at school for a performance so missed the actual birth.
She was obviously born with no difficulties as she was just standing for the first time as we got home. You can see she is still pretty wet and “goopy”! This was the day before our AFL Grand Final, so we named the calf Dusty, after Dustin Martin, who played in the grand final and also won the highest League medal for the year.
We gave them a couple of days to get use to each other, and started milking on day three!
We made a decision early on that we would only milk once a day, in the morning. We use quite a bit of milk but the average jersey cow can produce over 15 litres a day, with 2 milkings, so we knew we didn’t need that much.
At this stage we are leaving Dusty with Marmalade all the time. As she gets bigger we may need to separate them over night, so that she is not having a big drink just before we need to milk, but at the moment there is definitely enough for all of us.
Number 2 son, Danny is our main milker at this stage. He and Cam get up around 6am, and head out to the milking shed with an empty billy for the fresh milk, and two buckets of hot water, for clean up.
Danny gets a bucket of oats ready, and stands at the gate and calls to Marmalade. Most times she trots up to the gate then follows him into the shed. Occasionally she needs some encouragement from Cam.
Our milking shed has a small bin at one end that Danny tips his bucket of oats into, and when she starts eating we have a block of wood that falls down towards the side of her neck, so she can’t back out while we are milking. You can see above, Cam putting the cups on, and in the inset, you can see the milk running thru at the bottom. She is not worried, happy so long as she oats!
A few years ago, with our previous house cow, we bought a small milking machine. It was a great decision – so much quicker than hand milking!
Either Danny or Cam put the cups on her udder and within 5-10 minutes we have a full billy of milk!
The first couple of milkings we didn’t keep the milk, because it was mostly colostrum, but I did save a couple of bottles of the rich colustrum, in case we have a calf that needs it at some stage. It freezes well, and it always pays to have some on hand, in case a cow dies, or doesn’t accept her calf for some reason.
We have been milking for nearly a fortnight now, and getting 3-4 litres of milk a day as well as plenty of delicious thick cream!
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