A cow's life

Partly because many folks are far removed from farm life, and partly because every farm is different, I get a lot of questions about how the cows here live. With that in mind I thought I would tell you about a day in the life of an average cow here at Northview Dairy.

Let's use Beausoleil because she is a real middle-of-the-road, ordinary girl (and a family favorite.) In summer her day would begin somewhere out on the pasture hill, where she and her herdmates at some unseen signal would start down to the barn.

This time of year she wakes up when the light goes on shortly after five AM. I suspect she doesn't mind her human alarm clock because she is about to get roughly a scoop and a half of Pennfield 20% protein grain. While she and her pals are eating, someone is pulling the milking machines down from the wash in place system and setting them up for milking. By the time the grain is mostly gone, people are washing cows' udders, three at a time on two sides of the barn, with a spray solution of Clorox and water and a clean, individual washcloth for each cow. The teats are carefully dried and the milkers attached. While those six are milking the next six are "prepped". As the milk flow stops, the milking person removes the machine and sprays each teat with Fight Bac, which is darned good stuff I can tell you. The pre-washing, careful drying, and disinfectant at the end of milking each cow helps assure you, our customer, clean, healthy milk. It also helps keep mastitis infection at bay for wonderful Beausoleil and her buddies.

Between cows on our farm each milking machine "claw" gets dipped in sanitizing solution too. We take cleanliness and udder health very seriously here. Two cows (Fitty and Aretha) whose milk is not good enough to sell (by our standards at least) are milked last and the milk is fed to our pigs and our beef steer, Hermie.

When everybody is milked, the calves fed, and the pipeline and machine washer set up, Beausoleil and her pals are let out of their stalls to go to pasture for the day. She is an old cow and waits for the impetuous youngsters to crowd out the door before she strolls calmly outside. Out on the hill she will find two feeder wagons full of ensiled corn and grass haylage, which the cows eat at will until late afternoon. Then they generally head down to the barn.They usually come in on their own, wanting to be milked again and to get a second feeding of that tasty grain. We feed a mixture of pellets and steam flaked corn, which the cows simply love. When the door is opened they crowd inside and hustle to their individual stalls, eager to eat theirs before the neighbors reach over and gobble it it up.

Then morning chores are repeated, washing, milking, calves and all, plus bedding is put in each stall if no one found time during the day. Last thing at night, before the cheap help heads for the house, baled hay is put down for all the animals. This keeps them busy at night with something to chew on and tunes their tummies up for the morning grain feeding. Beausoleil is usually one of the first to lie down in her bed to chew her cud and sleep until the light goes again on in the morning.

Life is a simple routine for the cattle, the same activities repeated day after day because that is how they like their lives, as boring as possible. Come winter, they will get most of their food in the barn because of the weather, and sometimes will stay in all day (they can't walk on ice too well). Most days though, they get a period of time out in the yard for exercise. In summer, they are only inside at milking time, spending their days and nights out in the pasture.

There you have it, lifestyles of the rich and ruminating.