Holy Cows

Yep, we ended up getting another cow a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Chloe. She is a first calf heifer, she had calved the day before we picked her up from the same farm that Elsa and Ruby came from. It never makes for an easy first milking when the heifer calves before she gets a chance to get used to her new herd mates and surroundings, but we were really worried about our milk production coming into March. So we jumped at the chance and bought her anyway. We brought her and her new calf to our farm two weeks ago yesterday. And as we expected, had a real time of it getting her in the milk parlor that evening. But we did, no one worse for the wear. She calmed down and began coming in a bit quicker over the next 10 days and then last Sunday had a bit of a relapse. I was having a lot of trouble getting her in the head lock and I reached up to push her head down to go in, and wham, she got my hand between the top notch of her head and the cross bar of the head catch. That broke the 5th metacarpal of my right hand and did result in her learning a few new words that I’m hoping that she will not repeat. She has returned to good behavior though, and has moved into second place just behind Elsa as our best producer. We think that she will be a wonderful addition to the “girls” of Rockhill. The Xray tech at InstaCare said I had a “boxer’s fracture.” I told her I liked that much better than a “stupid farmer’s (who is plenty old enough to know better) fracture.” 
 

 
 
As many of you know, we had quite a battle keeping Ruby alive this last month or so. (see “The Longest Month” in January posts). I’ve been reluctant to give any update on her until I was sure she was okay. Well, she is doing great. The weather really helped … we’ve haven’t been below zero for a couple of weeks. And we had lots of help from our veterinarians, Dr. Hansen, and Dr. Hoops from Valley Veterinary Services right here in Richmond (actually just two blocks east of us).  
 
We originally thought that, if she did pull through, she wouldn’t produce any milk until she calved again. Although we have not been able to use her milk in cheese making (we did treat her with some fairly strong drugs), we have continued to milk her and we use her milk for feeding all the newborn calves we have been buying through the winter. When she was having such a rough time maintaining her body temperature, and it was hitting minus 12º F, she ended up with frostbite on all four teats.  
 
So, while trying to get her over her terrible case of pneumonia, and deal with all the damage that comes with frostbite, I decided to keep milking her, just once every two or three days at first. My belief was that the milking would help keep blood flow to the damaged tissue. Maybe I was just lucky, but it worked. She has almost all newly-healed skin on her teats, and shows no discomfort while being milked … that’s a huge improvement in just a couple of weeks. And her production is climbing by the day! So in a month or so, she’ll be back to contributing to keeping us in the black. 
 
It proves that the strength and resilience of youth (hers not ours), combined with lots of attention and wonderful help and advise from good friends and colleagues, along with unbelievable good fortune, can result in what I don’t mind calling a miracle. We’re once again looking forward to watching Ruby grow old! – PS