Milking time

Almost every day I was here, I helped with the evening milking in some way or another. I would usually milk 1 or 2 cows, and help wrestle the calves back and forth. First, you tie the front legs of the cow, then let her calf suckle until the calf’s mouth is foaming with milk. Then you milk the cow. Once it runs out, you repeat the process with the calf. When you are done with the second milking, you let the calf and mother go. There are 11 cow/calf pairs to deal with. As the summer went on, the calf-wrestling job got harder as the calves grew bigger and more stubborn. Enhee and Grandmother got a big kick out of watching me try to move the biggest 2-year-old calf away from his mother. I could barely do it.

I never tried milking the horses, but milked all the other animals. The goats were the most cantankerous, moving around and trying to sit in my bucket. I had some very frustrating evenings trying to help, and Kelly was kind to remind me that as I wasn’t making a new career out of milking, it was OK that I didn’t do it with great skill. By the end, I was able to adequately milk a cow, but still struggled with it. In this video clip, Enhee is showing her expert milking skills after more than 30 years of practice. (Push the "Play" symbol on the bar you can see in this entry and the video clip will pop up.)

Some interesting milking facts: Horses, sheep, and goats have 2 teats, cows have 4. Horses and cows require their young to be nearby when being milked. The cows are milked from April through November, twice a day. The horses are milked June through October, 5 times a day. The sheep and goats from late May through early July, once a day.