More on milking Maggie

In the last post on training Maggie to milk, a reader asked for more details on how I hobble her back leg to avoid getting kicked. This morning I took the camera with me to the barn and got some general pix of the milking process.

I have a permanent loop on the hobble rope. This way I can slip the rope through the loop, then around Maggie's leg. This means the hobble stays loose enough on her leg not to be uncomfortable, but if she pulls at it, it tightens.

I thread the other end of the rope through the eye-bolt on the post and make a slip knot. That way, if I have to release her leg quickly, I just yank the tail of the rope and the knot comes out.

It's normal for cows to shift position while in the milking stall. The slip makes it easy to readjust how "hobbled" Maggie is as the milking progresses. You don't want to make a hobble so short that the cow is immobilized, because she'll panic. It should only be short enough to keep her from kicking over the milk bucket, or kicking the milker (me!).

The very first thing to do before starting to milk (after hobbling, of course) is to wash the udder. For obvious reasons, this is very important. It's not always this bad, but this morning was a doozy.

I use two buckets for milking. I milk directly into the smaller one...

...and then, when I've accumulated an inch of milk or so of milk, I pour it into the larger bucket behind me.

This system serves two purposes. One, if the cow kicks the bucket over, I haven't lost all the milk. And two, the larger bucket is far enough away that if Maggie urinates, nothing splashes into the milk.

When I'm done milking, I cap the clean milk with a bowl cover before I release the animals.

Then it's time for Stormy to get her own breakfast. By the way, to forestall any questions, once-a-day milking means the cow adjusts her output for two "calves" (I'm the other "calf"), so Stormy is not deprived of any of the food or nutrients she needs.

After I come back to the house with the milk, I strain it through a double layer of thin cotton cloth and chill the milk. (I boil the cloth each day to sanitize it.) Then I scrub and sanitize the buckets and upend them to air-dry until the next day.

And that's all there is to it! Ta da!