Please keep a good thought for us tomorrow afternoon

[willowgirl]

.. as we bring the last rescue cows (Marietta, Jewel, Babygirl and Annabelle) home to their forever home.

[mzgarden]

Prayers for safe travel and freedom from any travel-induced illness. Prayers that they acclimate well and you & Numb find joy in having them with you, and they find joy in their new forever home. I'll watch for the pictures.

[willowgirl]

Aww thanks so much! This has been so hard ...

The cattle dealer came and took 34 cows last night. I guess he will be getting the rest today or tomorrow. Our hauler is coming for our 4 at 3.

The dealer wasn't supposed to start pulling his cows until Thursday and yesterday afternoon when my boss's wife told me he had been there, I drove in to work as fast as possible and ran through the barn in a panic, worried that he had taken some of mine by mistake despite the fact I used darned near an entire can of pink paint marking them (LOL). My boss and his wife had sorted them into the holding pen for me, though, so no worries. Whew.

Milking last night was so hard. All of the girls were very somber; there was none of the usual jocularity. It hurts my heart to know that some of the old girls aren't even going to get a chance ... they are headed straight to slaughter. Seems no one wants to milk an old 3-teat cow, no matter what a good cow she's been for all these years or how close she is to having her next calf. I can't take them all, though; I don't have enough land. Wish I could.

I'm saving some though. Jewel is in her fourth lactation and has been my pet since she was a heifer. She wears hobbles, after a mishap in her heifer lactation when she fell and nearly did the splits. I guess all of the hobble cows are going to be culled, too, so she would have been on the hit list, besides the fact she's open. Babygirl is our Georgia's daughter and Annabelle is our Marianne's granddaughter. Marietta is just a heifer, only two months in milk, but is the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of two of my pets cows who have passed on. She is the spitting image of her grandmother and named after her (as she in turn was named after her mother, Henrietta). She's just a darling baby who keeps trying to eat my hair (LOL) so she gets to come along too.

Shout-out to Numb who worked hard out the cold all day yesterday getting the newly divided paddock and barn ready for them. And did not say one word about taking in four more cows even though we have, umm, a lot of cows already, LOL. Originally I had only been planning to take 3 as that is what we discussed, but the dealer brought a vet in Saturday night to preg-check everyone and Annabelle tested open. I called Numb bawling my head off, telling him I think they're gonna kill Anna (she is an older, fat and kinda clunky-looking cow, LOL) and without missing a beat, he said "Just buy her too ... we'll make room for her."

Taking up with Numb is the one smart thing I've done in this life ...

[Jolly]

The man loves you, fer shur...

[Ozarks Tom]

Prayers for their safe transport and easy adaptations.

[tarbe]

God bless you two....and your cow friends!

[ceresone]

Dec 8, 2021 15:55:35 GMT tarbe said:

God bless you two....and your cow friends!

Ditto !!

[willowgirl]

Thanks for the prayers, everyone. We got our girls home safe and sound (though Jewel DID NOT want to go on the trailer, lol). It hurt my heart to see that 21 are being culled for slaughter (including, inexplicably, some of our best cows, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. One was just our top cow on test last week ... I guess no one wants to put 119 lbs. of milk in their tank. Bizarre.) But ... I can't save them all. I did the best I could and I'll have to live with that.

John, our hauler, had quoted us a price of $300 to do the deed but after we turned the girls out and I told Scott "Pay the man so he can get home to his supper," John said no charge and merry Christmas. That blew me away because John is a young guy with a young family ... he surely could have used that money with the holidays coming up. He jokes that he makes enough off us selling us hay, and there is probably some truth to that, lol. It's also possible that he's relieved that this is the last time he'll have to haul cows for us! Lordy did they make a mess in his trailer. (I'll post some pics of them when they're no longer covered in manure, lol.)

Well, I am trying to stay as positive as I can about this whole situation. It's probably best that we went out on top and not in a desperate scramble which is what would have happened had my boss or his wife gotten sick or injured. They have both had some health issues in recent years and the past two Januaries, I've milked 7 days a week for more than a month (through the nastiest part of the winter) to take up the slack. NGL, that was hard, and I'm glad I won't have to do it again. I'm not getting any younger myself and they have been dairy farming for 47 years and certainly deserve some sort of retirement (although they'll still have the crossbred beef cows and crops). I'm really going to miss working for them because in 14 years, I don't think there has ever been a cross word between us. They are about the nicest people I know and I hope we can keep in touch. Ha, my boss's autistic brother asked me last night if I was still going to bring in Christmas cookies like I've done every year because, as he said, "You make good cookies." So I guess as the holidays draw closer I'll fill my usual Christmas cookie tins and take them over.

I'm not sure what I want to do next; it would probably make more sense to find one full-time job rather than trying to cobble together a patchwork as I've done for the past 20 years in order to stay working in dairy. I don't want to look for another farm job because as much as I love it, I couldn't survive another herd dispersal. It would kill me. I never want to feel this way again. So, I think I'll take evenings off for a little while, spend time with Numb and my own cows, and catch up on a lot of stuff that has fallen by the wayside since I started working 55 hours a week in August. I'll still be putting in around 35 hours a week between my other two jobs so I'm not a TOTAL slacker, lol.

[mzgarden]

Glad things went well on the transport. John sounds like a real gem. Hope everyone settles in well and you have a happy herd. You will be in my prayers as you consider your future work plans.

[willowgirl]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that!

Numb is going out to check on the newbies this morning as I have to go work at the school. I laid up half the night wondering if they found their way back into the barn to sleep. When we first turned them out, they went in and jumped around in the straw we'd put down for them in the big stall. Poor Jewel is so big that she always had a hard time sleeping comfortably in the freestalls ... that won't be a problem for her going forward!

[willowgirl]

Good news! Turns out the cattle buyer isn't culling our top cows; he is keeping them for himself, heh. That's why they didn't go on the truck to the other place.

I thought I was losing my mind yesterday, that my judgment of cattle could be so 'off,' but it turns out that it coincided perfectly with the buyer's.

My heart still hurts for the girls I know will be culled, but I feel a little better knowing that some of the ones left in the barn last night will be getting a second chance. And the school already asked me to pick up an extra shift tonight, so it seems I won't be idle for long!

[ceresone]

Do you continue milking your cows? Or do you just dry them off? And if you do milk, what do you do with all the milk? Sound snoopy. Don't I? I admit it's I've wondered for some time and just got brave enough to blurt it out ! Lol

[willowgirl]

That's fine Ceresone! No, I'm not going to continue milking any of these girls; we just don't have the time, nor is the barn down at the farm set up for it. It's kind of a shame as Annabelle has only been fresh for 4 months and the heifer Marietta calved in September. They are both leaking milk like crazy and I'm sure their bags are uncomfortably full but there's no way around it. Luckily Jewel and Babygirl are at the end of their lactations so their bags will probably go away pretty quickly on their new hay diet (which they definitely aren't happy about, I'm afraid!).

When we bought Marianne in 2014 she was still milking heavily and we decided to use her as a family cow for awhile. My hands are too crippled up with carpal tunnel to milk by hand and a modern Holstein produces so much that it would be almost impossible anyway, so Numb built me a portable milking machine out of an old hospital stomach pump! (It worked real good, too.) We ended up breeding her back -- I AI'ed her -- and dried her off at the appropriate time but her calf came breech and was stillborn. (A little heifer, too, darn it.) She recovered and we milked her for 15 months; finally quit just as another winter was coming on and we needed a break, lol. Numb made cheese every day for more than a year and we still have vacuum-sealed blocks of it in the deep freeze. (Just used one the other day as a matter of fact!)

I wouldn't mind having a backyard milker again someday but I'm not sure I could ever talk Numb into it!

[willowgirl]

Edited to add: besides the cheese, Numb also made yogurt, cottage cheese, butter and clarified butter or ghee out of Marianne's milk.

[ceresone]

How I miss the days of fresh milk !I made cottage cheese at least twice a week,along with fresh butter mmm!