Quality time with cows
Highlight of the week…
I actually milked the cows on a Sunday morning and I took photographic evidence to prove it for those doubters (see above).
It’s been six months since I milked cows and I noticed some key structural changes in the dairy, in particular with the slip rails. A slip rail is a gap in the steel yard that people can slip through to get in amongst the cows if required. It seems as though over the past six months the steel has grown and the gap narrowed so whilst I could still get through them it was with more of a wiggle than a slip. The colder weather has caused an expansion of either my muscular physique or the steel. Let’s just say it was the second one!
I was pleased at how smoothly the milking went, though I did get the speed wobbles after about the third lap. Having a giant circular concrete platform turning slowly into front of you can make you a bit giddy when you’re close up and not used to it.
The dairy we milk our cows in is a 100 unit rotary platform. Made of steel and concrete, the platform weighs about 50 tonnes and sits on a bit of circular railway track has two electric motors that drive on nylon rollers. When you add 100 cows each weighing about 500 kgs, the motors are pushing roughly 100 tonnes of cows and concrete around in a circle- you could almost say these are our hardest workers, though as we can control the speed of the platform (which we prefer to dial down from a top speed of 750 cows per hour to a much more relaxing speed of 600 cows per hour) they aren’t pushed to their limit and therefore undeserving of that title.
Two people can easily milk 600 cows per hour. At this speed, the platform does a full rotation every ten minutes which means a cow begins to be milked every six seconds. Our biggest hold up is getting the cows to move off the platform when they have finished milking. It seems the dairy is too good to be true- it’s warm, the company is great and did we mention there is food?
The menu at this rotating restaurant is quite something! For entree it’s cracked Meatian barley mixed with Gowanford canola meal and a dash of buffers, vitamins and minerals. For main course, Beauchamp vetch silage mixed with some Ultima oaten hay and Bethune Lane mixed rye and clover salad (a firm favourite with the cows) and finally a dessert of marshmallow weed with the odd stinging nettle (not always a favourite).
With thanks to a trusty computer called Marjory, we are able to tell if a cow has snuck a second lap! Marjory controls the feed and refuses to dish up a second helping though this doesn’t always stop the cows who treat the dairy as a merry-go-around!
When we finished washing up, I went home and found that there was no one else there-rare in a bustling household of five young boys- so I heated up a bottle of our delicious milk + chocolate and took my mug and went to sit in the paddock with the cows which happened to be right outside our kitchen window.
Cows are such curious creatures-they always come up for a chat and a stare. It’d be rude not to sit talk to them a while. Cows reply with their eyes, their ears and other movements such a lick of their tongue (though this isn’t always pleasant as their tongues are like sandpaper). Animals never fail to heal spirits and cows are just such a joy to be around. I was never much good with tractors, or fences, or numbers, or people (I better stop this list) but for the most part of 30 years cows and I have got along pretty well.
If you’re happy and you know it, dance a jig!
Paul