Sorry to report- I have no crazy stories...but don't fret, because lambing season will soon be upon us and sheep are the most frustrating animals alive.
Since I have began my blogging I have had some people ask me what I do with the milk that I spend hours a week collecting and why on earth would we have animals that are so time consuming. Here are some deets about things:
Firstly I will begin with where I began. When I decided to go back to school to get my degree in 2009 I just sort of dove right in, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, all I knew was that I wasn't happy with the jobs I was doing because of the lack of a college education. It was about 3 months in that I decided no matter what I ended up doing, I was going to have to pay for my school and by living in the small town that I do, I was going to sacrifice a great paying job with lots of perks. It was then I decided to start a small cow herd of my own to have a back up plan in case it took some time to find a job that could support my bills and my student loans. I started making some calls and putting it on facebook that I was looking for bum calves. A friend of mine, who has a large ranch with a great deal of cows gave me two. Raising bum calves (and lambs) is a lot of work and can be tremendously difficult when you have several other things going on. I was a full time student, but only held a part time job so I had the time to raise some calves. The first two calves I got, luckily, were heifer calves (female) so I knew that I was going to keep them and eventually, get calves off of them. I raised those two calves on milk replacer and put a lot of work into nutrition supplements to make sure they were healthy, this cost me some money, but I still ended up way ahead.
The next year, we got the Jerseys. These cows can raise up to 3 calves with all of the milk they produce so when we had our bum calves taken care of, I went out on the hunt for more bums. The year prior, the price of calves sky rocketed so people weren't so willing to give them away. I purched two steer calves (males) for $300 a piece and a few weeks later, a heifer calf for $235. That is a total of $835. I raised them on the Jersey cows and an old Holstein cow. When I sold the two steer calves, I got $1,000 a piece. Pretty good profit margin of $1,400. I kept the heifer and raised my herd by 1.
I later bought 2 more cows and my dad gave me one so by the end of the year I had 6 cows, and last year sold 3 calves off of the two purchased cows and the gift cow (who's name is Harry Potter). Mind you, this is not a huge herd, but I only put $825 and the cost of milk replacer and pellets into this. I have to thank Kip in huge part since I don't pay him shares or cost of hay, but I do a lot of work around here to make that work out in the end.
This year, I am on the hunt for calves, and will probably end up with some...if not, I have 6 cows that are going to calve so, the work is starting to pay off and I will reap some rewards.
As for the milk: For the first 2 days, animals produce colostrum which is VITAL to a baby's existence. Without it, they will inevitably die. The colostrum basically kick starts the stomach in lame man's terms. I milk out the colostrum and freeze it so when we have lambs or calves that need the boost, we have it at the ready. After the colostrum has run out it is just milk but is still very beneficial. The middle of the night twin I spoke of earlier got Chelsea's colostrum and then her milk until he could be put on Chelsea.
Bum lambs DIE, it is their main goal in life to die. They never do very well on milk replacer as anyone with sheep knows. They also don't do very well on straight cow milk, but they THRIVE on a half and half mixture of the two. When you are a rancher, every death is a loss, not only financially but emotionally, and not the boo-hoo cry because a baby died way, in the way that you try so hard to save things and give quality of life. All of the work with the milking twice a day pays off when all of your bum lambs are alive when you are ready to take lambs to market.
I get up at 5:30 every morning and get the cows in and milk, I then srain the milk and freeze it and wash buckets and strainers and equipment. I then shower, go to work all day, come home, change into grungy clothes and do it all again but they pay off is fantastic.
Ranching life isn't glamorous- most of the time I smell like poop and am usually covered in some form of goo. Sometimes I run on very little sleep, and miss out on things but the rewards are really like none other.
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