Cow

What Day Will it Happen? Contest!

July 17, 2016 by NZ Filbruns 12 Comments

We are eagerly anticipating fresh milk again soon. We’ve been drinking frozen milk since I dried off the cow about the first of June, but it isn’t the same. The cow has started to bag up now, though, so we’re getting excited about having a new calf on the place again–and did I mention, fresh milk? And cream? And butter? We ran out of the frozen butter today and have to use butter from the shop now.

Anyway, I’m having a contest! I have a free copy of each of Chautona Havig’s two most recent books, Sweet on You and Ante Up!, so they will be the prizes for this contest. To enter, please comment on this post or on my Facebook page (with the link for this post) with the day you think the calf will arrive and whether it will be a heifer calf or a bull calf. The cow is due on July 23, and these pictures show how she looks today. (No, it’s not twins; we saw the calf when we had the vet do a scan to confirm the pregnancy in November, and it was definitely just one calf–this cow simply gets huge!) I’ll give one of the books to the person who guesses closest to the right date (or draw from all the right guesses), and the other book to someone who guesses the right gender. The contest closes when the calf is born–sometime in the next two weeks! The book you get will be a Kindle book, but you do not have to have a Kindle to read it. If you have a tablet or a smart phone you can easily get a free app to read Kindle books, or you can read them on your computer. So, make a guess and you may get to read a book by my favorite author!

Lots of Water!

May 27, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We still have the aftermath of the big flood Easter weekend. Directly out our living room window, we can see this lake; in fact, I took these pictures out that window! Surprisingly, the boys have only played in it the one time. It’s about too cold most of the time this time of year to want to go swimming. The lake is larger now than when these pictures were taken, since we had another torrential rain a week or so ago. Thankfully, the creek didn’t flood around the buildings that time.

Our landlord’s cows visiting with our steer.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REB2k8AgSo0]

And, a brief video clip I got of the boys splashing.

Moving Cows

April 30, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One afternoon, we moved four of the cows to the roadside for grazing.

Left to right: Curry, Red, Checkers, Mrs. Moo.

Chessie was sad that she couldn’t go, but we reserved the good grazing in the paddock for her.

Gayle got home as we were putting the cows in their new spot.

The first thing they did was to go to the end of the strip and gaze longingly at the grass they couldn’t have!

One day, our neighbor took this mob of sheep down the road.

The next day, he took these cows down the road. That’s the kind of traffic jams we have to put up with.

New Calf

April 24, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

This is rather old news by now. It is another of those posts that disappeared. On the morning of March 21, when I went out to milk Mrs. Moo, I discovered a calf frisking around Chessie! I had gone out to check on her late the afternoon before, and thought she probably had another day to go—shows how much I know! As far as we can figure, she had the calf that evening yet; the boys saw her laying down in a funny way while they were choring but didn’t think anything of it. The calf was dried off and running already. In fact, a couple of hours after we found him, he spooked and ran away! He went across the road, through the neighbor’s fence, and across a very large paddock to the far corner! One of my boys chased him down and caught him, and then they brought the ride-on mower with a hand cart tied on behind to fetch him home. We trussed him up and tied him on so that he couldn’t move, and then tied him up when he got back to his mother. He’s still a fiesty little thing, a month later. We’re bottle-feeding him, but he doesn’t trust us an inch. He’ll come for his bottle, but very warily, as if we’re going to eat him! (Don’t tell him that’s his ultimate fate—it’s a couple of years down the road yet, but that is his destiny.) He is a Jersey/Angus cross, by the way.

For this first month, we kept him in this small chicken yard out the kitchen window. I tried a few times to get someone to get a video of him playing, but I don’t think we got it. It was awfully fun to watch, though! Once or twice a day, he would start racing around and around, sometimes butting the walls of the building or fighting an empty bucket. Usually he did it at dusk. Such a circus! He loved it when the chickens would be let out for a little while—company!

Cows and Corn

April 6, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Finally, I have this post ready. I started it two weeks ago! I’ve been having computer problems; I bought a new laptop to replace my Windows XP desktop, since after this coming Tuesday it won’t be safe to use it online, and the new laptop was not working right. We sent it back to get fixed, and haven’t gotten it back yet; hopefully sometime in the next week! Anyway, that, plus the fact that for four days this past week our power was turned off for seven hours a day made it hard to do anything online–besides just daily busyness! “Apples—I said, ‘Give me apples!’” This is Chessie, the cow we’ve had for nearly four years now. She’s rather spoiled.

Mrs. Moo, the cow we’ve been boarding and milking since I dried our cow off the end of January. She moves back with her owners when they move to their new farm the end of April.

The neighbor’s bull, who was with our herd for two weeks so Mrs. Moo will have a calf next year. We’ll probably see him again when it’s time to think about that for our cow.

Chessie again, two weeks before calving.

We went to the garden at the other place and filled the bed of the truck half full of onions, half full of ears of corn, and then the corn stalks on top! I liked the expressions on their faces in this one! They had fun throwing corn stalks out for the cows to eat! Look how dry the hills were! That was a month ago; now the hills are green again, since we’ve had rain a couple of times.

Moving Day

March 17, 2014 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were finally able to move on February 15th. That was quite a busy day, as you can imagine—actually, it was quite a week! We had been waiting for the power to be hooked up so we could move, and on Tuesday that week it was done. The electricians finished rewiring the house on Thursday; we cleaned Friday and moved Saturday! Wednesday was spent finishing the kitchen and painting. Thursday Gayle and the boys moved our firewood while I did things at home. We were very thankful for help cleaning on Friday, and for friends who helped us move on Saturday. We didn’t get very many pictures, because all hands were working so hard with the move, but I’ll share the few we did get!

The living room is filling up!

The piano was one of the heaviest things we had to move.

Trying to get the piano in!

The cattle had to move that day, too. It is about 7 km from the old house to the new, so we walked them down the road. From left to right are our steers, Curry and Checkers, then Red Heifer and her mother, Mrs. Moo (Nervous Nellie), the cow we’re milking while ours is dry. She goes back to her owners when they move to their farm the first of May.

As we went past our former landlord’s house, one of his dogs joined us! We couldn’t convince him to go home, so he went with us the rest of the way, and then Gayle took him back when they went for another load.

Our new home! This is the back door, the west side.

Milking Time

November 9, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Every morning and evening, I go out and milk the cow. It’s a great time to be outside (most of the time), and very peaceful. Most of the time, I get to be by myself out there! Right now, I’m milking along the roadside, because we have her grazing there. Here are a few little glimpses of milking time.

I get to enjoy these roses along the house as I walk out to milk.

Here she comes! My obedient cow comes when I call her.

I often get to see this duck and her 12 ducklings when I'm out to milk. — I often get to see this duck and her 12 ducklings when I’m out to milk.

I get to watch these sheep and lambs across the road.

I can see these hills just past Cheviot from where I milk; the one with the road up it is the Camel's Hump. — I can see these hills just past Cheviot from where I milk; the one with the road up it is the Camel’s Hump.

This beggar practically always joins me, rubbing around and asking for attention, waiting for his milk.

And the news of the week? We have to move. Our landlord’s son wants this house, so within 2-3 months we have to find somewhere else to live.

Messy Faces!

May 18, 2013 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Baby showed up at the door this afternoon, in the tow of Big Brother who was saying, “Be prepared!” It took awhile to figure out what he got into, but eventually we found that he had been playing with a bucket of mud, and obviously decided to paint his face! He enjoyed the clean-up, once I quit turning him upside down to wash his hair. Tonight, he painted himself again. This time, it was easier to clean up!

I haven’t been doing well at keeping this blog up, so I’ll just put in some more miscellaneous pictures from the past week or so. Maybe I’ll aim to do that in the future–just go through the memory card once a week or so and put up pictures of the highlights of the week.

Our landlord put 180 dry dairy cows into the paddock next to our house over the past week. He keeps them here for the winter to allow their home farm to rest. They arrived in big double-decker stock trucks.

The paddock he put them in is planted in kale, which is 4-5 feet high! Notice how the cows are dwarfed by it!

This is the first section, after 24 hours of grazing by about 120 cows. By the next day, nothing was left except short stubs of stems.

This enormous spider was on a cupboard in the laundry room one night when I was putting laundry in the washer! It was 1 1/2 inches long.

Simon invented a stir-fry one evening, with goat meat, onions, mushrooms, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and an egg. It was delicious!

At the same time, Elijah was mixing up apricot-chocolate chip muffins, and Seth was making coconut bread, which I didn’t manage to get a picture of before it disappeared. Both were scrumptious! The kitchen was quite the busy place that evening, as all three boys were cooking while I was trying to fix supper. Also during that time, a friend dropped off my cell phone which had gotten left somewhere, and someone else came for milk!

Exciting Birthday!

October 11, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Today is my birthday, and I had a wonderful birthday present–my cow calved this morning! She was nearly a week late, so we’ve been keeping a close eye on her. Last night she looked like she was very close, so we moved her into a paddock (we had her beside the road) so the calf wouldn’t end up on the road. When I went out at 6:30 this morning to check on her, it was apparent that she was in labor, but she also had milk fever and couldn’t get up. Of course, Gayle was at work, so I called our landlord, who knows a lot about cows, and asked him if he would be able to come over and give her some calcium. He very kindly came over soon, and instead of giving her the oral calcium that I had, he gave her two bags under her skin. He tried to hit a vein, but missed both times. It still works, just not quite as fast. We continued to watch her closely, and around 9:00 I felt inside to see if the calf was in the right position. It was, and half an hour later the feet started showing. Around 10:00 she finally stood up! The feet and nose disappeared back inside, and she took a break for awhile, eating some grass and hay. By 11:00, though, the calf was born–a healthy little bull. The children all got to watch. They had been hoping for that. They’ve had quite the education–they witnessed the breeding and now the birth.

And here’s a funny: This is Chestnut’s third calf, and all three have been born on a Thursday. We’ve had four different goats kid here, and three have kidded on a Thursday. What are the odds of that happening?

Just born!

Everyone wants to meet the new baby!

Worn out.

This afternoon, the two oldest boys went to help a local man “tail” lambs. Of course, lambs are born with long tails, but if you leave the tails on, poo builds up on them and then flies lay eggs…. I’ll spare you the details, but it’s kinder to cut off the tails. At the same time, they notch the ears for identification, and “ring” the males. This farm has around 2,000 ewes, so there are 3-4,000 lambs. The farm is in the hills directly east of Cheviot. We were able to drive the van to the back of the farm where they were working, since we have 4-wheel drive in it. We were going up and down some mighty steep hills! I have been looking at those particular hills, and the farm road we went up, since we moved here, wishing I could go up them! What a day for my wish to come true–my birthday! The views from the top were awesome. Snow-capped peaks in one direction; the sea in the other.

Ever since we moved to Cheviot I’ve wanted to go to the top of this hill. The tailing operation.

On the way back down, we stopped on the hill at the base of the cell tower (we were higher than the tower when we were back where they were tailing!). We live at the edge of the worked ground in the middle of the picture–just beyond Cheviot.

View to the north from the cell tower. You can vaguely see the Kaikoura mountains here; in reality they were quite clear.

Look how steep this hill is!

See the cows along the top of the ridge across the valley?

The road we drove on to get to the back of the farm, viewed from the other side of Cheviot. That’s the road I’ve been eyeing for nearly three years!

Cows

August 24, 2012 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We’ve had some interesting experiences with cows the last two months. First, some background information. Here in New Zealand, dairying is seasonal. Cows are all dried off in May and they calve in August, for the most part. During their dry period, in the winter, they are generally trucked to an area away from their home farm, to give the paddocks there a rest. Our landlord boards dairy cows from a couple of farms near Culverden, and he says it’s very good pay. He had 700-800 cows on his home farm, and around 100 on this farm. The beginning of July, one of the cows at his place “slipped her calf”–it was born dead about a month early. She bagged up, so he brought her over here for us to milk. She was here for three weeks, and we had a few circuses with her (she wasn’t used to being handled), but she was tame as a kitten compared with a couple of others we tried to milk!

The second week of August, one of the cows here calved. She had an enormous udder, so he said we could milk her. We spent two hours one Sunday afternoon, trying to tie her up! She jumped three fences before we could get a rope around her neck, and then it still took an hour to tie her tight enough to milk. During that time, she sent me flying once with her head, and by the end of that ordeal she was charging anyone who came close, and pawing hay up over her back like a bull when anyone so much as looked at her! She stayed tied up in a shed here for nearly a week till our landlord’s son was able to figure out how to untie her and get her back out with the mob.

Several days after that circus, our landlord asked me if I’d like to come over to their place to milk a cow whose calf had died. He has a headgate there, so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to milk her. He put a rope on her hind foot so she couldn’t kick–but she did anyway! Soon, she was seemingly trying to kill herself and us! They put a strap around her belly to hold her up to the side of the chute she was in, but she laid down anyway. So much for that cow–after I left and the landlord let her go she was charging at him!

By now, I’ve had it with Friesiens. I’ve really been enjoying my sweet, gentle Jersey! I can walk up to her and lead her around by her halter anywhere I want to and she can be tied with a light string and stay put!

Yesterday, our landlord offered us another cow. This one has been in a paddock by herself close to his house for three months, ever since she hurt her foot on the truck coming over here from the dairy farm. Her leg is in such bad shape that when the last of the cows were loaded up and sent back yesterday her owner said to shoot her. She had calved the day before and had so much milk that our landlord decided to keep her, and kept back another bull calf that had been born there to put on her. He offered her to us to milk, and brought her and two calves over today. Her leg was so bad that she couldn’t get on the horse float, so they used this makeshift platform to bring her. She fell down on the way here, and I’m guessing she hurt her udder; there is blood in the milk. Hope that clears up soon.

Cow

Thank you!