Cream check

I haven’t written about Della for some time.  In this case, no news is good news.

 

A cream check is just that – a check for the cream you have sold to the Dairy Cooperative.

 

This is a cream check stub from 1945.  The coop was paying  51 cents a pound for cream in those days.  I have no idea what it is worth to sell now.  Three Collie?

This is an AI calendar.  The top date is freshening date, the next number is what day in the year, and the third date is when you can expect your cow to come into heat if she didn’t take. 😦

I did it.  I had Della bred, even though I was toying with the idea of waiting until next year.  Reality always sets in.  It would cost a lot to carry a dry cow for an extra almost two years just to get her calving date more in line with where I want it.  If she takes, she will calve earlier next year.  If not, you will hear me moaning and groaning on November 28th.

Even after her difficult calving experience this year, she had no signs of infection, and she was having strong heats at regular intervals.  I tried to get the AI guy here three weeks earlier, but he refused.  His reasoning being that she would not be healed properly.  He did agree to the next heat though.  Of course, the day she came in heat we had appointments in town, and couldn’t be home until noon or so.  I left a message, and hoped he could fit me in his regular dairy route.  His territory is huge.  He arrived at the same time we did.  I caught her and questioned him while he was doing his exam.  He could not believe what he was feeling.  He also could not believe that she had not received any conventional drugs and would be healed so well in two months.  So, keep your fingers crossed that she is “with child.”

Thanks Trace, should I tell everyone that you really aren’t doing anything?  Della goes to her stall without any help…

So now my big concern is keeping her weight on.  I don’t need extra milk.  I plan on feeding milk to Lath, the bucket calf, until spring, but making Della produce to her full potential is not important to me.  I’m not selling milk, nor do I need the cream check.  Think of the family milk cow’s udder like the speedometer in your car – sure you can drive at 100 mph, but how long can you keep that up and be safe.

A while back, I was toying with the idea of once a day milking a little earlier.  It would lower her production, allowing her to gain weight or at least not lose weight during the winter months.  Normally, I don’t do the once a day until late lactation.  But, this year with no calf from Della, I don’t have to push her so hard.  Plus, she will be 11 in March.

I got my chance about 6 weeks ago, I forgot one night to open the gate to the pasture.  Della had to spend the night in the loafing shed eating hay, instead of grazing all night.  Her milk production was down a little due to dry feed, and the next day she came into heat.  So she didn’t graze too much that day either.  I seized the moment and started milking once a day at that time.  I have to say at this point though, that if your cow has had ANY sign of mastitis during her current lactation, do not do once a day milking.  Mastitis thrives on that kind of schedule.  The cow’s udder needs more milkings per day if she has mastitis.

Kate Yegerlehnerwrites extensively about once a day, seasonal milking in the Stockman Grassfarmer.  Her family dairy story is interesting in how her family has changed their management to allow the next generation to have a viable business to step into.

Full, but not full capacity.  She is now giving 3 gallons per day.  That is plenty for us and Lath. 

Empty.  I have a harder job this year.  Usually I let Della’s calf do the stripping, but now I’m elected, so I have to make very sure that every last drop of milk is out of that bag.

Surprisingly, those scratches don’t bother her.  This is a side view of her empty bag.  There should be no hard quarters, and the bag should be floppy.  This is a good time to give your cow an exam.  Feel for lumps and oddities.  When the udder is full of milk, it is hard to tell what is going on.  Della has one quarter with a little scar tissue from mastitis when she was younger.  So I have to monitor that quarter to make sure I get all the milk out, as it doesn’t drain as well.  If you ever watch a calf strip a cow, you will see them make the rounds of all the quarters trying to get every last drop.  That is what you have to do as the human milker. All except the part of head butting the udder.   😉  After a cow freshens, her bag will be somewhat swollen for a week or ten days, after that time period, when milking is finished, the bag should be very floppy and empty feeling.  If it isn’t, you should find out why.  Infection (mastitis) is the first place to look.

I want to have Della enjoy a long and productive life, but to me, productive on our minute dairy,  means maybe giving the same amount of milk over a longer period (years) of time.  So watching her weight is a first priority.  I don’t care how much she weighs, I’m looking at her body condition.  I look at her to see what condition her coat is in, how much back fat, and if her ribs are sticking out.   It’s easy to spot the unthrifty cow in the herd, but how to measure the severity and what to do about it have always been somewhat of a mystery to me.   Most people assume the stomach is where to look to see if a cow is fat or not, (they are not people) that bulging side is all the stomachs, not fat.  When you butcher a cow, you would not believe the size of the paunch and all the guts that go with it.  it takes up the entire stone-boat just to drag it away!

So when a newsletter arrived containing an article about a simple way to assess Body Condition, this time I paid attention.  Usually this newletter contains so much feeding information for high production, and other articles for large dairies, I don’t usually read the whole thing.  But, I have learned over the years that I can usually glean something from books and articles that don’t necessarily apply to my operation, or task at hand.

Basically, the simple tool was a ruler.  If you place a ruler on the backbone and extend over the short rib area, you can roughly estimate your cow’s condition.  The backbone shouldn’t stick up like a ridge, allowing you to see much daylight underneath.  Dairy cows normally appear skinnier than a beef cow, but shouldn’t look emaciated.  But, you also don’t want them too fat either, somewhere in the middle, like the beds in Goldilocks.

Once the cow freshens, they are programmed to produce milk, and feeding concentrates (grains) can increase that production, to the detriment of the cow, more grain will produce more milk.  And a cow can draw down her body reserves to produce that milk.  A cow’s production records may show that she can produce a large amount of milk, but she can have other problems like poor reproduction, and/or other health problems, which really don’t show in the milk production records.  These other chronic conditions could be caused from too high of production.

 

This shows a little daylight under the ruler.  According to the chart (rated 1 -5) she is a low 3.  This was taken a several weeks ago, at about 45 days in milk, and when I started the OADmilking.   She has since picked up in weight a little, since dropping her production from 5 gallons a day to 3 gallons.  She had lost weight in her pregnancy, growing those twins.  It has been a struggle to get her to gain at all, with late fall pasture.  The first two months is critical, you don’t want the cow to lose condition, since she will be lactating for many more months.  So check your cow, and make sure you aren’t just draining her reserves.  Maybe a little less milk at the house would do you better in the long run.   Another reason I prefer spring calving.  Better grass is available and cows do best on grass. 

 

 
These folds on her neck show she is in pretty good shape.  Her coat is shiny, and she has a little fat or her hair would be dull and coarse, and she would not have any neck folds. 

All in all, I think she looks OK for November.  She is slick and dappled.  You can see her short ribs, but she probably needs more dry matter (hay) since the triangle below her short ribs isn’t quite full.  She has a funny shaped backbone (probably from poor feeding in utero, I bought her mom just before she calved and she hadn’t been getting the best feed possible) so it is sometimes hard to tell just how much her backbone is sticking up from a distance.  If she stays at a 3 all winter I will be happy.

The article I read was titled, DAIRY COW BODY CONDITION SCORES CAN SPEAK VOLUMES, BY Dan Leiterman, August 2008.  COW TALES is the newsletter put out by Crystal Creek, the company I buy some dairy supplies from.