Post by mamacherri on Apr 7, 2009 11:38:24 GMT -5
Hey everyone,
We are the Gullickson's in South Central SD (any one else in our area ??)
We recently moved out into the country , and are slowly building our farm. We are on an old homestead where almost everything has to be torn down and start fresh, slow but fun. We recently got our baby chicks, we have 2 ponies and as of last month we are the proud owners of Big Bad Bertha, a 7 -10 year old Holstein. We are unsure of her age. Last Wednesday she had a beautiful heifer, named Sweetheart ( the white spot on her forehead is almost a perfect white heart). Anyways, we have had to call in our friends that are experienced ranchers for help many times. Bertha, which the kids like to call Crazy Maizy, was not at all interested in coming in the barn or being milked. After several milkings like this, of taking over an hour just to get her where we could milk her, our friend gave her a shot of oxytocin (), He was able to milk her then without tooo much trouble. Since we have milked twice a day, the calf is with her 24/7. Her bag is tight and hard to get any milk out. A lady that used to milk HOlsteins all the time came by and said that she had mastitis, we were getting ropy, slimy milk and sometimes it looks like cottage cheese. Soooo, last night we started her on penicillin. We are not sure how she is doing, both last night and this morning she was laying down and did not want to get up for us. It took giving her that shot last night to make her mad enough to get her up. This morning my girls had to milk her in the corral because she did not want to go in the barn. Help, I feel like it has been a month since the calf was born, not just a week. I knew that it would take some getting used to but we didn't count on having a cow that was so stubborn and now the infection. Yikes!! We just keep doing what everyone keeps telling us, we are hoping that eventually we will be able to reap some drinkable milk when all is said and done. That brings up a question, the vet told us that we have to wait 2 weeks and have the milk tested from each quarter before we can even think about drinking it, has anyone else ever done this???
Sorry to sound so discouraged, we are just frustrated and hoping to one day be happy family milk cow owners.
Cherri
We are the Gullickson's in South Central SD (any one else in our area ??)
We recently moved out into the country , and are slowly building our farm. We are on an old homestead where almost everything has to be torn down and start fresh, slow but fun. We recently got our baby chicks, we have 2 ponies and as of last month we are the proud owners of Big Bad Bertha, a 7 -10 year old Holstein. We are unsure of her age. Last Wednesday she had a beautiful heifer, named Sweetheart ( the white spot on her forehead is almost a perfect white heart). Anyways, we have had to call in our friends that are experienced ranchers for help many times. Bertha, which the kids like to call Crazy Maizy, was not at all interested in coming in the barn or being milked. After several milkings like this, of taking over an hour just to get her where we could milk her, our friend gave her a shot of oxytocin (), He was able to milk her then without tooo much trouble. Since we have milked twice a day, the calf is with her 24/7. Her bag is tight and hard to get any milk out. A lady that used to milk HOlsteins all the time came by and said that she had mastitis, we were getting ropy, slimy milk and sometimes it looks like cottage cheese. Soooo, last night we started her on penicillin. We are not sure how she is doing, both last night and this morning she was laying down and did not want to get up for us. It took giving her that shot last night to make her mad enough to get her up. This morning my girls had to milk her in the corral because she did not want to go in the barn. Help, I feel like it has been a month since the calf was born, not just a week. I knew that it would take some getting used to but we didn't count on having a cow that was so stubborn and now the infection. Yikes!! We just keep doing what everyone keeps telling us, we are hoping that eventually we will be able to reap some drinkable milk when all is said and done. That brings up a question, the vet told us that we have to wait 2 weeks and have the milk tested from each quarter before we can even think about drinking it, has anyone else ever done this???
Sorry to sound so discouraged, we are just frustrated and hoping to one day be happy family milk cow owners.
Cherri