May 6, 2010

In my last post, I said I would tell the story of our new calf's arrival here at Liberty Farm. I didn't know it at the time, but T-Bone's arrival was not the real story. It turns out that Sugar was quite ill. The reasoning behind it is mostly educated conjecture so if any dairy folks are reading your comments are welcome. Anyway, here's the story.

About three weeks ago, Sugar forsook hay completely for fresh green grass. Subsequently, her milk production went from 3.5 gallons a day up to 5 gallons. Great! (we thought). About a week ago she started scouring (i.e. got diarrhea). This wasn't the typical loose manure that cows get when eating grass but pure liquid. We knew something was really wrong last weekend when she refused grain and her milk production dropped like a rock.

Here's where the conjecture comes in. The grass this time of year is high in moisture content and low in mineral content. It is also quite high in nitrogen (protein). The protein caused the spike in milk but the wet, mineral-deficient grass wasn't fibrous enough to maintain good rumen function (hence the scouring and lack of appetite for grain).

Our solution has been to keep her confined in the barn eating dry hay. She has been in there since Sunday afternoon and her appetite has returned with a vengeance. When we first brought her in we supplemented her with molasses and apple cider vinegar. I've been giving her probiotics every other day. Tuesday she was finally her usual self at the grain pan and she tried to eat the plastic tube that the probiotics come in. Her manure is still not the "cow pie" we like to see but it's definitely three dimensional. I'm confident that she will have developed a good fiber mat in her rumen by this weekend and plan to let her out on grass. If she stops eating hay altogether, though, we will confine her for part of the day.

As for milk, we really don't know what's going on because of the calf nursing. By the way, she has thoroughly adopted him and I suspect that she may be refusing to let down for us. We're getting very little milk for the house but the calf is fat and sassy. Once things are back to normal we'll begin separating the calf at night and milking in the morning. There are some training methods for cows that refuse to let down but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.