Sunday, February 29
I failed to entirely realize that when my dad said that we would be sorting the springing (close to calving) cows out from the further-outs "soon", he meant we would be doing so today. Therefore my morning was much more exciting than I had originally planned... overall things went well, aside from Eva the One-Eyed Bitch jumping not one but two gates. Cows occasionally do this. The problem is that cows are not naturally aerodynamic creatures. They are naturally large, heavy creatures who ought to stay firmly on the ground. This is something which they themselves do not remember until they are airborne, resulting in a lot of jumps which begin in spectacular confidence and beautifully executed form and end in a gate with a cow-shaped bend and a cow standing in the middle of it looking surprised. Eva did this twice. That's two forty-dollar gates that we won't see again, at least not without a distinctive U in them.
In all there were 48 springers. We started sorting at nine and didn't finish until one. All in all, a bad day to have skipped breakfast.
Later on we ran the springers through the milking parlour to get them accustomed to it, especially the heifers, who have never been milked before and tend to be a bit surprised by it when it happens. It went as well as could be expected, meaning that nobody got broken and my shit-bath was not complete. There was some truly explosive excrement happening down there. It was a bit like being caught between a double row of projectile vomiters, only not quite.
In other news... I am officially halfway through the novel now, having both passed the 50,000 word mark (I had the idea that this would be a 100K word novel) and finished the fifth of ten days that the novel's supposed to span. These even occurred at roughly the same time, meaning that the novel is likely to be about as long as I want it to be. This makes me Happy.
All in all, not a bad, but a thoroughly exhausting day. I was determined to post it, though. After all, a chance to post on this particular date won't come around again for four more years.
In all there were 48 springers. We started sorting at nine and didn't finish until one. All in all, a bad day to have skipped breakfast.
Later on we ran the springers through the milking parlour to get them accustomed to it, especially the heifers, who have never been milked before and tend to be a bit surprised by it when it happens. It went as well as could be expected, meaning that nobody got broken and my shit-bath was not complete. There was some truly explosive excrement happening down there. It was a bit like being caught between a double row of projectile vomiters, only not quite.
In other news... I am officially halfway through the novel now, having both passed the 50,000 word mark (I had the idea that this would be a 100K word novel) and finished the fifth of ten days that the novel's supposed to span. These even occurred at roughly the same time, meaning that the novel is likely to be about as long as I want it to be. This makes me Happy.
All in all, not a bad, but a thoroughly exhausting day. I was determined to post it, though. After all, a chance to post on this particular date won't come around again for four more years.
Saturday, February 28
The parents were supposed to get back from Europe on Thursday, but ended up getting back yesterday instead, due to a freak of the weather gods. I should say that the weather here's been absolutely gorgeous - in the fifties and sixties, sunny, warm, happy.
Except on Thursday. On Thursday it snowed a foot.
My parents landed all right but between the snow on the road and the idiots in the snow they didn't get any closer to home than Statesville (about an hour and a half away) before giving up and calling it a night. Then Friday it was sunny and warm and in the sixties again and all the snow went away and my parents came home.
Somebody up there's playing funny buggers, that's all I can say.
But they are home, incredibly jet lagged and very, very glad to hear English again but happy, and have had incredible adventures and such, including some which I should not post in a public blog, seeing as the current administration calls it terrorism. Much cheese was eaten, also, which is perfectly legal, except for the bit which Mom snuck home in her suitcase, but hey, it's too late for Customs to bust her now; the evidence is, ahem, no longer with us.
Now they are all full of energy and fun and work that they thought up for us to do while they were partying. Oh, joy.
We've had a preliminary back from the lab, and the cautious diagnosis on Didge's calf was spontaneous bacterial abortion, which is not really preventable and not really contagious. Let's hope that's really it. Fingers crossed....
Except on Thursday. On Thursday it snowed a foot.
My parents landed all right but between the snow on the road and the idiots in the snow they didn't get any closer to home than Statesville (about an hour and a half away) before giving up and calling it a night. Then Friday it was sunny and warm and in the sixties again and all the snow went away and my parents came home.
Somebody up there's playing funny buggers, that's all I can say.
But they are home, incredibly jet lagged and very, very glad to hear English again but happy, and have had incredible adventures and such, including some which I should not post in a public blog, seeing as the current administration calls it terrorism. Much cheese was eaten, also, which is perfectly legal, except for the bit which Mom snuck home in her suitcase, but hey, it's too late for Customs to bust her now; the evidence is, ahem, no longer with us.
Now they are all full of energy and fun and work that they thought up for us to do while they were partying. Oh, joy.
We've had a preliminary back from the lab, and the cautious diagnosis on Didge's calf was spontaneous bacterial abortion, which is not really preventable and not really contagious. Let's hope that's really it. Fingers crossed....
Monday, February 23
Nothing's ever simple.
My parents left for Europe, and the next day we had a cow abort her calf six weeks early. The poor thing was dead, of course - it never breathed, never had a chance - but the mother was in good shape. And coming into her milk.
Meaning we had to milk her.
Did you know there are muscles in your hand that never get used for anything but hand-milking? Okay, I'm sure they get used for something else, as it's unlikely that the Grand Plan put muscles in the hand on the off chance that we humans would someday get the idea of squeezing milk out of cow's teats, but the point is, when you suddenly put a lot of strain on those muscles it's painful. Nor is milking a cow a quick and simple task. Chameleon was an absolute love about the whole thing, luckily, but with the bro and I both working it milking her out took fifteen minutes of hard work, minimum. On the one occasion I had to milk her out by myself I was sitting there for a full forty minutes.
(As a side note, we have a hundred cows. Every so often some innocent asks whether we milk by hand. Reading the above, doing some simple multiplication, and imagining severe and never-ending hand cramps will probably help explain the glazed look of horror I give such people.)
Then, this past Saturday, the bro rung me from the field to say we'd another dead calf.
Now, this has good points and bad points. The good point is that, with two cows, it's worth our while to fire up the milk pump and rig a can. We can milk by machine now. Bliss.
The bad point is that once may be a fluke, but twice suggests that we've got a problem. The weather's been good and nothing's happened to stress the animals, which leaves the fear of some kind of abortive disease running through the herd, which would be Very Bad Indeed. We have, as I said, a hundred cows; picking up a hundred pitiful little calf-corpses is not how I care to spend my spring. Not to mention the fear it could be leptospirosis - unlikely, as we vaccinate for lepto, but vaccines have been known to fail. And lepto is a zoonosis - we can catch it from the cows, in other words. A Kiwi friend of mine spent a year in the hospital after catching lepto off a cow.
The lab was closed on Saturday, of course (lazy, overfed government peons) so we put the dead calf and the placenta on ice and the bro drove it in this morning. Now we can only wait and hope that the whole thing really is a fluke.
The other, more minor bad point is that while Chameleon is a love - a few cards short of a full deck, maybe, but generally a love - Didgeridoo, the new cow, is being a right whore. I chased her over half the farm to get her up here, and when we put her in the pen with Chameleon, it took her about two seconds to realize that she was, for the first time in her life, the biggest cow around, and about another two seconds to celebrate by smearing Chameleon all over the side of the pen. The ones who've been at the bottom of the heap all their lives are always the worst... she kicks in the parlour, she hogs the feed, and poor Chameleon runs to the gate and starts bawling every time she sees us, clearly saying, "Why'd you put this crazy bitch in here? Take her away! I wanna be an only cow again!"
Oh well. Weather's been nice.
All this could, I suppose, explain why I haven't posted here in over a week, but actually it doesn't. I've just been lazy.
My parents left for Europe, and the next day we had a cow abort her calf six weeks early. The poor thing was dead, of course - it never breathed, never had a chance - but the mother was in good shape. And coming into her milk.
Meaning we had to milk her.
Did you know there are muscles in your hand that never get used for anything but hand-milking? Okay, I'm sure they get used for something else, as it's unlikely that the Grand Plan put muscles in the hand on the off chance that we humans would someday get the idea of squeezing milk out of cow's teats, but the point is, when you suddenly put a lot of strain on those muscles it's painful. Nor is milking a cow a quick and simple task. Chameleon was an absolute love about the whole thing, luckily, but with the bro and I both working it milking her out took fifteen minutes of hard work, minimum. On the one occasion I had to milk her out by myself I was sitting there for a full forty minutes.
(As a side note, we have a hundred cows. Every so often some innocent asks whether we milk by hand. Reading the above, doing some simple multiplication, and imagining severe and never-ending hand cramps will probably help explain the glazed look of horror I give such people.)
Then, this past Saturday, the bro rung me from the field to say we'd another dead calf.
Now, this has good points and bad points. The good point is that, with two cows, it's worth our while to fire up the milk pump and rig a can. We can milk by machine now. Bliss.
The bad point is that once may be a fluke, but twice suggests that we've got a problem. The weather's been good and nothing's happened to stress the animals, which leaves the fear of some kind of abortive disease running through the herd, which would be Very Bad Indeed. We have, as I said, a hundred cows; picking up a hundred pitiful little calf-corpses is not how I care to spend my spring. Not to mention the fear it could be leptospirosis - unlikely, as we vaccinate for lepto, but vaccines have been known to fail. And lepto is a zoonosis - we can catch it from the cows, in other words. A Kiwi friend of mine spent a year in the hospital after catching lepto off a cow.
The lab was closed on Saturday, of course (lazy, overfed government peons) so we put the dead calf and the placenta on ice and the bro drove it in this morning. Now we can only wait and hope that the whole thing really is a fluke.
The other, more minor bad point is that while Chameleon is a love - a few cards short of a full deck, maybe, but generally a love - Didgeridoo, the new cow, is being a right whore. I chased her over half the farm to get her up here, and when we put her in the pen with Chameleon, it took her about two seconds to realize that she was, for the first time in her life, the biggest cow around, and about another two seconds to celebrate by smearing Chameleon all over the side of the pen. The ones who've been at the bottom of the heap all their lives are always the worst... she kicks in the parlour, she hogs the feed, and poor Chameleon runs to the gate and starts bawling every time she sees us, clearly saying, "Why'd you put this crazy bitch in here? Take her away! I wanna be an only cow again!"
Oh well. Weather's been nice.
All this could, I suppose, explain why I haven't posted here in over a week, but actually it doesn't. I've just been lazy.
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