Winter Bliss

Winter is meant to be a time of slowing down, of hibernation, but we have been extra-busy because the weather has been sunny. And we hadn't had 'sunny' for many, many months it seemed!

So we finished all the jobs on our gardening list - weeding, mulching, creating paths, paving, and lots and lots of planting! The gardens look amazing. We have been harvesting pumpkins, lettuce, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, silverbeet, rocket, herbs, eggplant, celery, macadamias, citron, chokos and lemons. And so much of the garden is still in the very early stages of growth.


We have had several frosts - night temperatures below zero with ice on the car and frost-burnt grass in the paddocks. A few plants in the gardens were affected, but not many. I think the shadecloth on the greenhouses, thick mulch and watering regularly have helped. There is often steam rising from the greenhouses on a very cold morning! The taro, sweet potato and basil are a little bit burned by cold, and the chickens have complained by reducing the number of eggs they're producing (and it had just picked up too)... Some of the youngest fruit trees and many of the banana trees have dead leaves on them, but we're hoping they will come back stronger in the spring.

We don't have much experience with very cold temperatures, but we really enjoy the contrast in seasons we enjoy here in the mountains. After living in the tropics for over 15 years, I love wearing jeans and boots with thick snuggly socks, the ambience of a wood fire, huge pots of soup with home made bread and air so cold it takes your breath away... I love growing cabbages, peas and broccoli too! Here we have the benefit of being able to grow a lot of tropical plants (not all fruits though, sadly), but with a temperate winter.

Last weekend we did some pruning of fruit trees, and put some cuttings into pots. Hopefully we will have some little trees to plant when Spring arrives.

We have reduced the number of chickens we keep and have been getting more eggs now. We have rounded up the 'wild' chickens and kept them in the pen for a couple of weeks now, feeding them grain and some garden waste and scraps. When everyone has settled in to calling the chook pen home, we will let them free range in the afternoons again. We added have six baby guinea fowl to the flock, and look forward to them growing and becoming part of the farm yard antics as they strut around in their amusing way.


It is almost time to dry Lucy off, she is in calf and due at the end of the year. Next, Poppy will be in calf and so next year we will have more babies to admire and lots of milk! Today I received a new cow, but she is just on loan so that we have milk for the next few months while Lucy is dry.

Lucy

It is a real pleasure to work on the farm in the sunshine, without slipping and squelching in the red mud and having our seedlings drown and die because of seemingly-endless rain. It's nice to do work other than mowing and weeding, and enjoy a wider variety of harvest too.

I hope your garden is full of blessings this winter!

A Herd Update

It has been 1.5 years since we got our first cow and calf, and I am continuing to learn every day. In the last few weeks, Honey went to live at my friends' farm, as they will run a horned herd over there. She's currently with the bull, and they hope to be milking her by the new year!

Honey, 1.5 years old, the day she left

It was a little hard to let her go, being hand-reared by us and so loving and quiet. But I am rapt we'll be able to visit. It also means I can raise more calves without crowding the paddocks if some of them move on!

Wags and Poppy are a year old now, and growing big and strong. They both love a scratch under the chin and are very tame. Wags is destined for the freezer when he's about two years old. Poppy will hopefully be in calf by this Winter sometime, delivering in a year or so.

We are hoping for a calf from Lucy before the end of the year.

Today Lucy was Artificially Inseminated (AIed), so will hopefully deliver a Jersey calf around Christmastime. If today didn't work, we need to try again in 3 weeks' time. I've been charting her cycles and reading all about the signs of bovine fertility for a few months now, another learning curve.

I am still milking every day, but getting much less - about 6L, once a day. I make a lot of yoghurt, and the labneh I make from the yoghurt is so creamy and delicious. I can't make enough of it to keep it up to the family! I think I'll tackle fetta this week. Jersey fetta is very yummy!

Labneh - photo from this tutorial

House Cow FAQs

It's been over a year since we first got a house cow, and we've learned a lot along the way. Here are some of the most common questions people ask us, and our replies. We are rather unconventional in the way we manage our home dairy, and I encourage cow owners to seek out information most suitable to their animal before following our example.


How do you tame a cow from a commercial dairy?

This was harder than I expected. Lucy was very frightened and stressed about being away from her herd. At first we had to use fences and ropes to get her to co-operate because it was important that a) we fully milked her at least once a day and b) the calf we also brought home (not hers) got milk. After the initial rough days, Lucy would lead on a halter (the show type with a small chain under the chin). From there we brushed her, spoke kindly to her and got her used to a routine - dry food with minerals and molasses, same time of day, same people around, same calls and commands... Within months Lucy would come when called and take herself into the milking shed at least some of the time. She didn't kick or otherwise carry on for us.

Where do you get the foster calves from?

Our foster calves are calves from a nearby dairy which are excess to their needs. In commercial dairies, male calves are often killed at birth, or they are raised to sell for veal. Some female calves are not kept as replacement heifers because they might be the wrong bloodline or colour, or they aren't a strong animal. If a dairy runs about 200 cows who each 'work' for several years, and each cow has a calf per annum (the usual way in commercial dairying), and half these calves are female - the dairy can't use 100 replacement heifers each year. And so there are often perfectly lovely little heifer calves available for a low cost in dairying regions. And that is how we got Honey and Poppy! We use the term 'foster calf' to describe a calf raised on its own mother for a couple of weeks, who then comes to our farm to drink milk from Lucy until weaning age.


Do you really milk by hand?

Yes! I got a quick lesson from a friend who hand-milks, and a few tips from others who have milked by hand in the past, and within a couple of days had mastered the art! I find milking by hand is relaxing for the cow and I, and it ensures that no damage is done to the udder or teats during milking. Also, milking machinery isn't cheap!

Does owning a cow take a lot of time?

When I'm milking, or monitoring foster calves closely, the cows take me about an hour to an hour and a half each day. That is to feed, water, clean, milk, check the animals over, move them to other paddocks, and so on. To some, that may seem like a lot of time, but it is my exercise and 'hobby', and provides our family with milk. When I am not milking or required for so much hands-on work, I only need to check the cattle and their water once each day.


What do you do with the excess milk?

Excess milk has usually gone to foster calves at our place - I only milked out what we could use, and trusted the calves to take care of the rest! Currently, we don't have any calves on Lucy so with excess milk I make yoghurt, kefir, custard, soft cheese and so on. I also give milk to our animals sometimes, who seem to like it and digest it well.

Doesn't milk have to be pastuerised to make it safe?

After reading information from the Weston Price Foundation and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, we decided that the benefits of raw milk outweigh any small risk of contamination, for us. Also, because we control the health and hygiene of our cow and home-dairy facilities, we are confident that the raw milk we're drinking is a quality product.

How do you treat health problems in your herd?

We have been blessed to not have many health problems to date in our herd. We follow the advice of Pat Coleby who has excellent resources for farmers regarding minerals and nutritional supplements. We believe that this prevention is worth the investment of time and money. For buffalo fly, worms and ticks, all common pests in our area, we have tried Neem oil, and a specific mix of essential oils as well as supplementing their diet with specific minerals including diatomaceous earth. For behavioural issues we have used homeopathy and herbal treatments. We are not totally against conventional treatments and will use them if the health or comfort of our animals are at stake.

I hope this interests those of you curious about having a house, or looking into having your own cow. I highly recommend the following resources:

Weston A Price
Sally Fallon- Nourishing Traditions
Keeping a Family Cow Forums
EnviroNeem
Natural Cattle Care by Pat Coleby
The Healthy House Cow by Patricia van den Berg
The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsly

Weaning and Surplus Milk

We weaned Poppy a couple of months ago now. She took it really well. We moved her up to the main paddock with Honey and the horses, and they roamed about getting fat on the lush winter grass. Because Poppy is a foster calf, Lucy didn't mind that we took her away.

Finally, when Wags was 6 months old we weaned him from Lucy as well. They called to each other day and night, and at any possible chance Lucy fed Wags through fences. He kept escaping and she wasn't very co-operative at milking time. After several days we put a trough in the back paddock and put up some electric fencing to keep Honey, Poppy and Wags up there for awhile. Now that Lucy can't see them she's being really co-operative, even taking herself into the shed each day at milking time, without being called.

At first I had to milk her twice a day because her supply was so huge, but now we have cut it back to 9 litres, once a day, which is manageable. I've been making yoghurt, kefir, custard, white sauce, labneh (yoghurt 'cheese') and all sorts of milkshakes and smoothies. I'm keen to try more cheese-making as my attempts so far have not tasted so great! If you have recipes for using up excess milk (and eggs), I'd love to try them.

Our House Cow Journey Continues

I began milking Lucy when Wags was a few weeks old. Until then, he and Poppy the foster calf shared all the milk. As they began to eat a little grain and some hay and grass, I decided to separate Lucy and Honey from them during the day, giving her several hours to graze the grass in the orchard and house paddock, and then I brought her in to be fed, checked over and milked before releasing her back into the small paddock with the babies and Honey for the night. I did this around four times each week, taking around 3 to 4 litres each milking. The other days they all grazed together. This routine went well for a little while, and then Lucy was only giving 2 litres at each milking, and then just a litre for the final couple of milkings last week. And then I gave up. Why go to all the bother of mixing feed, setting up, milking, cleaning the dairy, the buckets and everything for a mere litre of milk? As I led Lucy back to the small paddock, her udder would swell and teats fill with the rest of the milk she had withheld from me, ready to feed her babies she'd been apart from all day.


Last week we let them all into a larger paddock to allow us to do some maintenance on their small paddock and the areas we graze them inside electric fence tape. I'm not milking Lucy for awhile. We've slashed their paddocks and we'll harvest some manure and hay from near their pens to use in some of the raised garden beds I've emptied out recently. Do I still have a House Cow? Or a dairy breed with her calves let loose in the paddock? I'm trying to convince them they're still our dairy herd by encouraging them back to the water troughs daily for their minerals, perhaps some hay or another treat, and some checking over and brushing. Poppy and Honey especially love to be brushed, I think because they've had less affection from Lucy, being foster calves. I use a horse brush on them and they mostly love careful strokes around their face and ears.

When it's time to wean the calves, I'll bring Lucy back to the small paddock. I'm not sure on the exact management of the herd from there, but I'll try to get her into once-a-day milking again. I don't think I'll bother with another foster calf for a little while.

We have just castrated Wags using the banding method, which seems to us to have been a humane way to carry out the process. His job now is to eat grass and grow big!

The next thing we need to think about is getting Lucy artificially inseminated (AIed), which is usually done three months after a dairy cow calves.

So much to consider... And to think that once I just thought that cows ate grass, drank water, made manure and existed with little human intervention!

Our Herd

I am so filled with joy every day when I see our cows grazing together in the orchard, or taking a nap under the trees...

When Wags was three days old, our foster calf for Lucy, who was then 3 weeks old and named Sweetheart, was delivered. Sweetheart was cold and hungry and wet and covered in manure from the calf pen.

Sweetheart on Day 1 here (3 weeks old) - we have since changed her name to Poppy!

At first Lucy was not interested in her new charge at all and pushed her away. So my daughter Abby and I led the calf to the milking shed and washed her off with warm water and rags. We dried her with old towels, as it was a cool, rainy day. Then we led Lucy in to milk out some of the excess colostrum (just as we had the day before). When she was in place having her snack of grain, hay, minerals and molasses we encouraged Sweetheart forward to feed from Lucy's udder. She fed with gusto, having been kept away from the nurse cows at the dairy that morning to make the mothering-on process easier for us. After awhile we thought that Sweetheart might be taking too much milk, and get a tummy ache, so we took her back to the shelter where Wags was waiting. Honey was in an adjoining paddock at this point, in case she got jealous of the calves and hurt them, or tried to feed from Lucy.

Once Lucy had finished her food, we took her back to the calves. When Sweetheart saw Lucy come into the paddock, she snuck around between her back legs and drank more milk, and Lucy let her! We were so relieved! She then collapsed for a nap in the hay beside Wags.

Lucy feeding her two babies. She is so patient! It rained for two weeks after Wags was born, hence the muddy paddock entrance!

I continued to watch Lucy and the calves carefully each day - checking the calves' health and bowel movements (Wags was scouring for awhile), checking Lucy's udder and generally observing their interactions with each other.

Wags is a big boy now! He's 1.5 weeks old in this photo, and so very cute.

After two weeks Honey went back to sleep in the main cow paddock at night too, as well as grazing alongside Lucy by day, with or without the calves. She watches the calves during the day, resting alongside them, calling out to them and seeming to help Lucy care for them.

The name Sweetheart was too confusing as I use it as a term of endearment when speaking to the other cattle, and possibly even the hubby and kids! I hadn't noticed before she arrived, but I'm mentioning her name a lot more often than I'm actually speaking to or about her... So after a week of trying it out, we had a family vote and re-named the foster calf Poppy.

We're about to start milking Lucy again now that the calves are doing really well and the colostrum has gone. It will be interesting to share milk with two calves, as last time we only had Honey to share with. The times I milked out excess colostrum (to prevent mastitis and to have some in the fridge and freezer in case a calf was ill), Lucy was very accepting of being milked. In fact she wandered into the bails of her own accord one day during her time grazing in the house paddock.

Honey and Poppy (was Sweetheart) resting together in the afternoon. Honey is Lucy's foster calf from last year, and 7 months old now.

I remember when Lucy came here and she was quite lonely - calling at the fence for some cow friends. Now she has her own herd - a son and two foster daughters - and she seems very, very content.

Lucy has a calf!

BEFORE

This is Lucy two weeks before calving. She wanted to lick the camera! Cows are very curious creatures.

Two days before calving her very round shape changed, see her sides are quite flat now?

From the side she even started to look skinny as the great weight of her baby weighed her down. All of a sudden, ribs were showing!

We kept looking at her tail, which would appear lifted quite often, and for dips on either side, which indicated softening ligaments. We were also looking for signs of swelling, redness and mucous.

And Lucy's udder began to swell up and feel firm. Her teats enlarged. These changes happened in the two days before Lucy calved.

After what feels like a very long time waiting, we awoke this morning to see that Lucy had her calf in the wee hours. I had to look up this site to show the children the happenings we missed!

Newborn loveliness

I had spent a lot of the previous week researching about calving because I didn't really know what to expect. On the one hand people told me, "Just leave her to it, she will be fine!" and the next minute someone would ask, "What will you do if she needs help?" I expected that she would birth the calf fine as she has before, but it was interesting to read about different things which can happen for birthing cows. I found a lot of information and valuable links on the Keeping a Family Cow forums.

Wobbly legs

So when I launched out of bed at 6.30am and raced in my cow print nightie and gumboots (sorry, no photos of that!) to see the new addition, it was such a relief. I spent about 1.5 hours in the paddock fixing up Lucy's shelter, fetching minerals and food, laying out fresh hay and observing Lucy and her baby boy.

Lucy after calving but before delivering the placenta.

When I came up to the house I called my friend and asked about the placenta and what to expect. My friend thought that maybe she'd birthed it and eaten it, so I stopped worrying for awhile. About two hours later I saw it across the paddock a bit and it was HUGE and gross! I left it there for most of the day and Lucy looked at it once that I saw, but left it. So I packed it up in a garbage bag tonight and put it in the shed fridge in a bucket! We are bringing home a foster cow, so might need the placenta for its (awful) scent yet. Since I don't eat red meat, I find placentas of any description quite horrible! Amazing, but yucky...

Lucy's placenta with the toe of my gumboot showing to see the size of it.

I was worried that Lucy's tiny calf could not latch on to her hugely swollen teats. I crept up to check how he was going and he turned to look at me with milk coming out of his nostrils. He later jumped about a bit, moo-ed ever so quietly to his mama and lay down for a nap. I haven't seen him latch on since, but he has a lot of energy and knows which end to find the udder at now. I'll be spending a lot of time watching him feed, pee and poo tomorrow, so that I know he's getting a lot of colostrum. I will have to milk Lucy out somewhat too as her udder will be over-full and he is only tiny, taking a small proportion of the colostrum she's producing. I believe I'll freeze it in case of a calf emergency of any kind...

Can you spot the calf in these photos?

This afternoon, Lucy took little Wag for a walk to catch some sunshine and hide from the humans. He was so well camouflaged and began to lighten in colour as he dried off!

So now Lucy and baby are asleep on the hay this windy, rainy night. Lucy is eating some grain and lucerne, she had molasses and a lot more calcium and seaweed supplements. I had been giving these to her in increasing doses before she freshened (delivered), so hopefully I'm on the right track there. Of course there's a lot of conflicting advice out there regarding bovine nutrition!

Soon we will hopefully collect the foster calf, who must be 2.5 weeks old now (a Jersey heifer). And so the story continues...

Weaning begins

Curious

It seems like no time since Lucy and Honey arrived, but already Honey is over 3 months old. It is time to begin to wean her from Lucy as we prepare for when she dries off to have her own calf around March 22nd.

Honey loves to lick my hands. I'm not that keen!

So, much to Honey's disappointment, she is having only one milk feed a day and eating grass, hay and a tiny amount of Lucy's grain and mineral mix (when Lucy's not looking)! We've been doing it this way for over a week now, and both are doing well with the new routine. Honey still tries to get Lucy to feed her occasionally (she never accepted her as her own calf and only allows Honey to feed at "bucket time").

Scratching Honey's chin

In a few weeks I will have to cut out Honey's afternoon feed, and as demand drops, so will Lucy's supply, and then when I stop milking once a day as well it will be time for her to rest and eat grass and concentrate on growing a healthy calf.

And so the cycle goes...

Meanwhile, we are learning about:
* strip grazing through using electric fence
* getting the mineral/supplement mix and Neem spray applications right for deterring flies
* de-horning (dis-budding) calves (still researching)
* making cheeses
* handling a calf that weighs more than I do!

Lucy, 6 months gestation, enjoying the green grass after our first summer rains.

Update - Two Months

We've learned so much in the almost two months we've had a house cow! Some of the main lessons are:

* it's not easy
* it's not cheap
* nothing ever stays the same

If I knew what a challenge a house cow would be, would I do it again? YES! The milk is fantastic, the manure is abundant, and the cows are really a joy to work with, especially Honey the calf.

We're still milking out once a day, but we take our share first in the afternoon as we were barely getting 1.5L for awhile. Honey is eating a variety of other foods (mainly grass and lucerne hay tops) and growing amazingly fast and well, so we thought it was time to take the first step to weaning. Hopefully each further step toward weaning will go as smoothly.

We are using diluted Neem oil for buffalo fly at the moment, which appeared once the rain came back. I'm playing with dilutions so I don't have to re-apply all the time, but it certainly seems to make a difference. I check both cows daily for ticks, and remove them manually. Luckily, both animals are quite used to me touching them now.

We're spending less on feed now that there's more pasture for the cows - for awhile there their food budget rivaled ours! Lucy is happy to eat more homegrown foods, especially pigeon pea, and she is hand-fed snacks of these most days. Sometimes I'll lead her to a lush part of another paddock and stand whilst she munches away, or tie her to a post whilst I do something else.

From the milk I've made yoghurt, panir, quark, sour cream (didn't work out), cottage cheese and cream cheese so far. Mostly, though we only milk out what we can use fresh and in cooking. The Home Creamery has been an invaluable resource (and inspiration) in creating products from excess milk.


This was also published as Our House Cow Journey Part Two, to follow Our House Cow Journey Part One, written for the Simple Green Frugal Co-op Blog.