Welcome to Gretchen and T-Bone

Jacob and Jordy went in together and bought the family a younger milk cow.  She came with her 3 month old bull calf.  We named her Gretchen.

Her little calf is our new meat cow, so we named him T-Bone.  

We let them settle in for the first week and just get used to their new family and their new surroundings.  T-Bone hasn't had a lot of human contact so we put a halter on him while he was still in the trailer so that we could begin working with him to gentle him and teach him to lead.  The halter was too big for him, though, and we haven't begun teaching him to lead since him pulling on it and resisting will only succeed in pulling it off.

The second week we incorporated them into our barn chores routines morning and evening.  They had been exclusively grass-fed so we slowly introduced them to some grain.  We used the grain to help teach T-Bone that we mean good for him.  We began leading Gretchen into the barn and into a stanchion so that we could brush her, check her over,  wash her and milk her.  She didn't give us much milk since T-Bone still had first dibs.  Mostly we went through the motions of milking and were rewarded with just a mouthful of milk while we all were getting better acquainted with one another.  A couple of times we must've caught her before T-Bone had had a recent smackerel and we got almost a quart!

The third week we bought a plastic weaning ring and placed it into his nose to prevent him from nursing whenever he chooses.

He is still sneaking snacks or trying to at least, since we see him doing what looks an awful lot like nursing!  Either way, it is making a difference and we are getting 2 or 3 quarts at each milking.  We give him 2 quarts morning and evening in addition to his grain.  The first time we offered it to him we used the calf bottle we used for Brisket waaay back when he was a baby.  T-Bone did not know what to do with it, but Brisket sure did!  He pestered Emily for a sip and then chased her around and around begging for more and was relentless in his pursuit for more milk.  It was pretty funny!

We finally decided to just dump his milk into the bucket we give him his grain in and that worked well, so now he has multi-grain cereal and whole milk twice a day. :)  

We still have Girlfriend, our sweet old milk cow.

She did fabulously through the winter and we were so happy that she was doing so well.  We aren't sure if there is something wrong with her or if she is just showing her age, but she has had an off and on appetite and has had a dramatic increase in the creaking and popping noises from her hips and is not as steady on her feet anymore.  One day we went out for morning chores and couldn't get her on her feet.  We finally did get her up but she wouldn't eat.  We had someone out to look at her and they thought she might've eaten something that didn't agree with her.  She did perk up the next day, but she hasn't gotten her appetite back like before.

She recently slipped while navigating the gutter  and the step coming out of the milking parlor and we had a time getting her up again.  There's not a whole lot you can do to get a thousand pound cow up that doesn't want to go anywhere!

For a time we milked her out in the field so that she wouldn't have to pick her feet up so high to go over the threshold.

She did eventually get up and seemed to be fine but it has worried us a bit that we might lose her sometime in the nearish future.  Brisket tried to mount her not long after that and he toppled her over because of how unsteady she is.  She has trouble getting up from a laying down resting position.  We have to walk her very slowly to the barn because she seems to find all the creaking and popping in her hips to be uncomfortable and needs to go at her own pace.  Hmmm, come to think of it she sounds an awful lot like me!  :)