view sourceprint? 01 Ramblings from a Ranch Wife: On Second Thought, Who Needs A Milk Cow Anyway!

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"The darkest nights produce the brightest stars"
~


Friday, April 22, 2011

On Second Thought, Who Needs A Milk Cow Anyway!


I've been after the Cow Boss to get me a milk cow for a couple of years now.  I don't want to have to milk the cow.  I want him to.  I figure when you are going through 4-5 gallons of milk a week, and milk cow would be pretty dang handy.  I have it all figured out too.  Every summer we have a handful of leppys that we are feeding, so why not let the milk cow do it for us.  Now, I do know that 1 milk cow can't feed her calf plus 4 more by herself.  But we could rotate them through and supplement with milk pellets and milk replacer.  Then every other day or so we could milk her for ourselves.  Just imagine the yummy treats I could make with fresh milk!  I'm thinking cheese, cream pies, ice cream, you name it!  Things that I don't make very often because I'm usually out of milk.  Not to mention the money we would save on milk.


No matter how convincing I think I am, the Cow Boss always tells me no.  Yesterday I realized why.  QT and I were dragging meadows.  We were rocking out the IPOD, we had the heater on (it was a little chilly), and keeping up with our current events on Facebook.  So glad I farm now and not 100 years ago, but I digress!  We were headed back to the house and saw one of the roping heifers was out.  So we decided to put her back where she belonged.  She was in a small pasture with Julio's dry milk cow and a few other heifers, and it wasn't going to be any trouble to put her back because she was following the Kubota, which is also the feed tractor.  We just drove through the gate, she followed, and we shut it behind us.



Hind sight being what it is, I should have known that was way too easy!  In order to get out of their pasture, I had to drive through a second gate.   I opened it, went to get back in the tractor, and before I could get in gear, the milk cow had lead half of the heifers through it.  I should have just drove through, then worried about putting them back  after.  I herded them back, pushed them way past the tractor, climbed in, and before I could get in gear, they were back through the gate.  We did this for 15 minutes.  Not only was the milk cow hard to push, no amount of beating or cussing could get her to take a step back into the pasture, she can run pretty fast when there is an open gate she wants to go through.  Plenty of swear words later, a neighbor happened to see my problem and came to guard the gate so I could drive through.



I've come to the conclusion that until my help is big enough to drive through gates for me, I wold rather pay the $3 for a gallon of milk!

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