A Day in the Life of Dairy Cows, and Four More to Go...

Well, today was my official start day at Langhill Farm. I woke up at 6:30am this morning (ouch, first time I have had to wake up before 9am since I arrived in Edinburgh). I caught the bus to Langhill Farm, well, actually had to stop at Bristol Roundabout and walk about 1/2 mile down the road to the farm entrance. When I arrived, I was greeted by the farm manager Lawrence, who was very nice. I met Wilson and Steven and some other guy. This other guy's Scottish accent was very thick and he mumbled a lot, so when he did introduce himself, I did not understand one word that came out his mouth.

Unfortunately, right now there is no calving going on. Langhill's breeding season does not start until September, so all I will be doing is dealing with milking the cows. The cows are milked once in the morning and once in the evening. The AM milking takes place at 6am, so I miss that one. This means there is nothing to do in the meantime. There was a girl at the farm as well getting experience. She is a native and is 16 yrs old and is getting experience for when she applies. Apparently she took an exam to apply for vet school here and she says that you really have only one chance to take it and if you score poorly, you need to think about another career. That's unfortunate! Hopefully she will do good on that test.

Since there was not a whole lot to do before the milking (at 3pm), we were driven around to all of the different fields that Langhill has, which essentially the University of Edinburgh owns. Once we were finished with the driving tours, we were taken back to the farm where Kate and I had to do dirty work. We cleaned the milking parlour, which was very dirty with cow feces. Oh well, gotta start somewhere, right? So after about an hour of scrubbing the milking equipment, Steven, Kate and I went out to the field to gather the cows and herd them into the milking parlour. This was very amusing, as we had to halt traffic in order to herd the cows to the parlour. About 10 min is the time frame it took to gather all 240 cows. I was at one end of the road halting traffic, I felt like a construction worker stopping traffic for construction equipment, except I was doing it for 240 cows! It was amazing, the cows are very good and easy to herd. There was a guy on a quad herding the cows towards the street as well.

Once all cows were herded from the main field on onto the farm, we had to get them to the milk parlour. That job was for Mr. Quad. Kate and I went out into another field, where about 10 cows were lying down. Our job was to get these cows with the main herd into the milk parlour. Kate had one that was lying down, and took quite an effort to get her to budge. Clapping loud and yelling seems to get them to move faster. Once they were in the milking parlour, they were fed and then transferred into the milking station. This is where it got VERY dirty.

So the guy with no name (hopefully I will find out tomorrow) told us to get our wet suits on. That right there let me know that this was going to get very dirty. So we changed into the wet gear and walked into the milking station. We entered this pit, about 4 feet below the cows. There were 28 stations, 14 on each side where 14 cows were milked at a time. The first load came in and the guy showed us how to attach the milking clusters, which seemed pretty easy. After watching several, I went ahead and began attaching the clusters to the utters of the cows. It was tricky at first because you have to make sure you don't let the vacuum leak, if you do, the cluster will just fall off. However, when you get all four clusters attached to the utter, it is pretty impressive how fast the milk flows through the line. These clusters automatically release when the milk yield begins to decline, which signals that the cow is finished milking. The cows are automatically being fed while the milking goes on. After the cluster releases automatically, you then have to spray the teats with an iodine solution to prevent infection.

Oh, and they are identified with these collars they wear around their necks. That way, if one has mastitis, it will let you know on the machine. The ones that have mastitis, you have to soak the cluster in a special solution for 10 minutes after the milking has been done on that particular one. So, through this whole process, I felt like Mike Rowe on "Dirty Jobs". When you are down in this pit, you are completely vulnerable to feces and urine from the cows splashing on the ground and onto you. Very nerve-racking at first. It especially becomes nerve-racking when you are attaching the cluster and you are right below the primary landing zone! I did get splashed on quite a bit, but oh well, part of the job. You definitely can't avoid it! Hopefully I won't get a full stream on top of my head, that would just be terrific now, wouldn't it? Milking took about 2 hours. The guy with no name, was EXTREMELY impressive with his memory and how he could identify almost every cow just by the markings. Each cow is branded with a number on the rear end, he knew just about every cow as the were walking in. I was impressed! Anyway, he had been to Scottsdale before and we chatted a bit about Rawhide and the jeep tours that he went on and stuff. He was quite funny at times as well.

Before I end this, I also forgot to mention a cow that I helped with today. She had been lame on her L hind leg and ended up having an infected horn on that L leg. Steven trimmed back the horn until he hit the pocket of purulent discharge to relieve the pressure. I gave a subcutaneous injection of Excenel right in the rib region. I tented the skin and went to insert the needle into the tissue. Yeah, I have done many subcutaneous injections in dogs and cats, but never cows. I had to exert so much pressure to get the needle to puncture the skin, it was amazing! Well, need to head off to bed now so I can get some sleep and prepare myself for day 2! I was unable to get some good pictures, something about a $800 camera and cow urine/feces just didn't sound good together...I took a few with my cell phone, but not much. I may have more cell phone pictures tomorrow, we'll see. Hope everyone is doing well and I miss you all!

Langhill Dairy Farm