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%.