
Dandy cooling off with a quick bath
Here is a photo I snapped last week of our dairy cow, Dandy. We have had a handful of super hot days and a mid-day shower in the shade of a big tree is a great way to cool off! Dandy is a great cow… perhaps with a “princess” attitude, but I will forgive her of that since she very rarely kicks the milk bucket. We milk her twice a day, every day. Depending on the day (and also whether it is the a.m. or p.m. milking) we get about 12 – 20 lbs of milk each time. It really isn’t a lot of milk but Jersey cows (that is her breed) produce the least amount of milk of all the dairy breeds. Dandy will also give less in the afternoon because there is more time overnight for her to produce milk for the morning milking.
The milk we get from Dandy is then divided up and fed to young animals around the farm. Sometimes we have baby goats who need milk, other times we have young cows from other farms. Right now the milk from Dandy as well as our dairy goats is being split between our young pigs who we plan on showing at the State Fair in October. With the help of the milk and a custom feed those piglets are gaining 2-3 lbs per day!
Another neat thing about Dandy is that she is pregnant. We artificially inseminated her in June and she should give birth in March. We will not continue to milk her through next year. Instead we plan on letting her dry up after the fall harvest in October so that she has time to rest before the new baby arrives. Then milking will start all over again.
(PS…Excuse the mess in the photo! I’ve cleaned it up since the picture was taken.)