She is due to calve very soon. Sixty days before her expected delivery date, we stop milking her so she can focus on growing her calf. This gives us a vacation from the daily milking but it stinks that we have to buy milk from the store.
Her registered name is much, much longer but the last word is "Waterlily" so we call her Lily. Like the goats, we weren't really prepared for getting a milk cow when we bought her but ended up taking her anyway. We knew eventually we wanted to add a milk cow to the farm but it's difficult to find one that is quiet, healthy and gentle, simply because most cows are born on large dairy farms and are not gentled - much less used to being handled by humans or milked by hand. To make our search even more difficult, we also wanted a dairy cow that was already bred.
Our research led us away from purchasing a Holstein (the black and white ones); they are very large, require more food and give a LOT of milk. Milk is measured in pounds and an average Holstein can give 75 - 80 pounds of milk per day. That's 7 to 9 gallons of milk every day. Plus, Holsteins often have trouble giving birth. The last thing we need is to be playing midwife to a cow!
So we looked into other breeds and settled on purchasing a Jersey. They are a smaller breed that does better on grass and other forage, plus they give a more manageable 2 - 5 gallons per day. Their milk is rich in milk fat and makes nice butter and cheese. Jerseys are typically quiet and easy to handle. All these characteristics make them a popular choice for a backyard milk cow.
During the fall of 2010 I was looking over some classified ads and found an old ad for some Jerseys. A small, organic dairy just over an hour away was selling some of their cows before winter. I called and, yeah!, they still had a couple available.
We walked out into the pasture among the big, brown creatures and noted how quiet they were. It was evident they were used to humans and that the farmer knew each one of them. One stood out from the rest because a) she was already bred, and b) she seemed friendly and quiet. We were warned she was "a three-quarters cow" and, though we had no earthly idea what that meant, we nodded sagely and arranged to buy her.
Turns out a three-quarters cow means she has an infection, mastitis, in one of the "quarters" on her udder. A bad infection means the cow doesn't give any milk at all out of that quarter so she doesn't produce as much milk as her healthy herd mates and, if they're on a typical dairy farm, these cows are usually sent for slaughter.
The advice from the backyard cow forum folks was to avoid a three-quarters cow. If she had mastitis once then she may get it again. Well, we hadn't read that advice beforehand but it ended up working out well for us. Lily's infection was not that bad. For the duration of her first pregnancy, that quarter gave little milk and the milk it produced had a salty, bitter taste but the cats and the dogs still appreciated it so we kept milking all four quarters.
At the end of March, 2011, Lily gave birth to a beautiful little calf we named Hazel.
Happily, after Lily gave birth to Hazel, the mastitis completely cleared up and we haven't had trouble with it since.
We sold Hazel to a man from southern California. He had looked all over the country for a backyard-raised, gentle Jersey heifer and was happy to drive to the East Coast to come get her and haul her home.
After some difficulty (that's another posting!) we were able to get Lily bred again. She's due to calve very soon. Her belly is getting bigger and she's very lovie - trying to lick anyone who comes near. She gets preferential treatment since she's pregnant. For a few hours each day we let her into a small pasture still thick with grass. It's funny to watch this hugely pregnant cow trot to the gate when she sees us coming!
So our Lily vacation will soon be over and we'll be back to milking twice a day. It will be a blessing to have her rich, creamy milk on the table again - we've missed it!
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