Post by vermont on Jan 9, 2009 10:13:32 GMT -5
Hi, just want to say this site is awesome, you folks are amazing. I only wish I started reading up on what to expect much sooner. Miss Belle had her first calf on 12/18, all went well, healthy bull. She's new at this and so are we. We bought a bucket milker, put her in the stanchion and tied her calf in view. I feed her grain and alfalfa cubes mixed in with her hay as I milk. At first she seemed mildly interested in what we were doing back there, but kept right on eating. No sooner did my dh say i'd been blessed with a gentle cow things started to change. She's started to try to kick the milker off. I checked to make sure she's not chapped, no hot hard lumps. The strainer comes out clean every time. We're getting about 1 1/2, sometimes 2 gallons a milking, twice a day. I milk at 7am and 6:30 pm. Now she starts to kick even when I start to massage her down with warm water. Her ears are back, looks like she's mad. He now has to stand next to her as she tries to lean away from me and so a little dance. We persist, her ears stay back. I have one of those clear milker thingies (Yes, i'm a newbie) and i'm nervous about over milking so I keep my eyes on the flow coming out in addition to feeling her udders as I massage. Well lately the back udder (back passenger side:) ) is still very full. But this am it was the front udder on the same side. When I take the milker off and strip her out the 3 udders are milked out and the teats are shriveled, but the other one is still full, as if it hasn't even been milked. We checked the pulsators, and last night as she was dancing around giving me a hard time I even put it on backwards by mistake, we left it that way so if it is a problem with the pulsator the other side should have been the one not milked out. That didn't happen. I wind up having to hand milk one quarter and get out about a quart. Why is this happening, is this the beginning of mastitis? I milked her 3 times yesterday and the extra milking was fine, the machine milked them all out equally. But at the pm milking I had to finish the back quarter off by hand again. Sometimes I feel like i'm in over my head, and get very nervous at what i've gotten us into. This gets better right? I've been reading through past posts about some of the things that can go wrong, really wrong, and think maybe it's better I didn't know this stuff before hand or I wouldn't have had the nerve to begin with. Any advice on why she isn't geting all 4 quarter milked out equally with the bucket milker? Thanks in advance.