Wednesday was my sister-in-law’s birthday. Once spring arrives, my brother and his wife get very little quality time together. A typical day for him begins around 5AM with milking and from there he goes straight to the fields where he works until dark. It doesn’t end there. If he doesn’t simply turn on the headlights and keep working, four nights a week, he is back in the barn at 9PM for night milking. Once warm weather hits, the average day for my brother is often 18 hours long. His only “weekend” or “holiday” comes in the form of a rainstorm, and if there are too many of those they are more stressful to him than his 120-hour workweek!
My dad decided he wanted to give his daughter-in-law her husband, for her birthday. He asked me to milk Wednesday morning so my brother could spend the morning with his wife. Fortunately, my husband was off work, so I was able to do this.
Typically, I am not a morning person. But there is something about starting my day before most people are awake that I am beginning to find oddly appealing! I went to bed early the night before (a luxury my brother rarely enjoys) so I would be ready to get up at 4AM. The house is so blissfully quiet before the kids, dogs and husband are up and around! I do yoga every day, so this is how I started my morning, with breath and stretching. Again, I must say, far more meditative while the house is quiet! I got dressed, had yogurt and water for breakfast, grabbed my flashlight and headed over to the barn just before 5, wide awake and ready to go!
Chores begin in the morning as they do in the afternoon and at night. Start the wash cycle to sanitize the milkers, and then out to the main part of the barn to clean up the platforms of the calves and the cows. As I am scraping, it is also my job to quickly survey each animal. First thing I look at is manure quality. This is especially important with the young calves. Runny manure, or scours, can indicate any number of illnesses. Just like with young children, young calves can get dehydrated and seriously ill in a matter of hours. We handle scours right away with a “cocktail” of vitamins and electrolytes.
In the cows, it is important to watch for reproductive information. Vaginal discharge can indicate what stage of estrous a cow is in. A few months after a cow calves, it is important to get her bred again. Dairy cows only make milk after they have given birth, and calves are the future of the herd! So to keep a cow milking, she has to have babies. So we look for signs of heat, missed heat or (this is rare) lost pregnancy.
While one person is cleaning at the back of the cow, another is working on what goes in the front end! This morning, it is my dad who is pushing feed back into the manger. As he does this, he is looking at the cow’s eyes and how much feed is left in front of each cow, more quick indicators of health. 64 pairs of bright alert eyes and fairly empty mangers are what we want to see. Once the mangers are pushed in, dad will drive the feed cart around and deliver fresh TMR (a custom mix of feed formulated by a nutritionist just for our herd) to the girls.
I go to the milk house and get out all the supplies we need to milk and within a half an hour of arriving to work, we are ready to get down to business. Milking 64 cows takes about an hour and a half; but there is much more to do in the morning! After milking we again clean all the milking equipment. Then we clean the barn. Mangers are completely emptied and old feed is replaced with fresh. The cows are let out and their stalls are cleaned out and re-bedded as are the calving and calf pens. Then the cows are let back in and the barn floor is scraped down.
This morning is even longer than that because we have a visit from one of our veterinarians. He comes about every two weeks and examines select cows to determine pregnancy and also addresses other health concerns we have about any other animals in the herd.
Today he finds my Onyx is pregnant! He also looks at Opal. He determines she has a hematoma. When she fell, Opal ruptured a blood vessel, which has caused her swelling and lameness. We are to continue our current course of action and hope for the best. I will certainly keep my fingers crossed. Opal made no milk this morning at all. She is not currently pregnant, so if her milk dries up, her place in the herd may be at risk.
It is 10:30 before I head home. Time to take care of my kids, do some dishes and prepare lunch before I am back at the barn for my usual shift at 1PM.
It’s been a good day already. My brother and his wife came to the barn at about 8 AM to do the cleaning and feeding chores. They were both appreciative of their morning together and in good spirits. It strikes me how much people take time for granted. Most of us have days off every week and we waste them in front of the TV or playing video games.
We take for granted the people we live with because we have time with them. But when you don’t, when you’re only seeing each other long enough to say hello before you crash out of total exhaustion, you realize what you have, and what you are missing. My brother and his wife have a great love and deep appreciation of each other, a rare thing in this world. It pleased me to be able to help my dad give them these few extra hours together, because I know how hard they are both working, and that they would spend this time well. They would spend it enjoying each other and their kids.
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