Training house cows

Many people I speak to, even those on a farm, have little idea how much preparation is involved in milking a cow. Just as you train a dog to come, sit and generally obey so must a cow be trained before she can be milked. Often I speak to folks who have tried to simply drive the cow into the bales when they want to begin milking, only to find she fights like hell! They come to the conclusion that their cow is no good as a milker and that hand milking is incredibly difficult. The cow is sold and they pass their bad experience along to others as lore.

What a waste.

So, to answer questions and prevent further problems for new dairymen and women (you know who you are!) I will tell you what works for us.

First purchase your cow, but if at all possible you should purchase a heifer not yet in calf. Failing that, purchase a cow that has only just been put to the bull for the first time, and only recently at that. This is because you will need that valuable time before the birth to train your cow. She must learn to tolerate being touched, driven and bailed. She should learn to come when called and should be used to a set daily routine. Cows are most definitely an animal of routine.
So first you get your heifer (and I am assuming you follow my advice so I will refer to a heifer hereafter) used to being fed from a bucket twice daily. Feed her a few scoops of chaff with a little molasses as a treat, about six litres of chaff and one cupful of molasses but use your own common sense. (If you have no common sense and cannot work it out for yourself, please move back to the city where you are always told what to do). Feed her in the place you intend to milk her. I strongly recommend constructing a good set of milking bales and not head bales, a well trained cow should not need her head restrained but only a place to stand where she can eat her feed while being milked. next you will gently pat and touch her as she is eating, perhaps even brush her down. Your heifer should feel relaxed and secure at all times, no surprises or loud noises. This should take a month or more. Next you should sit quietly beside her in the milking position and brush her side until you can touch her udder. Expect her to shy away at first, possibly even kick. Persevere and if at all possible do not use a leg rope. Some cows never lose the kicking urge and will need the near side leg roped back, but not off the ground please as this is cruel in the extreme, just enough to prevent kicking. This step should take another one to two months.
Now what you have been doing all this time is training not only the heifer but also yourself to milking. You will end up milking twice a day, every day and this is not negotiable! You are getting a chance to back out now if the routine is not for you. You must milk at roughly twelve hour intervals, say 6am and 6pm or thereabouts. An hours leeway is not out of the question as long as it is the same each time.
When your heifer is old enough, put her to the bull. Think about the calf you want too. If you are after meat then you will want a meat breed bull. A good dairy breed heifer calf is worth a fair bit of money as a house cow as you will know having just bought one. You can cover many costs this way. A dairy breed bull calf is close to financially worthless though. Fatten him as you can, turn him into yearling beef and be done with it.
After nine months pregnancy your heifer is now a cow and she drops her calf. The first week of milk is a substance called colostrum and contains antibodies fit for the calf but not much good for us to drink so let her feed her calf. You still keep up the daily routine though. After the first week or so you will begin milking your cow once per day. The rest goes to the calf. To do this I prefer to lock up the calf overnight away from the cow. In the morning she will be full and you can milk her out before you let the calf out. Make sure you completely strip her out (remove all milk in the udder) for her health, otherwise she may contract a disease known as mastitis and this can do permanent damage or even kill the cow. After she has been milked she and the calf spend the day together and he drinks his fill. I have raised many calves this way now and they have never once had a problem. Both cow and calf will quickly become used to the routine. Make sure you put your cow to the bull when she next comes on heat or failing that the month after.
At four months or so I like to wean the calf from his mum. Place him in another paddock where he cannot get to his mother. Beware him drinking through the fence and I have often witnessed this. Two fences between mother and calf are preferred. Out of earshot is even better. Expect a couple of nights of bellowing. Now that the calf is no longer drinking half the milk you will need to milk twice daily, morning and evening. You will be milking until six weeks before she is due to drop her next calf. Then you must dry her up (stop her lactating). The easiest way to do this is to simply stop milking her and cut her feed by half. As soon as she no longer "bags up" (has milk in her udder) you can resume the usual amount of feed, in fact a pregnant cow may need extra feed if your grazing is less than good. You will continue the routine exactly the same in all seasons, milking or not. Then she will drop her next calf and the routine continues. Happy milking!

New cheese, new dog.

Serendipity will play her role in the most unexpected ways. Having lost Max to a snakebite a while back, I was looking around for a new puppy. I was sort of thinking about a Blue heeler, I have always wanted a Bluey, they are fantastically intelligent dogs. In fact I have been trying to obtain a good blue heeler pup for years but another dog always came along first. This time was no different.

Meet Rufus. I was over at a friends place when his wife mentioned she was helping find homes for a litter of puppies. Free but only to approved people. I was initially reluctant but soon warmed to the idea, especially when I found out he was a Border collie, Kelpie cross. My very first and most beloved dog was this same cross. So I brought home this little fellow and after some discussion we named him Rufus. He is a bright little chap and learns very quickly, he is also very outgoing, friendly and loves to explore. I expect he will turn into a very good dog, but we shall see.

In other news, I pulled the Brie cheeses I had maturing out of the fridge only to discover that the humidity had been too low. Even though the cheese had a good bloom of the expected white mould it was much too firm for a Brie which should be creamy and soft. Disappointed, I examined the cheeses to see how they looked inside only to discover an almost cheddar texture and a firm crust. The taste was superb! I had unwittingly created a version of some of the rare French style hard-bloomed cheeses. I will definitely be making this mistake again.

Stiltonesque

A while back I mentioned I was attempting to make a Stilton cheese.
This blithe comment hides the six nights of research, trawling the web for details, cross referenced against the cheese manuals I have, all in an attempt to arrive at a workable method. You see, Stilton is probably one of the most difficult of all cheeses to get right. One step slightly wrong and you can end up with a mess or at best a load of blue cheese. 

Disaster. Tasty, tasty disaster...

My first attempt produced curd that was too firm to be "rubbed up", a process whereby the cheese is rubbed all over to close off all pores and cracks on the surface. This first cheese went blue too early and so became about four kilos of rather tasty creamy blue cheese. As a simple blue cheese it was excellent, good with wine and on steak. As a stilton it was a disaster. If only all disasters were this good- I am eating some as I write.
Back to the drawing board and with a bit more research I revised the method. Try two produced a much softer curd that did all the things it should have. The curd was cut gently then "hooped" and turned for five days before being rubbed up.

Half way through the rubbing. Note the un rubbed right side.



Rubbed up and ready to be aged.

Next the cheese is aged in the cheese fridge for seven weeks before being pricked full depth all over. This will allow oxygen in to begin blueing the cheese from the centre out. At around nine weeks it will be ready to eat. I will keep you posted.

Off to do the morning milking on a fine Cloud Farm day.

Farm snaps

 Alessa, bored of our company has gone back to her cattle. They were both seated together but rose as if for a guest when I tried to take the photograph. The livestock have such good manners on the Cloud Farm

 Excess milk goes back to some of the livestock. It is marvellous for egg production and fattening both pigs and meat birds. This girl couldn't wait for me to take it to the chook pen and helped herself. Note the milky moustache.

One night of the year, or so it appears, the cicada larvae emerge from the ground to shed their skins. This little fellow was still drying off when I found him the next morning. We get these lovely emerald cicadas earliest in the year and huge chocolate brown ones in the later summer. Christmas carols and cicada song to bring in the festive season.

And on the Cloud farm today...

The weather is absolutely beautiful at the moment on the cloud farm. The rain and associated sogginess has passed and the days are starting crisp and turning warm later, beautiful blue cloudless skies. Great weather for doing the hard yakka jobs that I have been avoiding all summer.


Bartle Frere at dusk from the top paddock.

We have spent the day cutting up firewood from the timber I had previously stacked in the orchard to dry. I also took the opportunity to level several tree stumps flat with the ground so I can mow over them. The littlest Cloud Farmer supervised the operation and gave a running critique at all times.

About one tonne ready to be unloaded to the wood racks at the house.

Mid morning I saw a flash of something red and blue out in the bottom paddock. As I watched a large male cassowary emerged over the hill before turning and stalking back to the rain forest. I tried to get a photo but cassowaries have very good vision and I was unable to get any where near him.

This is a file photo but it is pretty much what I saw.

 We have seen several recently. A month ago a female and two half grown youngsters were sighted by the child bride in the same paddock. The bottom third of our property is native rain forest and it will remain so for as long as we are here. A bit of space for all to live in.
Still waiting for the next batch of piglets and the pig pens are thoroughly overgrown. This is quite intentional as the overgrowth supplies a considerable portion of the food for the next pigs to come. In amongst the weeds and grass I have sown all sorts of grains and tubers as well as pumpkins and it is all fertilized by the last batch of piggies free of charge.

 I have put a pair of goat wethers (castrated bucks) in there to fatten in the meanwhile. They are Boer goats and an excellent meat breed. I lived on goat meat for years when I was younger and I consider it to be one of the best meats of all. If you have never eaten good chevon (goat meat), it is like prime lamb but without all the fat. It is absolutely superb!

The goats were supplied by a friend who could not house them any longer, I fatten them, we will slaughter them together and each party gets half the meat.

Bah humbug.

I've been mooching about the house for three weeks now. Home from work with a broken rib. The holiday has been nice granted, but the inability to use the time on many of the waiting projects galls me. On the plus side all of the small jobs that have been ignored for ages are now done. At the time of writing I think the rib is finally coming good and I am slowly getting into the heavier jobs I have been longing to do.

I have finally admitted that I will not have the hot house up for winter. As we can wait no longer I have turned the veggie garden over and will be planting out the winter crops soon. I have about three tonnes of compost, carefully hoarded, to enrich the areas that the excavator has denuded of good topsoil. Digging still causes me some difficulty - the pushing action in using a shovel, so I have yet to work out how to move all of the compost to where I need it. I might be able to cadge the use of a small loader from a neighbour. Otherwise the child bride and I will move it one barrow at a time in small doses.
Yesterday I placed my seed order for the winter planting. Mostly brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli), peas, carrots, kale, lettuce, shallots, radish, leeks and some swedes. We don't bother growing onions or potatoes as they are grown in abundance in this region and can be obtained cheap or free most years. If somehow we are suddenly able to move ahead on the hothouse then a few plants will just have to get squashed in the process.

We are now milking twice each day as it is time to wean Timmy-the-little-bastard from his mother. I think his mother Anna is actually quite relieved. Meanwhile Timmy-I-vote-for-veal made his displeasure known by bellowing day and night for a week. He was probably quite overdue to be weaned. Anna's milk yield has been up and down for months but it levelled off at ten litres per day as soon as he was away from her. This indicates he was drinking erratically and was already getting most of his sustenance from the grass.
With all of this extra milk and the time on my hands I have been madly making cheese over the last couple of weeks. Cheddar, Farmhouse, Haloumi, Quarg, Ricotta, Blue, Camembert and I am trying a Stilton which is pretty much touch and go at the moment. Not an easy cheese. I have also managed to finally track down an aftermarket thermostat for the cheese fridge so I can age the cheeses at 12 degrees Celsius. The warmest the fridge would do before was 8 degrees.

When we are not making cheese we have taken to giving ducks a cuddle. Actually I am checking them so see how well they are fattening (and they are growing nice and plump too). The ducks have not yet guessed at my motives and probably think I am just the local friendly pervert. Probably better if they don't work it out.

Boo!

Ok so I know it is only a python and not even a very big one at that but coming face to face (literally) with this character first thing in the morning is still not good for the heart!

Annabelle thought it was hilarious! I swear she chuckled all the way through the milking afterwards.



In other news, the littlest cloud farmer is most pleased with his new bed. It was a very kind donation from our most wonderful neighbours. Repainted now and with a pair of hand print smudges from the little feller on the end board. I wanted a pair of neat hand prints but the young artist had other ideas.