us department of agriculture farmer's bulletin number 1419

originally published in 1924, this edition was revised in 1940, when draft horses were probably already on their way out: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89098654833

visionquest

My co worker is going on vacation for four days. To type that out doesn't seem like such a big deal. I work two days a week by myself every week and seldom are their problems I can't handle.
But still, I wonder how this will go. The days I work solo are between 13 and 14 hours not counting the break I take at lunch. The next day I usually sleep in until 7 or 7:30 and spend the morning hanging out in my pajamas. I have been known to change into my pajamas in the morning because I passed out fully clothed on top of my covers with the lights on when I get home. And how many days in a row can I wake up at 4am?
The last few days I have been psyching myself up for my upcoming challenge. I made a menu for each day and went grocery shopping. This is a change from my european style - go to the co-op every day and buy what looks good eating habits. I won't have time for that commie bullshit. I bought some ace bandages for my wrists since they have been giving me a hard time lately and I know they will not appreciate extra work. And of course I bought a bus ticket to go visit my friend in Boston, because after my co-worker gets 4 days off I will get 4 days off!

I think about it as good practice for when I have my own farm. My friend has taken to calling it my visionquest. I wonder if I will see my power animal at the end of it and will my power animal be a cow?

Happy New Year!

My farming new year's resolution was to rectally palpate more cows - at least one every week if possible. That's right dear readers, in 2011 I want to shove my entire arm up more bovine asses.

I've written before about AI and how I'm really not very good at it. I'm also not good at all sorts of other farmer things that have to do with feeling a cow's reproductive tract through her large intestine. Our vet can tell if a cow's in heat or if she just had a heat or is going to have a heat, he can tell if her ovaries are releasing eggs, growing CL's, cystic, or sitting around doing nothing at all. He can tell if a cow is pregnant and for how long. I won't get good at these things palpating one cow a week but I do aim to move beyond the "hrm ... feels like warm mush ... that might be her cervix ... oh wait ... i think it's her pelvis ... bleh my arm is tired" stage, which is where I am now.

Week 1: Felt cervices of 2 cows who were having a hard time breeding back. The vet gave them an acupuncture treatment to help increase their fertility and then I gave them a Lutalyse (prostaglandin hormone) shot to bring them into heat. When they were showing a strong heat, I felt each cow's cervix. They were easy to find a very firm.

Week 2: Palpated a heifer about to calve to check presentation of calf. In the afternoon the calf was still quite far down and I could only feel one foot. By evening the calf was in the birthcanal, properly arranged (front feet first, then head), and alive. Heifer calved that night.

we're bringing dairy back

I thought I'd share the links I had found recently with the help of google and the beginning women farmer's yahoo group should anyone else be hunting for obscure diary supplies or old/new ideas.

http://www.microdairysystems.com/
-out of south royalton VT. has 40 and 50 gallon bulk tanks and other good stuff.

http://www.smalldairy.com/
- a wealth of information, links and classified section.

http://www.microdairydesigns.com/
- their website seems like it is still a work in progress, but offers small scale pasteurizers.

http://www.hambydairysupply.com/
-if you find a pail milker at the salvage yard and need new gaskets for it, this is the place to go. also has lots of other neat stuff.

barn cats say hello

he sees you when you're sleeping. he knows when you're awake. he knows if you leave your milk room doors open!!!

This week the milk inspector came. The milk inspector is someone employed by the state to inspect all dairy farms twice a year and make sure that we're not doing anything too egregious. As you might imagine, he is not the most popular of characters. In fact, for a while I didn't even know his name, I knew him only by the unfortunate but descriptive epithets used by the people at my old job to refer to him.

Now don't get me wrong, I think he is a good guy who does his best at a difficult job. But it gets my panties in a twist to have someone walk around the farm and find shit to criticize. But I smile and nod and agree that I will find out what the meat withold is for some obscure Chinese herbal medicine stashed in the back of the vet cabinet and thank the department of ag that he won't be back for another six months.

My uncle told me a story that sums up most dairy farmers' opinions of their milk inspectors:
When my uncle met his girlfriend's (the woman who i have known as my aunt for my whole life) dairy farming father for the first time, he addressed him as Mr. So-and-So. My uncle says his future father-in-law looked him right in the eye and said "Son, call me by my first name. Only one person calls me Mr. So-and-so and it's the milk inspector."

santa brought me a new vocabulary word

i was listening to says you in the barn sunday night. a quiz game that they play each week is one where the host gives a strange word and one team gives several definitions, one of which is correct and the other team must guess what is the true meaning.

last night the word was jibb, which turned out to mean "to milk a cow out completely." i think they should use the word in a sentence or at least say where they found these words because it was hard to know how to use the word in context. but google books seems to suggest the word "jibbings" was in some sort of usage in scotland, meaning the last, richest milk.

i wanted to try out google's ngram viewer with this but i found out that jibb is an alternate spelling of jib - the part of a ship, and is also something bad (i can't quite determine what) that a horse can do, and, more recently, it refers to a trick done on a snowboard.

here's a sentence that i think is correct:
the light on top of our milking machines flashes when the cow is giving her jibbings.