Breeding time

It's that time of year: Breeding time via AI (Artificial Insemination) for our Jersey cow Maggie.

But wait, there's more. After much discussion, we decided to breed Maggie's yearling heifer calf Stormy as well.

Stormy is half-Jersey, half-Angus. She looks very much like an Angus, but she has a lot of Maggie's sweet Jersey disposition. And she's big, bigger than her mama.

Here's a comparison between a Jersey's boney butt and a half-Angus' meaty butt. You can tell which one is bred for milk and which one for meat!

You can also see that Stormy is now taller than her mama.

In fact, it is because of Stormy's sweet disposition that we decided to keep her as a breeder rather than putting her in the freezer and raising another animal for meat. This means Maggie is now the mother of our dairy line, and Stormy will become the mother of our meat line.

Before we could be certain we could breed Stormy, however, we needed to make sure she was able to be handled. She's never been lead-trained and had never worn a halter. If we could get a halter on her, the chances were good she could get bred. If she was too wild, well ... we had space in the freezer.

Getting a halter on Stormy took a couple weeks of strategizing. We prefer to use chain halters (sometimes called restraint halters) on our animals. We've always handled Stormy a lot – scratching her, brushing her, giving her a bit of grain here and there – so we ramped up these efforts during this time. That part was easy since it's nothing we hadn't done before.

Meanwhile Don prepared a stout rope to temporarily confine her. This was set up with a clip that could be adjusted so we could slip the rope over Stormy's head and a slip-knot would tighten the rope, but the clip would prevent the rope from getting too tight and choking her. The idea was to get the rope around her neck, then thread the other end of the rope through an eye-bolt that was already in place on the barn beam. This would, in theory, confine her tightly enough that I could get the halter on her.

The evening came when we went out to the barn, got Maggie and little Lucy outside, and confined Stormy inside. Right away, of course, Stormy knew something was up.

Getting the rope around her neck was easy enough, but every time Don tried to thread the other end of the rope through the eye-bolt, she would yank it out. Finally, more by accident than anything else, we got her cornered against a side of the barn (cows become more or less immobilized when pressed against a wall), and I was able to slip the halter over her head and buckle it on.

Right away we released her, removed the rope, and gave her a lot of fuss and attention, scratches and brushing. Fussing didn't mitigate the indignity of being haltered. She did not like that ropey thing on her face, that's for sure, and sulked about it for a day or two until she got used to it. But get used to it she did, and quickly recovered her normal sweet disposition.

In fact, a funny thing happened. After being haltered, Stormy became our new best friend whenever Don or I were in the barn or corral. She nudged us (sometimes hard) for affection, she submitted to brushing and scratches like never before, and she started leading with a lead-rope with very little effort. She became so affectionate that we started calling her Princess.

At this point, I emailed the AI lady (her name is Andrea) to inquire whether Stormy could simply be tied up while being bred, or whether it was necessary for the heifer to be confined to the milking stall.

Andrea said it was essential that Stormy be confined. During breeding, Andrea would have her arm inserted literally shoulder-deep in Stormy's backside, and the last thing she (Andrea) needed was a broken arm if Stormy got testy. Fair enough.

After this, we started training Princess Stormy to go into the milking stall.

We already knew the head gate wouldn't work for Stormy – her neck is much thicker than Maggie's more slender Jersey neck – but we had an eye-bolt already installed on the opposite beam that we could use to thread a lead rope clipped to her halter and confine her that way.

But that was in the future. First Stormy had to get used to being in the milking stall without feeling panicky.

This was actually easier to accomplish than we anticipated. Stormy spent the first nine months of her life spending the night in the adjacent calf pen, so that whole milking-stall infrastructure already held warm, fuzzy memories for her. In fact, even now we have to keep the calf pen gate closed when Stormy is around, because she'll make a beeline for the calf pen even though she has massively outgrown the space.

Our morning and evening routines became as follows. Don would go into the small space behind the milking stall where the bucket stand was located (this is where Maggie puts her head to eat grain in the mornings when I milk her) with a bucket of grain. I clipped Stormy's halter chain to the lead rope and gently pulled her toward the milking stall, where Don waved the grain enticingly at the other end. Once she was in the stall eating the grain, we made no effort to confine her in any way, though I did scratch and brush her rear end so she would get used to activity back there. When Stormy was finished with her grain, we let her back herself out on her own terms.

This training period was extremely effective. Once or twice Don threaded the lead rope through the eye-bolt just to get Stormy used to being tied up in place, and while she fought it a little bit in a half-hearted sort of way, overall she didn't seem to mind.

Meanwhile the clock was ticking down to when Andrea was planning to come out for the first stage of breeding the animals, which involved estrus synchronization protocols so both Maggie and Stormy could be bred at the same time. This meant giving the animals a shot of prostaglandin as well as inserting a controlled internal drug release (CIDR) device to regulate the estrous cycle.

This took a bit of calculating on Andrea's part. She was traveling from about an hour's drive away, and had to time her first visit with when her second visit would be necessary. In other words, unless we wanted her to breed the animals at midnight, she had to backtrack and time the beginning of the estrus synchronization protocol at a specific hour. (As it turned out, we had to juggle this schedule a bit because a cow's estrus and a heifer's estrus run at slightly different times.)

Andrea arrived on the evening of August 31 to start the process.You can see how suspicious Stormy looks at all the activity.

Beginning with Stormy, we pulled her into the milking stall, gave her some grain, and threaded the end of the lead-rope through the eye-bolt to confine her. Stormy was nervous at Andrea's presence, but what really set her off was when Andrea gave Stormy the prostaglandin shot in the neck. She didn't like that one bit!

She thrashed around a bit, but Don held onto the lead rope grimly, and Stormy really couldn't move much anyway within the confines of the milking stall. Andrea was able to insert the vaginal CIDR device without any problem.

After this, Don unclipped the lead rope from Stormy's halter to release her, and the heifer backed out of the milking stall with alacrity.

Then it was Maggie's turn. Piece o' cake. She barely even twitched at the prostaglandin shot in the neck...

...much less when the CIDR device was inserted. Good ol' Maggie.

Andrea gave us two doses of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), to be administered to both animals on Day Seven after the prostaglandin shots. We had to make sure these shots were given at exactly the same time of evening as the first shots.

To this end, we made sure to continue giving Stormy another calming week of milking-stall practice, which she did without a problem. However when it came time to give Stormy the GnRH shot in the neck, she thrashed around and bend the needle before the GnRH could be administered. Fortunately we had spare needles (and even more fortunately, knew exactly where they were), so we swapped needles and were able to administer the shot successfully. I also pulled out the CIDR device, which was easy.

Maggie, as before, barely noticed the shot or the removal of the CIDR device.

Now the stage was set for the actual breeding itself. Andrea actually had to come out at two separate times because of the slight difference in estrus cycles between cows and heifers. This added to the cost of the breeding since the most expensive component was the per-mileage travel costs, but oh well.

For breeding Stormy, Andrea had to come over after dark (about 7:30-ish). Since the barn light doesn't shine very well into the livestock side of the gate, much less in the milking stall where Andrea needed to see, Don rigged up a portable halogen shop light and aimed it at the opposite wall, so it would reflect back and provide Andrea with light without blinding her.

Andrea had a number of different straws of semen from which we could choose, stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen. This is the vat.

Inside the vat are holders at the end of rods which hold the straws of frozen semen.

Andrea stocks a variety of beef and dairy breed options.

She required warm water (101F) to thaw the semen before loading it into the insemination gun.

Since this is Stormy's first calf and we wanted to avoid any birthing difficulties, we opted to breed her to a smaller breed. We also wanted her to have a beefy calf we could eventually put in the freezer. Of the available semen Andrea had in stock, we opted for a smaller lowline Angus to breed to Stormy. We also opted not to select the gender of the calf.

Prepping the straw and all the necessary accouterments for the actual breeding took about ten minutes. Don was holding onto Stormy in the stall, who had long since finished her grain and was getting restive. But finally Andrea came in with the straw, ready to breed Stormy.

Sorry if the next bit gets somewhat graphic.

The first thing Andrea did was to don a shoulder-length disposal plastic glove and insert her arm waaaay up Stormy's rectum, feeling around the various organs through the rectal wall. Apparently this technique is used to immobilize the cervix through the rectum. When this was accomplished, Andrea took the insemination gun (pre-loaded with the semen) and inserted it into Stormy's vaginal opening. She had to guide the gun through the vaginal canal into the cervix, which she did by rectal palpation and manipulation through the reproductive tract.

It's hard to se what's going on in the photo below, but the large light-colored thingy at top is Andrea's gloved left arm deep inside Stormy's rectum. Her gloved right hand is guiding the insemination gun up the vaginal tract toward the cervix.

I expected Stormy to be having a hissy fit at this indignity, but in fact she was very calm. Andrea explained that's why this narrow window of a cow's estrus cycle – when they are most receptive to fertilization – is called "standing heat." Cows literally stand still during the breeding process, whether natural or artificial.

This process was actually accomplished fairly quickly. Andrea clearly knew what she was going and got the task done confidently and efficiently. As soon as she was finished, she withdrew her arm as well as the insemination gun, Don unclipped Stormy's halter to release her, and the heifer backed out of the milking stall. Voilà.

That was all Andrea could do that evening. Despite Andrea's competence, Don and I were wiped by the time we staggered back to the house. "Yup, a little shot of whiskey, I think," said Don, one of the very rare times in the last twenty years he's drank anything. He mixed a finger of whiskey with some soda and settled in for the night.

Early the next morning (around 8:30 am), Andrea repeated the process with Maggie. As predicted, this was easier, in part due to Maggie's calmer nature and in part because we knew not to confine Maggie to the milking stall until Andrea had finished prepping the semen and loading the insemination gun.

For Maggie, we chose to breed her to a polled A2/A2 New Zealand bull named Ardachie Zigzag. We also opted to select the gender and chose a heifer. This costs a bit more, but almost guarantees the results.

While shoulder-deep in Maggie's rectal tract, Andrea had a bit of trouble getting the tip of the insemination gun into Maggie's cervix (something having to do with the boniness of Jerseys in general), but at last she succeeded. She did say that should Maggie's breeding not "take," she would come out and re-breed her without any additional cost.

Lucy: "What are you doing to my mom?

Stormy: "What are you doing to my mom?"

And that was that. Stormy was bred on the evening of Sept. 9, and Maggie on the morning of Sept. 10. Both should calve around June 15 of next year.

Despite the hassle of training Stormy and the cost of the breeding, we're very satisfied with the precision and specificity of artificial insemination, particularly since we no longer have the space, infrastructure, interest, or need to keep a bull.

Maggie's calves will be sold as milkers as they get older, and Stormy's calves will go in the freezer when the time comes. In this manner, we will be set for dairy and beef for the foreseeable future.

Milking: The daily schedule

Ever since Maggie's latest calf was born on June 18 (we named the calf Lucy, by the way), milking was a priority.

This goal was far, far easier than last year's rodeo, for two reasons: One, we already had the milking infrastructure in place (calf pen, milking stall, etc.). And two, Maggie is already trained to milk. Picking the morning routine back up was a piece o' cake compared to last year.

It was muscle memory for me as well. I haven't milked since February 26 (before Older Daughter and I went to Italy to visit Younger Daughter), so I had to remember the basic steps and not forget anything. In this respect, muscle memory played a large part.

So join me in my morning routine. This time of year, I'm in the barn sometime between 5 and 6 am.

This is the milking equipment I take out to the barn. On the left is the milk bucket into which I actually squirt the milk. In the center is the holding bucket, into which I routinely dump the fresh milk as I progress. (I'm a big fan of the two-bucket milking system. This way if Maggie kicks over the milk bucket, I haven't lost the entire morning's output.) Notice the black line marked on the center holding bucket; this delineates one gallon. On the right is just a small bowl which I put a towel and some warm water for washing Maggie's udder.

Here's the bowl with the towel and warm water.

I stack everything together and cover it with a plastic cap before going to the barn.

In the barn, I grab a scoop of grain to put in the feed bucket on the other side of the head gate. Maggie looks forward to this morning treat-slash-bribe. (Never underestimate the power of grain to convince a cow to do something.)

This is the layout of the calf pen and milking stall Don built last year. The main pen is where I sit on a crate to milk. This arrangement has worked superbly.

Maggie is now in the milking stall, eating her grain. On the right is the crate I sit on while milking.

The head gate has an arm that swings closed, which locks in place with a pin tied to a string. Maggie cannot pull her head out until I remove the pin and allow the arm to swing open.

Here's little Lucy, waiting for me to finish up so she can have her breakfast.

On the shelf in the main pen, I keep a bucket of sawdust (on the left) for the times Maggie urinates in the milking stall (it absorbs the liquid almost instantly), and the crate on which I sit. On top the crate is the leg-tie I use to secure one of Maggie's back legs.

I don't care how well-trained a cow is; it's imperative to tie the near leg to a post so she won't kick. Maggie doesn't kick from viciousness; she might kick if a fly is annoying her or if she's getting impatient. Regardless of the cause, I don't need a black eye from getting kicked by a cow. (Ask me how I know.)

Once Maggie is confined, I wash the udder and teats with the warm water. Most of the time her udder is fairly clean, but washing will also remove bits of straw, etc.

After this, I milk. For obvious reasons, it's hard to take photos as I milk, but it actually goes rather rapidly. I usually just milk out a gallon, no more, so there is plenty left over for the baby. Not counting the lead-up and clean-up afterward, the actual milking itself usually takes only fifteen minutes or less.

Interestingly, we had something of a glitch in the otherwise smooth milking season; namely, Maggie's yearling heifer calf Stormy. This young lady is half Angus and is actually slightly bigger than her mother at this point ... but she's still a baby at heart, and quickly learned Maggie has milk again. The thing about Jerseys is they're a soft touch when it comes to milk – we call them the Universal Donors – and they seldom turn away any bovine who wants access.

A couple of mornings in a row, Maggie had been draiued dry by this greedy girl, and I didn't want to take any milk for myself lest Lucy not get any. After some discussion, Don and I started closing Maggie into the barn by herself at night, and locking Stormy (and Romeo, our young steer) outside.

This makes for much easier milking in the morning since I can leave the milking stall gates open for extra elbow room and not be bothered by other animals. After I finish milking Maggie, I release Lucy.

I cover the milk and put it out of the way, then putter around the barn, cleaning up, while the calf gets her breakfast. This way she's not competing with Stormy.

I open the barn doors, and naturally Stormy dives for her mama.

I'm not too worried about Stormy's milk consumption. I suspect it's just a phase. Maggie is producing plenty at the moment, the calf is getting all she needs, and Maggie is getting plenty to eat. In fact, for the last two mornings, Stormy didn't go for the udder at all. I suspect her sudden interest in nursing might be a "regression" situation, similar to how a human toddler suddenly wants to breastfeed again when a new sibling is born. We'll see how this pans out.

When I've finished cleaning the barn...

...I open the gate to the pasture to release the animals, then I'm free to return to the house.

Back in the kitchen, I clean the milk bucket and the bowl with the udder cloth in it (the cloth goes in the laundry basket), and upend them to dry. Then I fit a small strainer over the gallon-sized jugs I use for holding the milk, line the strainer with a cloth, and pour the milk from the holding bucket through the cloth to strain the milk.

I cap the milk, date it, and store it in the dairy fridge (a dedicated beverage refrigerator) set at 35F.

Then I clean the holding bucket and upend it to dry with the others.

The last thing I do is put the straining cloth in some water and boil it to sterilize it.

This all sounds like it takes hours, but honestly from the time I leave the house to go to the barn to the time I finish straining the milk and cleaning the buckets is usually just half an hour or so.

So that's my morning routine.

Maggie has popped at last!

Our Jersey cow Maggie was officially due last Friday. Each and every morning, armed with my camera, I carefully checked her before releasing the cows from the corral. And each and every morning ... zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Yesterday morning, Don and I were getting ready to do a fencing project. I started walking across the yard and, as always, glanced up to gauge Maggie's posture (cows adopt a sort of hunched position when in labor). She looked like she was peacefully grazing ... except she had a long strand hanging from her backside.

I turned and walked back into the house. "Change of plan," I announced. "Let's go get Maggie's calf instead." The little sneak had managed to conceal her early labor when I released her and the other animals from the corral into the pasture, and then had the audacity to have her calf without my being able to watch.

Dragging the gorilla cart, Don, Younger Daughter, and I all trooped up into the pasture to fetch Maggie and her newborn back into the corral.

The calf had just been dropped and was still flat on its side, and very wet with the birth fluids.

Loading the calf was a three-person effort: One person to hold the cart steady in its "dump truck" position, and two people to shove and push the slippery-wet calf into the cart. (By the time we were finished, both Younger Daughter and I were soaked with placental fluids and would require a full-body change of clothes and a shower.)

After the calf was in the cart, I pulled while Don kept the calf from trying to climb to its feet, and Younger Daughter shooed the other animals from following us out the gate. It was a steep downhill drop from the pasture to the driveway, then level-flat as we pushed/pulled the cart around to the back of the barn into the corral. Maggie trotted on our heels, agitated but not aggressive. (Thank God for sweet Jersey cow dispositions!)

Once in the corral, we gently dumped the calf out of the cart to the ground, and let Maggie continue licking her baby dry.

Meanwhile the other animals had come around through the gate to see the new calf. This is Stormy, the calf's older sister, meeting the newcomer.

And the baby is a girl! Back when we had Maggie bred by AI (artificial insemination), the breeder was actually able to select for a heifer for a slight increase in price. She emphasized the gender was not guaranteed, but of all the times she's selected for one or the other gender, she's been successful. We'll have to let her know she succeeded again.

This is our first purebred Jersey calf, so we're pretty jazzed. In years past, all our calves were either purebred Dexter, Jersey/Dexter crosses, or Jersey/Angus crosses.

Maggie is an experienced mama now, so we had no concerns about her maternal care. However we wanted to make sure the calf was nursing as soon as possible to get colostrum.

Meanwhile, she had a long strand of mucous hanging from her backside that was dragging on the ground and tangling around her legs. I took a pair of scissors and snipped off a length.

It took the baby some time to get to her feet. She didn't seem in any hurry.

We left the animals to calm down a bit and let nature take its course. An hour or so later, we checked and saw the calf was standing, though very unsteadily, and blundering around trying to find a teat.

She tried the usual suspects: Maggie's armpit, her sister's leg, the steer's nose, that kind of thing. (It takes a calf a while to figure out where the udder is located ... and on what animal.) The calf didn't quite have her footing, either. At one point, trying to master the three-inch lip on the threshold of the barn door, she went splat.

"What just happened?"

Maggie wasn't much help during this process because she was swishing around in agitation as she labored to pass the placenta.

I went to fill up the feed bins with hay, since the animals were confined to the corral, and by the time I was finished, Maggie had passed the placenta.

Then, in true bovine fashion, she proceeded to (try to) eat it. This is normal behavior for cows, and doubtless is an instinctive technique meant to prevent drawing in predators. Maggie slurped and chewed and chewed and slurped, but wasn't making much progress.

After about fifteen minutes, I grabbed a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork, and scooped up the placenta. Maggie seemed vastly relieved to be excused from this duty.

I decided to run the placenta down to the county dumpsters (located a few miles away) rather than trying to bury it somewhere. I invited Younger Daughter to come with me, and she went to put on some shoes and use the bathroom before departing.

"I'm going to go load the placenta into the car," I called to her through the bathroom door.

"That is SUCH  weird sentence to hear," she shouted back.

Toward evening, Younger Daughter and I went to check on the animals and saw both mother and baby were resting, doubtless exhausted from their ordeal.

I was mildly concerned because I had not yet seen the baby successfully nurse, and I rummaged around in our supplies for a rubber teat in case I needed to milk out some of the colostrum and bottle-feed the baby. The calf was still blundering around investigating armpits and legs without locating the correct spot.

So YD and I collaborated to get her to feed. At a point when she was kinda in the right neighborhood of the udder, YD pushed the calf gently from behind while I guided her mouth toward the teat. Aha! Success!

With a belly full of warm colostrum, within an hour she began doing the cute little skippy-hops of a healthy calf as she tried out her legs.

"Hi Mom! Whatcha doing?"

Later she settled in for the night among her new herd-mates.

So all is right in our little bovine world.