Ah, good for ya’ knowing about Bag Balm. They really do use the stuff (made in Vermont) on cows, but it is also excellent for all sorts of skin problems on humans too. Helps chapped hands, burns, cracked skin on feet, etc.
But, it definitely does not smell like perfume. 
Yes, quite a lot actually.
Well, there are milking systems that can be programmed to milk for a certain length of time or until a certain volume is reached, but ours is considerably less high tech. There are four rubber inflations that go on the teats, and they connect to a clear plastic hub, which the line that goes to the pipeline and carries the milk is connect to. You can see the milk through the hub. It usually starts out pretty fast and steady. When it tapers off, the cow is done milking. Half of milking is staring at cow asses.
As for the twenty gallons thing, I’m going to have to say no. A cow produces between four and seven gallons of milk a day. It varies, depending on a number of factors, but twenty gallons? Holy crap, that’s a lot of milk! Forty gallons a day? Must be a magic cow.
ahem I will give you this traditional Cornish recipe for pasty:
Make a sturdy pie crust. Survey kitchen. What can you put in this pasty? What won’t be missed if eaten? Do you really need a kitchen sink? Assess your choices, cut into chunks, and bake at 350 degrees until crust is golden and gravy bubbling.
As for milk, I like 2%.
Whoops, I sorta mispoke. That’s about how many are usually being milked. I think there are 65 in the barn right now. The entire milking herd is closer to one hundred cows, and there’s a ton of calves, steers, and heifers in different pastures. As to how we make a profit, hell if I know. Money doesn’t come exclusively from milking. We also sell steers and sometimes heifers, along with selling surplus grain and hay. (We sold heifers to some farmers from Mexico a long time ago, and that’s one of the things that made me into a Spanish minor.) We don’t always make a profit every year, though.
Some people do. Cows get chapped teats and udders in the winter, for the same reason people get chapped skin. We generally use antibiotic ointment and Vaseline. It’s about the same thing.
What does the barn smell like? One time I tried to go into a barn but the smell knocked me back, I don’t remember if it was full of horses or cows, but it was on a hot summer day.
I assume the stanchions have to be mucked out, how do you deal with the cow poop? Do you compost it and use it as fertilizer?
Do you use Holsteins, or a different milking breed?
Do you keep any bulls around, or just use AI?
I can’t help but add: wouldn’t it be ironic if you had used that common misspelling that so often shows up on these boards:
" a cow-worker"
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(sorry,… but somebody had to say it)
How many times has a cow farted in your face?
Does your barn have “See Rock City” painted on the roof? Used to be a common thing in the South, dunno if it happened up your way or not…
See my above spoilered post. It’s not so bad as TMI goes, but I am a delicate flower so I thought it was pretty gross.
All our cows are special, but some are more special than others. Some are short-bus special and some are just friendly. They’re all curious and they all love smelling things, especially if there is potential for treats. Most of them like sweet things, and there was one once that was absolutely crazy for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. She always looked so hopeful whenever she heard crinkling plastic. They all definitely have personalities. Some will do what you ask them to if you babytalk them (“Move on over, now, bossie. There’s a nice little cow.”), but others need to be patted on the butt.
I can’t say there was ever one that made me stand up and go, “Wow, you’re a super cow!” A lot of them develop nicknames, partly because calling them by thei eartag colors/numbers gets confusing and partly because some of them just need names. We had a Tiger once and one called Dots because she has four white dots on her forehead. Oddly enough, the cow with the most personality right now we just call Yellow 15, her eartag color and number. She’s greedy and pushy and pulls over the graincart all the time, but she’s the only cow that I’d hug.
Does that answer that question?
Milk is graded. Our farm produces Grade A milk, which goes towards drinking milk. You have to meet certain standards to produce the different grades of milk. Dairy inspectors come and, uh, inspect the dairy facilities on the farm and tell you whether or not you meet the expectations. If you do, then they license you for that grade of milk. They come back regularly after that to see if you continue to meet the standards. If you don’t, then you either get a certain amount of time to bring your operation to within the standards or you can have your license revoked. (I think. We’ve never had our license revoked, so I’m not sure what would cause an automatic suspension.) The higher the grade, to more it pays per pound. There was a great page I found a while ago on milk grades, but I can’t find it now. 
I’m actually not sure. It goes to make milk replacer for calves and there are bath and beauty products that use milk in them. My brothers and I giggle over industrial grade milk, because we have this picture in our heads of large machinery making cars out of butter and such, but that’s not what industrial grade milk goes to. It goes to stuff like milk replacer.
Before I was diagnosed as a diabetic, we used to just dip up pitchers of milk from the bulk tank. Then the whole diabetes thing happened, and my specialist put a nix on that. There was the potential for getting sick from unpasteurized milk and whole milk is really high in fat. We generally buy 2% from the store. This gives my parents an opportunity to grumble when the price of milk goes up and the milk check doesn’t.
I dunno. Are you surly in the mornings? Can you swear like a sailor? Do you love kittens? 'Cuz I think you could probably just take my place and they wouldn’t even notice if that was the case . . .
Nope. It’s white with green trim and a tin roof.
Yep. Distinct lack of oxblood in these parts.
Nope. I’ve never worn anything like that. I wear old t-shirts and a pair of grey shorts with a Winnie the Pooh embroidered patch on the front when it’s hot. When it’s cold, I wear two men’s undershirts, a long sleeved t-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, thermal underwear, a pair of thin knit pants, a pair of sweatpants, three pairs of socks, shitstompers, and a stocking cap with a pompom on the top. If it’s really cold, I put a bright green coat from Pioneer Seeds on over the whole thing, size men’s 2X. Can’t say that anybody’s ever found either outfit especially seductive. Or that all that many people who haven’t known me since I was in diapers ever come to the farm.
This is a really tough questions, not just because it’s a short question with a huge answer, but because the ethics behind it are complicated. We run what many would consider a small operation, while other people would call us factory farmers and accuse us of animal cruelty. I’d have to talk to my dad about it first, just to get some things straightened out. In brief, Big Agribusiness does make it harder for a small-time farmer to survive, but there isn’t a lot sympathy as a lot of people have a shit or get off the pot attitude.
Oh, did I mention yet that growing up on a farm makes you kind of crude sometimes?
Because of those damned ads. Happy cows come from California? Does that mean
that happy cows can’t come from anywhere else? There are several elements to those ads that imply cows are mistreated (like the one where the entire herd is standing outside in a blizzard and freezing half to death–you just don’t treat your cattle like that) and that most farmers in the Midwest I know find rather insulting. People (okay, idiots) who don’t know anything about farming assume there must be a grain of truth to them, and a whole bag of bad crap is opened. I hate those ads. They make me angry.
We don’t really know at this point. My parents are only in their early forties, so there’s plenty of time to decide. It’s unlikely though. When (and if–god knows a farmer never really retires) they retire, it’s most likely right now that they’ll sell everything except the section of land the house is on. It’ll be sad to see it go, but sadder to see it fall into disuse and fall apart from neglect. I think we’d all rather see someone else farm the land than have a subdivision built on it.
We have taken exactly one family vacation in my lifetime. It was to Chicago for two days. We went to the Field Museum and the National Air and Space Museum. It was a blast. We hired the daughter of a family friend to milk and chore while we were gone. I’m not sure how much my parents paid her for that as it was ten years ago, but it wasn’t less than fifty dollars per milking, so they paid at least $250 for her to come and milk.
Now that we’re all old enough to do chores with parental supervision, my parents go away for a few days a couple times a year and my brothers (and me if I’m home) do the chores. They mostly go to Tom Petty and Moody Blues concerts.
I’m completely blanking on the name of the company that hauls our milk, but we’re members of National Farmer’s Organization. It’s kind of like a union for farmers. They pay us for our milk and then sell it to “major milk buyers.”
Nope. That’s a whole 'nother ball of wax, to lapse into Wisconsin-speak. One of our neighbors is just beginning to phase into organic production, and it’s a three to four year process. I can’t imagine my dad taking the plunge any time soon, since the farm is doing well now as it is.
Sand is common in some parts of the state, but not the part I’m from. I know some people use it as floor cover in their holding sheds–it’s like a big catbox. There are a bunch of different bedding materials you can use. For where the cows stand while they’re being milked, we use cow mattresses. The ones we have are slightly bouncy rubber mats, and they are pretty nice to stand on. During the winter, they get bedded up with straw on top of the cow mats, which we get from our oat crop. We’re out of straw right now, so the calf pens are being bedded with corn shucks. I’ve no idea where those came from, because we haven’t stored corn in the shuck for a long time.
You can also use shredded newspaper or just shredded paper. That’s more common in areas where there are paper plants that have lots of waste paper. Some people use sawdust, which works on the same principle as the sand. The cow mats in the link above are covered in sawdust.
Neither, I hope. If I ever meet a traveling salesman I’m not related to and isn’t older than my grandparents, I’ll let you know.
(Personally, I think the fascination with farmer’s daughters arises with the fascination people once held for milkmaids. Or maybe some folk are just fascinated with strapping young ladies who can kick your ass six ways from Sunday. Who knows?)
Wait, do cows lay down like that to get milked? I thought they were milked standing up.
It smells like cow shit, duh. I honestly don’t really notice the smell anymore. It smells like a combination of ground limestone (we throw it down on the floor because it’s absorbent and makes scraping and sweeping easier), iodine teat wash, hay, flyspray, and sweat. Oh, and the ever-present cow pie. It’s kind of musty, kind of like spoiled-grass. It certainly doesn’t smell good, but it doesn’t exactly smell bad anymore either. The iodine smell actually bothers me more than manure, because it takes days for it to fade from your hands after milking.
We have a barn cleaner. There’s a gutter behind the stanchions that all the waste is, in theory, supposed go into. (Cows don’t have the best aim, and since the barn was built in the 1840s and cows were smaller then, one side of the barn has a shorter space for the cow to stand in. That side is always messier.) There a series of scraper paddles on a chain that runs through the gutter and goes out to a hopper-chute-thing that unloads it onto the manure spreader. If you do a search for barn cleaners, you’ll be able to find a more technical discussion of how they work. I think ours is a Berg.
It the winter, when the cows are in the barn, the barn gets cleaned out every day. In the summer, it gets cleaned out about every two days. The calf pens in the barn get cleaned out twice a week, but get bedded with fresh bedding every day.
The manure gets spread on the different crop fields, even in the winter. No composting required. Some people, though, use it to provide electricity for their farm. Some people store it as liquid manure in slurry stores. If a slurry store releases its contents, it can have serious impacts on the environment.
Yep, Holsteins. Most people do, though there a few people around who use Guernseys instead. I can’t think of anybody who uses Jerseys, though they are very pretty.
We do things the old-fashioned way. We generally have two bulls on the farm at one time–one in with the dry cows and one in with the heifers that are old enough to calve or in with the milking herd. We rent them, since inbreeding isn’t desirable. Generally, we use young bulls, because they tend to be a little easier to handle, i.e. less mean and surly. They haven’t had time to develop an attitude.
Many. They can’t help it. Though it’s not like I have my head inches from their butts constantly. Nearby, but not directly behind.
Nope. I’ve never seen it either, and I’m not sure what it means. I’ve seen a lot of anti-Bush (both father and son) signs painted on the sides of barns and different political slogans. (Best ever? Painted on the foundation of a barn: “Buck Fush!” It was gone the next time we went by. Sadness.) Sometimes people paint murals on the roofs or the sides, mostly landscapes and usually with a barn featured somewhere prominently. That’s kind of weird. Most common of all is to have the farm name and then listing the family name and the names of everybody in the family.
They stand up to be milked. She’s just relaxing.
Whew! I think I just doubled my post count! If I missed anybody, bring it to my attention. There were a lot of questions there.
Now I have to go call my papa because it’s Father’s Day.
I checked wikipedia, and apparently the “See Rock City” thing happened mostly in the South. A link ensues…
What’s the typical productive life of a milking cow? Do you sell them for slaughter when their production drops beyond a certain point?
I have this vague idea floating in my skull that agri-scientists have mucked about with cow genetics seeking to produce cows who are consistently super-producers. Am I wrong?
Have you ever pulled on the shoulder-length plastic examination glove and gone in? 
(I should mention that when I would clean my QH gelding’s sheath, he’d never drop, so I’d have to wear one of them to excavate the smegma from the inner pocket. Hence my knowledge of that item’s existence.)
Did you do 4-H when you were a kid? Raise a calf for showing?
Which leads to: Have you had to bottle-feed calves when their mothers either died in calving or rejected them? Assuming mom-cows do at times reject their calves. Am I right in thinking that calf-pulling is assisting in a difficult calving?
About four to six years for cows who are fed on a drylot. We graze our cattle, so overall milk production is lower, but lifespans are longer. So eight or even ten years in that case. And, yes, we do cull for low milk production, though I kind of try to dissociate myself from that end of the business. Makes me sad.
That’s one of the things they breed for, meaning a bull that comes from a long line of mothers with high production will be more expensive than one that didn’t. But they also breed for other things, like avoiding congenital disease. It’s not like they’ll select a cow who has a tendency to produce calves with malformed legs but with high milk production over one with lower milk production but sound calves. At least, a smart breeder won’t.
Ha ha! Nope, I haven’t. I’m too short to really do that; I’d have to stand on a box and I make damned sure there are no boxes for me to stand on in the barn. Besides, we usually call the vet if a cow hasn’t cleaned completely or it’s a difficult birth, because Dad doesn’t really relish diving in either. Well, and there are all sorts of complications that could arise, and it’s nice to have a vet around for those.
No, I didn’t. My older sister was in 4-H and showed cats, which resulted in us getting a housecat, which was actually the second cat for that year, because the first one died. Mom absolutely forbid any of us from enrolling in 4-H after that, because she couldn’t take the emotional roller coast ride and she knew we’d end up with at least one housecat per child. That and none of us would willingly part from a show calf, because it would become a pet. We’re a big family of softies when it comes to animals.
All our calves are taken from their mothers within a day of birth, so all of them are bottlefed for two weeks before they’re switched over to buckets–two or three days on mother’s milk, and then the rest of the time on milk replacer. As they get older, more water is added to the milk replacer and they’re introduced to more feed. Around six weeks, they get switched over to one feeding of milk replacer a day, and then dry feed at night. At eight weeks, they get weaned completely.
Cows do sometimes reject their calves, or they develop milk fever or they die. We keep colostrum on hand for that. (In the freezer. It looks like slightly orange, dark yellow lard when it’s frozen.) Sometimes, another cow from the herd will adopt the calf. Sometimes another cow will even steal the calf from the mother. That can be messy to sort out.
And that’s exactly what calf-pulling is.
Wow. I was made to understand (through Animal Science classes and labs) that using natural breeding anymore was becoming pretty rare. You guys do things old-school!
Heh. Why stick your hand up a cow’s vagina when you could just let nature take its course?
So, if I’m understanding you correctly, your calves don’t run with their mothers but instead go into their own little herd once separated from mom? Do you ever put in a dry cow or two to nanny them, teach them cow manners? Am I assuming correctly that your comments on cows rejecting/stealing calves apply to beef cattle who don’t have their calves taken away at birth?
I take it also that the cow’s milk production is stimulated by the calving and continues at least as long as the cow would have in nature been suckling her offspring. Do dairy cattle give milk year-round or do they have a dry period before their next calving? Do you breed the producers every year?