Cow Boy

Just got a new cow in today. Last night actually. This one, unlike our Dexters (An old Irish breed, small and dual purpose: milk and meat.) is a Jersey who's sole existence in life as far human relations go, is to provide milk.

Lots and lots of milk.

Gallons of the stuff.

Daily.

She looks like a bone frame covered in skin attacked to a giant bag of milk.

The problem of course is they forgot to install an efficient faucet on that bag. I suspect it's an English design thing. There are four nozzles or, and here I blush: teats, that one is supposed to yank on with a sort of top-down squeezing motion. This isn't as easy as it sounds, and its all complicated by the fact that the boney frame holding the sack keeps moving about. She doesn't seem to be doing it with malice, but she does seem to be incredibly adept at either kicking the bucket over just as you finally get almost enough milk to transfer to the larger pail or putting her hoof down on your foot.

When I say your foot, I don't mean my foot. I actually refer to my wife's foot. But I was right there, psychically sharing the pain with her- which according to my wife isn't quite the same as actually sharing the pain.

We got her cheap from a dairy over in Washington. (The cow, not my wife. I got her (wife) from California a lot of years ago.) Seems she's a very good producer (cow), but doesn't work on a milking machine and I think the dairy owner was getting a little tired of having to hand milk her. I can't blame her because I'm already tired of it and that's only from watching my wife do all the work.

We've kept her in the corral so far, separated from our other cows, to let her get used to the new location and the strange hands groping at her (blush) teats. (Third base on the first date.) This hasn't stopped our bull, Zeus, from trying to find a way into the corral to check out his new harem member.

It's pretty funny, because being a short legged Dexter bull, it's kind of like watching a macho Pekingese chatting up an Irish wolf hound. He's out there, pushing at the fence and bellowing out the bullish equivalents of "What's your sign?" and "Come here often?" And no doubt trying to figure out how to get her to a convenient ditch to make his amorous attempts a little easier on his tiny legs.

This is all going to take a few adjustments for us all.