Hooray for Shyla, Hooray for raw milk!

Shyla, the jersey cow, calved on April 1st.  It was her first calf and she is our first milk cow.  It has been an interesting few months around here for all of us novices.  The calf, a boy, is named Taffy.

We are big believers in the benefits of drinking raw milk.  While purely anecdotal evidence, raw milk has done wonders for my back.  I have had problems with my sciatic nerve and for a while I was visiting the chiropractor three times a week.  I couldn't sit and I had trouble walking, I was in constant pain.  The chiropractor was helpful, over the period of a couple of months, she was able to get everything adjusted enough that the pain was no longer unbearable and I could function well enough.  The cost of the visits was too much for us, and so, despite her advice to the contrary, I stopped going.  I did ok for quite a while, but I had a flare up.  I was having trouble walking again and knew that I was going to have to do something.  I was in the middle of reading a book by Ron Schmid called The Untold Story of Milk  http://www.newtrendspublishing.com/USOMilk/index.html and there was some information in there about the benefits of raw milk for nerve damage, etc.  We didn't have the $120.00/week for the chiropractor again, so I decided to try the milk diet that Mr. Schmid suggested.  For three weeks I had nothing but raw milk.  I drank nearly a gallon a day, every day, and that was it.  The first few days were tough, but after about three days I felt incredible.  After about a week my back was not bothering me hardly at all.  My back has never fully recovered, I had lost sensation in my lower leg about 2 years ago and that has never returned.  But whenever my back starts bothering me, I reach for the raw milk first.

We are very fortunate to have raw milk available here in California - for now anyway.  Organic Pastures has  great raw milk and we have gone out of our way to buy it (it is not always easy to find).  But when we moved over here to my parent's place, my mom offered to buy a milk cow if we would milk her.  She has a pig that suffered a back injury as well.  Miss Piggy, my mom's first pig, sat on her and damaged her back.  The vet said we should put her down, but my mom wanted to give her a chance.  We gave her steroids for a few days and then put her on a diet of raw milk, oats, and lots of green vegetables.  Penny (the pig) has made a remarkable recovery, she will not ever be breedable, but she does have a good quality of life and is walking and functioning.  But she does go through a lot of raw milk and it gets really expensive at $13.00/gallon.  So Shyla was brought on board.

My mom called me at 6:00 in the morning on April 1st to let me know that Shyla's calf had been born.  Bryan said she would wait until I got out there to tell me "April Fools", but she didn't - there really was a calf there.  Taffy took a while to get up and then when he finally did, Shyla would have nothing to do with feeding him.  She was full of milk and her udder was tender, she didn't want him anywhere near there.  She was a great mom, cleaning him up and staying right there with him, but she wouldn't let him eat.  We tied her up and tried to get him to nurse, that didn't work either.  Eventually we milked her into a bottle and bottle fed him.  She didn't want to have anything to do with us touching her udder either, but we finally put her in the squeeze chute and were able to get her milked.  A couple days of bottle feeding and the calf had had enough, he was strong enough to fight for his dinner and he stuck with it until she would let him nurse.

Bryan and I have been sharing milking duty.  Shyla finally reconciled herself to the fact that she was going to be milked and she has gotten pretty good about standing still.  Bryan and I have been unpleasantly surprised by how much work milking a cow is.  We have nothing but respect for old time farmers who hand milk multiple cows a day.  Most milkings we would only get three or four quarts, but our hands and arms would be sore when we got finished.  Each milking would take us about an hour and Shyla's patience was sorely tested by having to stand still that long.  A few weeks of that and we ordered a milking machine.

We have been milking by machine for about three weeks now - it has been great!  It doesn't save much time, we have traded milking time for cleaning time.  But Shyla is happy about being milked out in less than ten minutes and our hands are feeling much better.  Production has increased, we get about three gallons a day and the calf gets his share.  We are loving our raw milk and the other day when she gave me nearly three gallons in one milking I was loving that crazy machine! 

http://www.realmilk.com/