And the Farmily grows
This was originally posted on The Daily Coyote in December 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy/Frisco details on this site!
Daisy had a baby. Oh, how does one start this kind of post? So much to say! I have been rather preoccupied for the past two weeks, meaning, I’ve thought of little besides Daisy, her baby, and when she was going to calve. I knew I didn’t need to be there. This is Daisy’s third calf; in theory she knows what to do. But I wanted to be there, very much so.
I felt confident she wouldn’t calve in the night because I’ve been feeding her in the evening ~ I have no idea why this practise isn’t more accepted, but if you feed cows in the evening, they generally calve during the day. Mike is the only one I know in the area who feeds at night and he’s the only one who isn’t night-checking every two hours throughout calving season!
However, the only signs I knew regarding the prediction of a cow’s calving were for beef cows. As their udder fills, preparing for the calf, the wrinkles pop out, and when the last wrinkle between the two halves (as viewed from the back) pops out, you know the calf is coming within 24 hours or so. There are other signs, but the udder is a key sign for “Oh! It is very close!”
With Daisy, I had no idea what to look for. Her udder got very full while still maintaining the back wrinkle, but I thought, perhaps, since her udder already had far more milk than a beef cow’s, that maybe it wouldn’t fill all the way before the calf came. So I was on alert. Then her udder filled more and the wrinkle popped out. So I was on high alert. Then the udder kept growing, filling more and more and poofing out the back! Now I know for next time. Calf doesn’t come until udder gets gigantic:
Daisy had her calf at about 7am on Friday morning. It was a mild morning, relatively speaking, and soon became the warmest, most beautiful day of the month. Hallelujah! The calf was wet and shivering immediately after the birth but Daisy licked it off as she should – licking the sac from its face so it could breathe, then its body to dry it off. I couldn’t stand the shivering so I got a towel and a small space heater and used them both to help Daisy dry the calf, using the the heater like a hair dryer, rubbing the calf with the towel, then making a tent with the towel, with the heater and the calf under it – a warm pocket until the sun got strong.
After the calf is dry and warm, it is up to the calf to get up and drink the colostrom (first milk) which it needs to survive. This part was so gnarly…. I wanted to carry the calf to Daisy’s udder but that’s just not the way it works. Plus, this newborn weighs about 15 pounds less than I do (that should give you an approximation of how huge Daisy is!) and I couldn’t carry it. The calf tried to stand several times and toppled over ~ I was holding my breath for close to an hour. Finally it stood halfway up and I stood behind it, so it could lean against my legs as support, and we just stood there for a while.
After about half an hour of standing and taking a few tentative steps without falling, the calf made it over to Daisy and started nosing around for a teat. It found one and latched on. I was about to breathe easy, for once the calf is warm, dry, and has it’s first drink, everything is pretty much in the clear. But no. Daisy kicked it away. The calf tried again, and Daisy kicked at it again.
I really didn’t think this would happen after Daisy raised the bull last summer – she had kicked him away, too, for about a week, but then adopted him and let him suck, and the rest is history. But Daisy kicked away her newborn. I was SO angry at her…. but then I realized it’s not her fault – she was raised on a dairy farm, where they take the babies away immediately after birth. The mother cows get milked by machines, as usual, and their milk is bottlefed to their babies. So Daisy really didn’t know. And there’s always plan B.
Right about this time, Daisy expelled her placenta/afterbirth and immediately started gobbling it up. Obsessive, single-minded consumption of her gigantic placenta. Yes, it’s very gross but also very beautiful, that this herbivore will eat bloody tissue that came out of her own body to save her baby: if the placenta was simply left on the ground (in the wild), it would surely attract predators.
So, while Daisy was chowing on her placenta, I sat down and started milking into a calf bottle, which is like a baby bottle but holds 1 litre and has a really big nipple on it. And Mike showed up. So I milked, and fed the calf most of the bottle, and then Mike helped maneuver the calf over to one side of Daisy’s udder while I continued to milk on the other side, and the calf latched onto a teat. And Daisy let it drink. She just needed a reminder of the familiar with the introduction of the new, I think.
I may as well add the obvious here, the calf is black. In this land of Black Angus Beef, my solid white Brown Swiss and Jersey (both typically butterscotch brown breeds), who was bred to a black and white spotted Holstein, produced a black calf. Major eye-roll to the gods on that one. But this baby’s coat is not just plain black. It’s black mixed with equal amounts of silver – a black roan. (Which doesn’t exist technically, I just invented it.) I am quite curious to see what this coat evolves into as the months go by.
And then the sun got strong and so, so warm, and Daisy and her new baby and I were able to relax. I left them together to bond in the straw and went with Mike to feed his cows, and sitting in his truck, feeling safe and happy about everything, I felt like I was finally starting to thaw after having been frozen with tension for so long. Mike got out to open a gate and I relaxed against into the seat of the truck and this song came on the radio. One of my favorite songs……. And I realized this male calf’s name is Frisco.
Frisco. For me, the name conjures the image of a burly man with an anchor tattoo and a heart of gold. After knowing this calf for a day, the name fits him perfectly. And it’s a nod to what got me here.
la grande odalisque
Daisy, the day before she calved. December 17, 2009
Cow Q&A
This was originally (similarly) posted on The Daily Coyote in October 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy details on this site!
What kind of cow is Daisy?
Daisy is 3/4 Brown Swiss and 1/4 Jersey.
Though the baby bull calf has seven names, is one of them most prominent?
Unfortunately, no. Mike and I cycle through all of them at random, and most of the time, I just call him Baby. Which is now what he answers to, and he trots over when I call out “Baby.” My soon-to-be 2000-pound Baby….
Is Daisy pregnant?
Daisy was bred (pregnant) via a Holstein bull when I bought her from the dairy and she is due to calve in December 2009. Sad, sad days are upon us, for next week I must wean Baby and stop milking – this gives Daisy a rest period before she calves so she can focus on the baby inside her.
To make the weaning less traumatic, I’ve been separating Daisy and Baby at night for the past few months – side by side in adjoining sections of the corrals, with just a simple pole fence between them. This way, they can see, smell, communicate, and even touch eachother, but Baby cannot suckle.
When it comes time to wean, I will give Daisy full run of the pasture and most of the corrals and put Baby in with Houdini, Mike’s 26-year-old horse (and the horse that peed on me, if you’ve read my book), who is in another section of the corrals getting special treatment (extra food, better shelter, etc). Daisy and Baby will still have through-the-pole-fence contact, and Baby and Houdini will have the opportunity for some quality male-bonding.
Why are you keeping Baby a bull? Don’t you know bulls are dangerous? You’re going to get hurt. I know someone who was gored by a bull.”
While I appreciate the concern, these emails remind me of the emails I got two years ago stating: “that coyote is going to kill your cat and eat your face off in the night.” Charlie hasn’t eaten my face off because a) I never forget he’s a coyote, and b) I spend a ton (TON!) of time working with him. Likewise, I never forget Daisy is a 1,200-pound animal. For as sweet as she is, she could give me a black eye with her tail while swatting at a fly if I didn’t watch myself. She’s angelic but she could break my bones. And the same goes with the bull.
This Spring, one of Mike’s bulls tested sterile, a fatal flaw in a herd bull. Since Mike was rather overwhelmed with the idea of having to buy a new bull immediately, I suggested he lease a neighbor’s bull for the summer and then use Baby. Baby will initially breed heifers the summer of 2010 (”heifers” = females that have not had a calf, like “maiden;” once they have a calf, they are “cows”). Once he reaches his full size and weight, he will breed cows.
Do you groom Daisy and Baby?
Yes! They love being brushed. It’s the only time I ever see them being rude to eachother – they will push eachother out of the way for more one-on-one time with the brush.
Do they have shelter?
Yes! Though I must say, these animals are tough. When I first moved to Wyoming, I had Mike’s two horses in the pasture at the house I rented. One day a huge storm blew in. I led the horses into the garage so they would be out of the weather. The horses were as baffled as my neighbors. That said, all the animals have shelter at the corrals, and one section is fully enclosed and heatable. This is where Daisy will have her calf and where I will milk during the cold winter and wet spring months.
If you have more cattle Q’s, leave them for me in the comment section and I’ll do another round ~ in the meantime, you can find more pictures of Daisy and Baby here, here, and here!
Bovine Benetton Ad
This was originally posted on The Daily Coyote in May 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy details on this site!
This is Daisy and the orphaned calf (see post below). When I put them together, Daisy barred the calf from her udder as she had never had a calf on her – at the dairy where Daisy used to live (and I am sure this is the case with all commercial dairies), cows and calves are separated immediately, and while the calves are fed their mother’s milk via bottle, it’s essentially business as usual for the cows. So, ’twas not surprising that Daisy shooed the calf away whenever he attempted to suckle. I milked Daisy twice a day and fed the calf her milk with a bottle.
One day, about a week and a half into it, I spotted the calf tentatively suckling Daisy! He had been persistent enough in his attempts, and Daisy curious and calm enough in her nature, to allow this great step to occur. And now there is no tentativeness about it. He ambles up to her side and extends his long curving tongue, which is practically like a finger, and draws her teat into his mouth and absolutely gobbles. For those who’ve never had an up-close view of a calf drinking off a cow, it’s really quite awesome – in the photo above, you can see the calf’s tongue reaching up and curling around the teat (his tongue is purple on the top and pink on the underside; the pink going into his mouth is the underside of his tongue, not the teat) creating a sort of seal up against the udder. And they drink so heartily and singlemindedly that frothy milk-slobber is a given. Daisy stands patiently with – and I may be anthropomorphising here – a look of serene fulfillment as the calf drinks from both front teats. That’s the deal the calf and I have: he gets the front two teats, and I get the back two. I milk the back teats morning and evening and leave the front ones for him; he drinks from the front teats throughout the day and leaves the back ones for me. It works fantastically.
Daisy is like a really, really, really big dog. She comes when called and follows me around without a halter, loves to be pet and scratched, walks through the corrals and straight to the milking stall without fail, and lets me use her as a sofa. It is such a decadent yet simple pleasure to lay against Daisy, reading a book, while she herself is laying in the sun chewing her cud.
The calf is gargantuan. I think he’s quadrupled in size in the past three weeks. He’s still a bull calf (as opposed to a steer calf, which is a male calf that has been castrated), and he’s probably-very-most-likely going to grow up to be a bull. One reader emailed me with the advice, “Don’t name food,” but I don’t follow directions all that well and this calf has seven names.
Miss Daisy
This was originally posted on The Daily Coyote in April 2009; I am reposting here for the sake of continuity & keeping essential Daisy details on this site!
If you’ve been following my Twitters, you’re aware I suddenly speak of little other than milk & cream. I have finally put a long-held dream into action: I got a dairy cow! Daisy is three years old, a Brown Swiss with a bit of Jersey in her. She is solid white but for a blond topnotch and blond kneecaps. And she is amazing. Sweet, curious, gentle, kind. To get this photo, I had to run from one end of the corrals to the other and quickly shoot off an image while I could – you can see she’s on her way over to me. She loves to get her forehead scratched or a good body rub.
I bought Daisy from a small dairy farm (~500 cows) about 150 miles north of here that was selling off a few of their cows due to the dreadful economy; Daisy is considered a low-producer in the dairy world, but that makes her perfect for me. She was named by one of the girls who works at the farm and everyone was sad to see her go; I love that she was such a beloved cow, and I can already see why.
Daisy was used to being milked by a machine but showed incredible patience as, during our first days together, I fumbled and tugged below her. Now, less than a week later, milking is a ritual we both look forward to. Although my hands are so sore. So, so, so, so sore! So sore I finally remembered those remarkable little pills designed to take away pain. I never take pain-relievers, but I will bow to the alter of Advil until my hand strength catches up with my work. (Note! Advil did nothing to relieve the pain but arnica worked wonders!)
Daisy produces 4 – 5 gallons a day, split between morning and evening milkings. The first few days I swore I could hear her producing milk faster than I could milk it. But now the milkings take twenty minutes? Half an hour? Forty minutes? I have no idea as time just disappears as I sit beside her and feel her warmth and listen to her eat contentedly. I get up periodically to rub her head, which she loves, and to rub my face against her cheek, which I love.
Half the milk goes to a calf. It’s not Daisy’s calf; hers was taken off before I got her. Recently, a neighbor across the way had a cow who had twins. The cow took one calf and orphaned the other. Another cow, who had already calved, adopted the second twin and orphaned her own calf! So that calf (a black angus) was being bottlefed by the rancher, and so I adopted him. I still feed him with a bottle several times a day (filled with Daisy’s milk) because, although the calf has tried to suck her, Daisy does not allow it.
I get the other half of the milk! I share some of it with Charlie, Chloe, Eli, and Jake (Jake is MC’s 20-year-old dog) and they all love it. {Raw milk and pasteurized milk are completely different substances. It is not recommended that animals be fed pasteurized milk. Raw milk, however, is generally quite fine for their systems.}
And I love it too. I milked two gallons from Daisy the other night and when I separated off the cream (I use a turkey baster to do this), I had one gallon of milk and one gallon of cream. Daisy, you make heaven a place on earth.
I made butter a few days ago and will be making more tonight, along with a huge batch of yogurt. And her milk is simply divine, warm or chilled, straight out of a Ball jar. It’s a good thing my life is one continuous workout because I’m about to increase my caloric intake by 400%.
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