By Karen
I came across this You Tube video about the separation of dairy calves from their mothers and it made me want to post a new blog just to clear up a few things.
When I first decided to have a family cow it was twenty years ago. I was pregnant and the calf was due the same day my daughter was due. To me this meant the whole world was a right as rain, and I needed to buy this very specific cow. Pregnant women can be a tad bit superstitious, as in having super powers to make meaningful connections to serendipitous events; so Ron being the understanding husband that he is, supported my decision to buy a cow when the rest of the world thought it a bit strange. As nature would have it the calf was on time, and I was late, so I spent my virgin milking experience as a nine plus month pregnant woman. If that doesn't qualify me to understand the psyche of a dairy animal, then allow me to indulge further.
I counted once, the years I've spent nursing my children, twelve years total! Home birthed babies that nursed into toddlerhood, all my kids were demand fed and naturally weaned. That means that they nursed when they were hungry, and I never once looked at a clock. I was a walking living breathing mother goddess who took the nursing role far more seriously than most of my peers. Now in a completing of the circle I've acquired an overly developed empathy for my dairy creatures. When Trinity got mastitis, I cringed, remembering the soreness, I, too, had once had to endure.
With this kind of background, my attitude is going to a bit biased toward the cow's experience, than the traditional conventional wisdom of farmers. I was a mother milker. Yet I was also the woman who was on the receiving end of the milk and needed to reconcile the experience of giving and taking. With my first cow, I decided I shouldn't have to milk twice a day since I had my own babies to care for. I placed the mother cow and baby cow in separate stalls at night. I would milk the mother in the morning, and let the calf have the milk all day long. Of course, this lead to the mother wanting to hold back the best cream for when she and her calf were reunited.
Over the years, I have experimented with the family cow relationship several different ways, but my newest experiment is one I am most happy with. Trinity and her baby Kennedy are never separated. They are out at pasture and only come in for Trinity to be milked. At first, Trinity didn't want to come in for fear I might separate her from her calf (she was not born on this farm and this had been done to her in the past.) So I coaxed Kennedy into the milking parlor with me. Once I even carried her, though even at two days old she was quite heavy. Trinity of course would follow us into the parlor quite closely and moo her fear that Kennedy would leave her sight. But as calf and mother got used to the routine a funny thing happened.
Trinity would come to the barn door as soon as she saw me with my milk pail in hand. Kennedy, on the other hand, would nonchalantly watch as her mother went into the barn with hardly a bat of her eyes. "Ho hum, no big deal; mom's going to stand there and be boring. I'd much rather stay out here and play with the goats." This is not unlike the way human children respond when they are demand fed. If they can see mom, and they are only separated by choice and not by trauma; then there will be no grieving, no fear, and, in the case of cows, plenty of milk for all.
When I milk Trinity she doesn't hold back her cream. She is so relaxed, eating her grain the milk flows like… dare I say, honey. Usually the calf has had her fill on one or more teats and Trinity is relieved that I empty the other ones. I am hopeful that as the calf grows and demands more milk, there will still be enough for me, her adopted human calf. Seriously, as a family cow, even with cheese-making, who needs more than a few gallons a day?
Years ago, Frédérick Leboyer revolutionized the natural birthing world with his book, Birth Without Violence. Perhaps one day all family farmers will all be practicing gentle mother milking. We'll see. I may need to make a bumper sticker, Mother Milkers Do it Gently in the Barn. Yes, I am definitely getting crazier and crazier the longer I spend on this hill, but I'm not minding it a bit and neither is Trinity, or her calf.
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