Mastitis Free!

As of last Sunday (22 Nov) Rosie is mastitis free. I never did order any of the external rubs. My treatment was apple cider vinegar and vitamin E in her food twice a day and keeping her udder empty as much as possible. I don’t know if It would have been successful without the little pig nursing from her. He has done a better job than a calf or I could have at keeping her empty.

Now I am getting a full half gallon of milk each morning. Probably about what should be expected from a Dexter. She is not a true milk cow. Dexters are dual purpose cattle. One half gallon a day is plenty for now. I just won’t be making cheese and will stick to making yogurt with the excess.

Banding Porter

Seems like everything got away from me this summer. I never got Porter banded when he was still small so that left me with either buying a different bander or castrating him. I didn’t want to cut him because it has been so wet and mucky and I didn’t want to risk infection. Banding is just so much cleaner and I don’t have to worry about flies or muck causing any problems.

If I can’t find what I need locally I can usually find it on Livestock Concepts website. The had the Tri-Bander Castrator and it was reasonably priced so I figured I would give it a shot. I was very pleased with how easy it was to operate. I may never use the old bander again.

Mastitis!

Well it looks like Rosie has mastitis on her right side. Front right is the worst. Left side looks ok. I read on the forum that you could use dish soap to detect mastitis so that is what I did. You take about an ounce or so of milk and an equal amount of soap and swirl it around in a small dish until it is mixed. If it stays thin it is ok if it appears to congeal or jell up it is mastitis. Her front right jelled almost instantly and completely. The rear right jelled some.

The initial plan is 2 to 4 ounces of raw apple cider vinegar added to her feed twice a day and stripping all the milk out as well. Trying to keep her empty. I was going to remove the pig that has been nursing from her but I decided that I could use all the help I can get to keep her empty. I am also looking for some Dynamint to massage her udder with but I can’t find it locally so it has to be ordered. I think I will try some coconut oil and cyan pepper until the other comes in. Cyan should increase blood flow and the coconut oil is antibacterial. Can’t hurt and I have both. If things don’t improve over the next few days I may have to buy some “Today” to clear it up. I don’t want to go this rout if I don’t have to because there is a 96 hour hold on milk after the last use.

Update:  When I did the mastitis check Sunday the right rear was clean but the right front was still positive. We are making progress so I’ll keep doing what I’m doing unless things start to regress.

Changing of the …. cow

Because the cows stay with the bull year around there is no way to know for sure when they are bread. So my plan all along has been to stop milking Olive as soon as I feel the calf move. That was last week. Last night it was very active. I told Lisa it looked like it was kicking field goals and felt that way too when I placed my hand on Olives side.

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I milked Rosie for the first time Sunday and it went pretty well. When I bought her I was told that she had been hand milked.She was my insurance because Olive had only been used as a brood cow and never milked or even handled.

 
Monday, well that was an entirely different rodeo. When I opened the gate to give her the grain she pushed past me ignoring the grain all together. I tried to hold her back and it almost worked. Emphasis on almost. I had to get a rope and drag her back to the milking stall through the muck and mud. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was pouring buckets. We got about 5 inches in a short period of time. Anyway, I got her back to the stall, locked into the stanchion and she was eating somewhat content. That is until I started to try and milk her then she got agitated again. Picking up her feet side stepping fighting the stanchion. Completely different animal from the day before. Eventually she kicked the bucket over and I gave up. I turned her out to her calf and her pig. Yes, she has taken up with another pig. Silly girl likes her piggy’s.

 
Tuesday, expecting another round of excitement, I put food in her trough over the gate and let her start eating before I opened it. Then I dropped both the barriers on the stanchion so she couldn’t move too far to either side. Then I locked her head in. The actual milking was mostly uneventful until she ran out of grain. I was nearly finished so I let her go rather than get her too stressed out.

 
The strange part was that the milk wouldn’t pass through the muslin cloth. It wouldn’t even go through the wire coffee filter. Something that looked like thick cream clogged up the filters. I was able to do a little at a time rotating the filters and washing them in warm water between uses. The substance melted like cream under warm water. It took a little longer but it worked. Rosie’s udder wasn’t feverish or hard, the milk wasn’t yellow or off smelling so I don’t know for sure what I am dealing with. She still has her calf and a pig nursing so I don’t think it is mastitis but I have ordered a CMT kit just to be on the safe side. It should be here by the end of the week. Until then I plan on adding raw apple cider vinegar to her food morning and night. I haven’t tasted the milk yet so I will give it a sample taste this evening.

 
I browsed the “Keeping a Family Cow” (an excellent book by the way) forum and it looks like a cow will sometimes let down allot of cream and it will look like this. I never ran into this with Olive who is a Jersey. Rosie is a Dexter and supposedly her butter fat particles should be finer and more homogenized so I wouldn’t expect to see this. Obviously I haven’t reached the top of the milk cow learning curve, not that I really thought that I had. There is always something new to learn.