Post by sora on Aug 14, 2006 11:55:52 GMT -5
Does anyone else have just one cow who seems to be really miserable by herself?
She is as good-natured, docile, and well-behaved as we could possibly wish as far as milking time goes. She seems to have accepted us very happily as her family, in replacement of the commercial dairy herd she grew up in. She's quiet when we're working outside, where she can see us. But when we go in the house, she bellows. Loudly, insistently, and for hours.
Someone suggested to us that she was probably bellowing because she was hungry, but we're pretty sure that's not it. She gets several pounds of grain and a leaf of good hay when we milk her, and frequently turns up her nose at some of the hay. We're rotating her around different sections of our approximately 1.5 acres of pasture, so that she gets a fresh area every few days, and see her grazing (when she's not bellowing) throughout the day. After the suggestion that she was hungry, we made hay available to her in the pasture area too, on that chance that our inexperienced eyes couldn't see that the grass was too short / not enough / somehow inadequate. She hasn't eaten it. We're also quite sure she's not in heat (she came with a vet-checked pregnancy and besides, there's no other signs of besides her noisiness.) Our best guess is that she's just lonely.
Is there anything we can do until she calves (I assume that a calf will be adequate "company" when we are in the house) to help her adjust and be a bit less noisy (we're rural, but we do have neighbors close enough to hear her). Short of getting a second cow. :-)
She is as good-natured, docile, and well-behaved as we could possibly wish as far as milking time goes. She seems to have accepted us very happily as her family, in replacement of the commercial dairy herd she grew up in. She's quiet when we're working outside, where she can see us. But when we go in the house, she bellows. Loudly, insistently, and for hours.
Someone suggested to us that she was probably bellowing because she was hungry, but we're pretty sure that's not it. She gets several pounds of grain and a leaf of good hay when we milk her, and frequently turns up her nose at some of the hay. We're rotating her around different sections of our approximately 1.5 acres of pasture, so that she gets a fresh area every few days, and see her grazing (when she's not bellowing) throughout the day. After the suggestion that she was hungry, we made hay available to her in the pasture area too, on that chance that our inexperienced eyes couldn't see that the grass was too short / not enough / somehow inadequate. She hasn't eaten it. We're also quite sure she's not in heat (she came with a vet-checked pregnancy and besides, there's no other signs of besides her noisiness.) Our best guess is that she's just lonely.
Is there anything we can do until she calves (I assume that a calf will be adequate "company" when we are in the house) to help her adjust and be a bit less noisy (we're rural, but we do have neighbors close enough to hear her). Short of getting a second cow. :-)