June 30, 2009

I didn't get to go to Mass on Sunday because Sugar had cold ears that morning. Cold ears are one of the initial signs of milk fever and the 72 hour danger zone wasn't up until about 2:00 pm Sunday. So I stayed home to keep an eye on her and it turned out to be nothing. Since I was home and outside, though, I took the opportunity to build this:
It's a headgate with feed box attached. What a difference this has made! Sugar can no longer dance around the barn in a 180 degree pattern while we're trying to milk. She can still move around some but she's getting better about that. It was hard to get her in there at first but at the last two milkings she's walked right in and put her head through the bars.

Unfortunately, she seems to have freshened with mastitis in one quarter. A well-meaning but ignorant relative squeezed some milk from one quarter about 10 days before she calved, thereby eliminating the natural wax plug. The colostrum from that quarter was slightly chunky. Unfortunately, her edema (swelling) is worst in that quarter so the calf is avoiding it. We gave her an antibiotic infusion Sunday evening and Monday morning. If the milk is still chunky on Wednesday, I will milk her out every two hours from the time I get home in the afternoon through the night along with applying hot compresses and maybe some minty balm or coconut oil laced with cayenne pepper. The heat gets the blood moving and helps with the edema and with getting the infection down and out.

We've been feeding handfuls of raspberry leaves a few times a day and massaging to help with the edema. Her teats are spaced far apart and hanging low because of it so we're only able to get two teat cups on her at a time when we milk. It's no big deal to do two at a time. As of this morning the milk is still pretty yellow from colostrum content.

We've been getting about a gallon per milking since we started in earnest Sunday morning. If she keeps that up after her pure milk comes in, I'll have to assume she's holding out on us and only partially letting down. If that's the case we'll have to get sneaky and bring her calf in to stimulate let down and then take the calf out and get the milker on. I'll be reading up on other tricks today.

If anyone has any suggestions, please comment.