The Skinny on Jane
ane is on the mend. Her tests came back with a trace of Staph a, which depending on who you ask, is a death sentence for the cow or it’s not a big deal. Ask ten questions, you get ten different answers. I’m going with the not too big of deal answer… . Jane is a family cow, so loss of production in a high producing cow isn’t a reason to send her to the sale barn or rail. Sale barn, rail you ask? Yes, culling means death, not just selling her on Craigslist to some unsuspecting person looking for a family cow. Staph a is a common cause of sub-clinical mastitis in dairy cows, and hard to treat. My research is leading me to believe dry cow treatment will be the best bet. This strain cultured sensitive to all antibiotics available for my use, and this may be the route I take. I may will change my mind one hundred times between now and then, and for sure I will be watching her like a hawk and possibly pre-milking the next go round.
In the meantime I need to boost her immunity and help her keep the infection at bay. Staph is notoriously hard to treat and is common everywhere. Since Jane was a formula baby, I am going to lay some store in that, in addition she just isn’t the most aggressive, stand up for herself cow either. Timid is, is timid does. Weak means weak, and how the body interprets that may come out in dis – ease. Of course, that’s just my simple interpretation of how the world works. It doesn’t matter really, though since Jane is our cow, and we are drinking her milk and not selling it, it’s a matter of personal choices we have made along the way and now we are living with them.
It’s been nice to settle back into a twice a day milking regime. At first I milked four times a day with a few extra stripping sessions on the affected quarter while Jane was in the pasture. However, the milkmaid needs to be coherent to take care of the cow and I ratcheted down to three times a day and then finally two, once her calving edema subsided and her milk was clear. Finally some rest for the wicked! In addition to the extra milkings I swapped homeopathic remedies, some worked and some didn’t, and finally received the Granddaddy of mastitis homeopathy, MASTOBLAST™ in the mail. The good thing about using homeopathy in animal treatment is that they can’t block the effects by not believing. It either works or doesn’t, and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t matter. It sure does give you some crazy dreams though 
Jane hasn’t shared what her dreams have been like lately but probably some big handsome Simmental or Charolais dude sauntering into the paddock… .
I haz cud!
Blake got her nose dew at about day eight, that means her rumen is starting to develop and she’s got cud. Now she can spread her cow culture where she grazes too, just like her mama.
June 14, 2012.
My biggest concern is keeping Jane in good flesh through her peak. The next two and a half months are going to be a trial for sure. She’s giving about six gallons per day. I’m taking four gallons to the house, and Blake is getting at least two. My wish is to keep her at 6 gallons a day, and keep her weight up. If she drops in production a little that will be fine with me. Comparing these three photos from the 14th and the 17th show me she is dropping a little weight. She’s on pasture except at milking and gets 2 1/2 pounds of grain at milking. I need to up my game in the pasture arena for sure. She will not be an easy keeper like her mama. Grass for condition, grain for milk. All this goes for keeping her in good shape to alleviate more mastitis flare-ups too. The simplest part of having a family cow is the actual milking – the rest is the hard part.
June 14, 2012.
June 17, 2012.
So that’s the skinny on Jane – her milk is delicious! And oh my, the cream, we’re in seventh heaven.
Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
Glad you got Jane’s results… sorry to hear the news. Will this affect Blake at all? I know you are doing the best you can by her. They both look great (so does the grass)! Happy milking.
Fid, I guess since the Staph is everywhere anyway, Blake needs to be a strong as she can be, and drinking her mama’s milk is the best medicine to help her grow into a strong healthy cow.
Can I borrow a cup of cream, lol?
I love that about the nose dew – I enjoy the symbiosis of the cows spreading their dew as they graze.
I’m sorry about Jane’s staph though – my goodness you’ve worked so hard for perfection. I never doubted for a minute that you’d get it. : (
But, I wonder how many cows you’ve helped by sharing the details of Jane’s saga? Thanks again…
AMF, Sure!
Poor Jane – things are different than they used to be – milk replacer these days is not the same as it was two decades ago. Unless you buy an prohibitively expensive one, for instance the one that Crystal Creek carries
I’m sure it costs more to ship it than the original purchase price, too much for a calf unless you lived right there. I also suspect there are lots of cows with this type of infection that never do get tested. I just need to up my game on her immune system, and let her raise her replacement somewhere down the road. It takes generations to right the problems, Jane’s gramma was weak, her mom strong, and now I’m back a few steps. And anymore from what I see these days in family cows, very few are perfect, there are always some little niggling things going on that you didn’t see 30 or more years ago.
Funny how the tough ones are the temperamental ones…
I know you’re not a dual purpose breed fan, but one thing I like about my cows is that if you find an old time herd, they’re pretty indestructable.
I notice that hobby breeders who buy them because of their novelty make emotional breeding decisions and the consequences don’t take long to show up.
I try to be as unsentimental as possible, but you do get to love them…
AMF, I know what you mean, though. My home raised beef cows, “dual mutt purpose” do great. I think if Jane had been dam raised instead of damn raised she would be in better shape, and all is not lost, she is still pretty healthy and is getting all but 5 pounds of her daily intake from home grown forages. A friend who deals with life force energies checked her when she was at her worst and her life force was in the 80′s…that bodes well in other areas.
I think my only gripe against the dual purpose is that I don’t want to short the cows calf, which is always such an afterthought with the subject of dairy. I want to know that the calf is getting what it needs, and the rest is for me. When I get to where I only want cream for my coffee, I’ll probably milk one of my Herefords
If I was looking for raw milk to purchase I would ask to look at the calf as well as the milking procedure…I guess that makes me sentimental doesn’t it?
The life force energy thing is interesting… I wonder what mine is.
I agree about the calves – one of the reasons I don’t like commercial dairy. That’s not being sentimental, it’s being kind.
AMF, I’m scared to ask her what mine is!! I’d probably keel over
It’s not just commercial dairy, now with raw milk being all the rage, calves are getting short shrift in micro dairies too. I just read a blog post about the potential for selling raw milk and there was no mention of how much the future calf would drink, just the math supporting 6 gallons a day at x amount of dollars…hmmmm, where is that calf, they are kind of essential to start lactation and they will either grow up to be meat for someone’s table or a future cow, no reason to short them.
I suppose if we don’t value mother’s milk for our own babies, why would we think otherwise for our cows?
I didn’t grow up with cows and milking and once I learned how important that colostrum milk is to the calve’s future, suddenly I wondered about human babies. Never heard any discussions about colostrum being important for them…
Crazy how we think….
AMF, I know it’s sad, and the opportunity for the baby to get the colostrum is such a small window. Similar to taking out tonsils and other body parts we don’t “need.”
I am in the process of writing an article on “How to Vet Your Raw Milk Source” for a Nutritional Therapy Newsletter. Most of the readers of this blog already know this information, but one of the topics I am going to discuss is the treatment of the calf. Many lists on how to choose a raw milk source do not breech this subject, in fact none of the ones I have read have mentioned calf care. In reality, if the calf is a heifer she will need to be raised optimally so she can be a vibrant, healthy momma milk cow. If the the calf is a bull calf, he needs to be raised optimally so he can be a vibrant, healthy beef steer. Either way, these calves enter our food supply, as milk or meat. Like Matron mentioned, buying from a small raw milk dairy does not guarantee that the calf has nursed or is even being fed real, raw milk. Some of the tiny dairies operate like the bigger ones and feed milk replacer because feeding the calf real milk cuts into their profit. Fortunately, I also know of a mid-size raw dairy that uses nurse cows. This fellow raises some of the most beautiful heifers that go on to be his replacement milk cows or go on to be family milk cows.
Sounds like an article I’d like to read when you’re done, April.
It actually makes business sense as well as being good for the cow here – I do everything by myself, so it would be false economy in a labor sense for me to be bottle feeding calves and worrying about mixing and storing formula. There’s a farmer in Lisa Hamilton’s book Deeply Rooted named Harry Lewis who runs an organic dairy and doesn’t wean the calves at all. Caught my attention – he produces enough milk to make a living selling fluid milk so obviously it can be done, just not at the prices being paid by Dairy Farmers of America and Dean Foods.
I work with plant medicines and would suggest at least a look at Usnea tincture or tea for Jane’s mastitis. It is supposed to be gentle enough for animals and children. Here’s a page I like: http://www.susunweed.com/An_Article_wisewoman3d.htm Until this week had no idea that a tea can be made from Usnea – dry it and grind it – boil for about twenty minutes – ratios are about 1 T ground to 1 quart water (wish I knew more). I really love reading your posts.
Edna, Thanks! There is no shortage of Usnea around here! I should make some tincture and have it on hand.
Thanks again, I like reading Susun’s articles this will give me more cause to do so more often
If anyone can keep a cow in good health, it will be you
Jane is lucky to have you as a momma, and that is interesting about the dew on the cows nose…I learned something new today.
Kay, that’s why cows are the prominent livestock for biodynamics – the rumen culture really makes a difference on the land. I’ll tell Jane that she’s lucky
We are lucky too, she is such a gentle giant, 99% gentle and only 1% pill!
And, what do you do w/ 4 gallons of milk a day? I have trouble keeping up w/ 3 gallons a day – MOF, I have stopped my cheese production because we have so much! Hee. I am now using alot of the milk to fertilize my veggie garden, and my gardens look GREAT this year because of it.
Kay, I may give some of it to the neighbor who is raising my pork this year, and I have been doing the same, and putting some on a couple of bad spots in my pasture…can’t hurt for sure.
The hardest part is storing that much milk – and keeping up with the dishwashing and churning chores! No slacking now, or I have to pay!
I thought I read here…or maybe in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook…or maybe ? about using kelp to keep staph at bay. Staph is easy to beat if you get plenty of X and it’s readily available in kelp. I really thought I read it here. Dang.
Good luck with the treatments. Keep us up to date on what Jane responds to. I know I don’t have to tell you that but…
Oh, and kelp meal doesn’t taste all that great. Just FYI. lol
HFS, yes for sure on the kelp. She blew through 10x her normal intake the first 8 days or so, now she is back to normal. You might have read it in some of Detloff’s Organic Valley stuff. She responded best to Bryonia instead of Phytolacca, and I gave her a dose of her constitutional Calc Phos and then she turned the corner. Then the Mastoblast arrived and she has steadily improved. This in addition to lots of other minerals, some free choice and others force fed with copious amounts of molasses.
I have really benefited from reading about “Jane’s Journey.” I am dealing with a case of mastitis right now too, haven’t had it cultured yet, but the MastoBlast (along with the cream) is on the way. I don’t remember… is Jane on minerals? I really believe that the decline is the mineral content of pasture is what is causing our cows to weaken genetically. And you are so right, it will take a few generations for us to see the results of our caretaking.
Lyelle, you’re welcome. I took the vet’s advice the first day and administered the antibiotics, which may or may not have worked, I didn’t see any real improvement until days later. But I don’t think the antibiotics hurt either.
She has access to lots of different kinds of minerals – but I think the land is always depleted anyway, and a work in progress. I agree about the gradual decline in genetics too – Jane is pure show cow all the way, no dumpy dairy body like her mom.
When our cow went down with milk fever after a pine needle abortion and retained placenta, I went with antibiotics and IV calcium, even though I’m a firm believer in homepathy, herbals and alternative therapy (for animals and people). Sometimes you have to get out the big guns or lose the animal. About eight days into the antibiotics, the cow made it very plain she was DONE with that part of the treatment. She was right, too. She bounced back from the milk fever, passed the placenta over the course of about six days and is now healthy and looks great, milking about four gallons a day. Like Della, she’s not a show cow, but she’s obviously tough. So glad to hear Jane is doing better!
Bee, what type of minerals are you feeding? I’ve had good luck with homeopathy during the dry period and Fresh-n-Easy boluses at and after freshening in addition to a good amount of different minerals all the time to ward off milk fever. Knock on wood, haven’t had to go the IV calcium route since I changed to that protocol. Della had milk fever at age 6 and the vet pronounced that she would have it forever more after that while he was giving the IV – she never had it again and even though we did put her down a week after Jane was born, she didn’t have milk fever. But I wouldn’t hesitate to go the IV calcium route because it is a lifesaver. The key is balance – calcium intake has to be balanced with Phosphorus, Magnesium, and Potassium. If the balance is wrong, you have Milk Fever. I think the hardest part of balance is when you bring in forages. Unless you have a good rapport with the farmer you really have no idea what the soil condition is, and what fertilizers are used. Here a lot of hay comes from the east side of the mountains and you are left to buy from a middleman. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not.
I’m glad you’re girl is on the mend. They sure are tough when you think about it
At that time I was feeding the standard mineral block for dairy cows. Since then I’ve switched to your recommendations for minerals, using kelp and granular salt, etc. Cows look great! The milk fever was partly our fault as we had been feeding some alfalfa just prior to drying her off. Normally we would have been fine because we stop the alfalfa and put her on grain hay for the two-month dry-off period. But she ate the pine needles within a few days after we stopped the alfalfa, aborted a seven-month calf and went into milk. And we probably also contributed to the problem because she had a lot of swelling in the udder that we though was milk, so we may have overmilked her the first couple of days. I think the combination of these things triggered the milk fever. What do you use for homeopathy during the dry period?
Bee, gosh what an ordeal! The old low calcium, no alfalfa during the dry period is no longer believed to be the culprit in milk fever. It’s more the imbalance of the calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium. Sometimes that is hard too, feeding alfalfa, since some of the fertilizers used in hay crops cause an imbalance (major cause of edema also.) Fresh-N-Easy from Crystal Creek is a must have here. It comes in bolus form, but usually you can top dress it, sometimes that’s all you need to get you over a slight hump, before you have to go the IV route.
http://crystalcreeknatural.com/animal_products/fne.html
Per Edgar Sheaffer, DVM in Homeopathy for the Herd, I use Calc Phos alternating with Mag Phos for my lean body type cow, I believe he lumps Guernseys and Jerseys in the group, as opposed to the stockier Holstein, Ayrshire type. But body types vary within breeds…
Sorry about the loss of the calf – that’s always a tough one
I hope Jane responds well and is soon (or at least eventually) fat and sassy. And I want to hear more about the homeopathy dreams…I must be using the wrong ones!
Quinn, wow mine have been vivid for two weeks, sometimes disturbing and sometimes not. Luckily I can’t remember them once I get some java in me!
Ok… now I am learning so much more! But there is so much more that I want to learn about…especially homeopathy, where can I find out more about this? What’s the “constitutional Calc” that you gave Jane and what was it for? And how does the rumen culture benefit the land and what is the dew on the nose mean? So many questions! But I want my cows to be healthy so we will be healthy, that’s why I am asking!
Lyelle, I would start with Homeopathy for the Herd, by Edgar Schaeffer DVM it will explain quite a bit about the different remedies for the different dairy breeds, and explain homeopathy for lactating animals fairly well. Like any book though, it doesn’t have every answer, another good one is Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals, by Paul Detloff, DVM. Those two will give you a start – both are different but alike… Jane got Calc Phos and Mag Phos once per month for a couple of months prior to calving.
The cow dew inoculates the grass with microbes from the rumen, which in turn helps the plants and all the critters that reside in your soil. Just one of those forgotten things that peasants knew and has been poo-pooed by the scientific world.
We have found peppermint oil cream works wonderfully for cows with edema and swollen quarters. Massage the quarter with cream after milking, and the swelling is reduced considerably by the next milking.
Cathy, thanks!!
Thanks MOH, I will look them up. Another question…We have put a new pasture in and of course the grass is far from great. We want to rotational graze the cows on it. There is a plethora of books on this, but I want to build the pasture up. Is there one or two that you could recommend that would give us the info that we need? Oh…and one last question… what are “homeopathic dreams?” Thanks for all your help and your blog is fantastic.
Lyelle, you need to go lightly on your new planting until the grass forms a good sod. Greener Pastures on your Side of the Fence is a good one.
Sometimes homeopathic remedies can give you some vivid dreams. I think it’s because I’m finally getting some REM sleep
How do you do it? I hadn’t even heard of that book. Geez…
Thanks again… we don’t have the cows on it full time right now, just a couple of hours a day. What I want to do is get it built up enough that we can put them on it full time next year. I’m off to look on Amazon for the books you recommended.
Lyelle, a good thing to do for new pastures is to clip them fairly high, maybe 8″ or so, and that will thicken the sward by allowing light in and keeping the plants in a vegetative state. Unfortunately until plants are firmly rooted it’s pretty easy for stock to pull out the entire plant
Mowing with a animal or machine is always good pasture.
Our pastures were full of weeds and brush two years ago. We brush-hogged the ragweed and multiflora rose once each summer, pulled the thorny saplings and ran goats and chickens over it all this spring…voila, the sward is thick and strong. There are also 20 of the neighbor’s cows free-ranging over 80 acres…lol. They eat the good stuff and move on. Oh well. There’s a lot of good out there. Gotta get them fenced out.
The cream is lovely! Are you making butter with it?
Yep!
So glad to hear how Jane is doing. Seemed to have good luck with the mastoblast as well. Did you give her a shot of antibiotics or use the intra teat kind? Is she still shedding the staph or is she “over it’?
I hear you so much on the 4 times a day milking when you were trying to get her cleared up. Oh gosh. So much work.
I don’t know how you keep up with everything! My hat is off to you!!
Janet, I used both, one time teat infusion, but that didn’t mesh well with the frequent milkings, the other was IM for 4 days. She still hesitates when I come back in the stall after milking…thinking I might stick her with a needle.
I was glad (and you know the drill) when I tapered off the milking frequency. Time consuming.
Keep you hat on! I don’t keep up with everything
Matron,
Thanks for any advice you may have. And really, thank you so much for putting all the information out on the internet that you do.
I just love your blog and have learned a lot from your posts. I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking for posts on milking. Although I grew up around dairy cows, I’m on my own now as an adult. I would like to buy a cow and get started. I was wondering, do you have or know where I can find a quick internet checklist, called something like “what you need to get started with your milking cow”. For example, I think of these items of the top of my head: stainless steel bucket, filters, something to hold the filters (?), glass jars to store milk (how big?), something to wash the udder with, and something to put on the teats after milking. Am I missing something? I don’t need to know what is needed to actually care for the cow, I have that down. But I am not sure about everything I would need to milk the cow or deal with the milk. Another question- in good ol’ Laura Ingalls Wilder, they poured their milk into shallow pans to cool. Is that necessary? What is the best way to deal with the milk? I’m sure you have already blogged about that, but I haven’t found it.
Trish, I think you’re right on with your list, bucket, strainer/filters, teat dip, & disposable wipes would get you started. As for jars I use wide mouth gallon jars (for skimming) and wide mouth half gallon canning jars for the drinking milk. With the canning jars you can use the plastic lids that are sold in the canning section for storage, although they don’t seal tight like the 2 piece canning lids that come with the jars. If I’m sending the milk to someone – I use the 2 piece lid, otherwise I use the plastic. I think the idea of the shallow pan for skimming is so you can get most of the cream, it’s hard to get down into a narrow jar, but the wide mouth jars work well and are much easier to store in the fridge.
I’m working on a post about what I am doing with all that milk! And a post about Jane’s maternity kit.
thank you very much! Two more questions: what does the filter sit in (I’m assuming it is a disk filter)? And you filter it one time?
Thank you for the fantastic post about making butter that I found on here yesterday. It does make so much sense to make it early in the lactation. Your photos practically made me drool.
Trish, actually I use a clean muslin cloth and strain that way, but if you’re going to sell milk or if you’re a little twitchy about raw milk I would get something like this, where you are just throwing away the filter each time:
http://www.enasco.com/product/C29353N
I just got done making the first batch of cultured butter for the season. I almost didn’t want to put it in the freezer putting for stocking up it was so delicious.