Rita

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Rita was listed as a jersey/guernsey cross at $800. When Rachel called about her, we found out she'd been recently bred to a guernsey bull, was due to calf in July, in milk, 5 years old, halter-trained and able to be led. When Rachel asked how much milk they were getting, the woman said 'a little under a gallon'. We decided to go out and look at her the following day as she was out in Robbins and only 20 minutes away from us. The last cows we'd looked at were dry, so this was at least something. After drinking the raw milk for a while, we really couldn't go back to store-bought, and we definitely wanted a cow that was in milk.

Rachel called for directions the next day. This time the woman said that maybe there was some confusion, but that she was getting up to a gallon and a half at each milking. That's a big difference from 1 to 3 gallons a day. But she seemed very shifty on the phone about it. Low-producing milk cows are apparently hard to sell.

Rita was out grazing with a few other cows on a large flat waterlogged pasture surrounded by electric fencing. She was led in to their unfinished barn and given some grain to occupy her while we looked her over.

She's a beautiful animal, in good condition, but not overly friendly. Her teats were small and close together. Rachel noticed they felt rough and chapped. I felt around her udder, or 'bag', as they call it, and it was very hard for me to believe there was any milk in there at all let alone 1 1/2 gallons. It was either a perfect udder attachment with all the milk up high, or we were being told a story about her production.

Rita's owner seemed frank about everything except the milk. She got tense with long pauses any time we asked about Rita's production. I asked to try some of the milk, and the woman again paused for a long while, looking at us . . . and I started thinking to myself . . . is there even any milk around to taste? Is she racking her brain to think where she can come up with some milk for us? But she did end up saying sure and inviting us inside to try some of Rita's milk. Rachel later thought it might just have been a fear of an inspector or something and all the ridiculous laws surrounding raw milk [in Tennessee it's illegal to sell it, trade it, or even give it away].

Rita's milk had a little guernsey yellow to it and the flavor was okay but not as good as the cow we'd learned to milk on. Rachel thought there was a slight 'off' flavor - this could have been the cheap bulk cattle feed she was on, or maybe the tubing in the milk machine wasn't perfectly clean. Rachel and I walked outside to discuss it for a while. We'd also noticed after Rita'd been led back out to pasture she licked obsessively at the mineral tub - so something was definitely lacking in her diet.

Our biggest concerns were the small chapped teats and questionable milk production. We decided to ask if we could come back at 5 for her evening milking - it would be good to see Rita's routine, and it might clear up some concerns on the milk issue. We also had a couple hours to kill so we drove up to the library in Oneida to research chapped teats to see if it's reversible.

There seemed to be a lot of evidence online that machine-milking can lead to chapped teats. Especially if the vacuum setting is too high. The owner of Rita had always had goats and her machine was for milking goats. She'd had to retrofit it with weights to get it to work for milking Rita. So maybe since goats are easier to milk than cows she turned the vacuum setting way up to get it to work for Rita.

It did seem like the condition was for the most part reversible.

It was dusk when we got back. Rita's owner invited us in and showed us how she makes Rita's udder wash - she put about 1/4 cup of Chlorox bleach in a quart jar, then added water to mostly fill the jar. Rachel has gotten chemical burns from bleach before and thought this proportion for an udder wash was way over the top - Rachel had read you usually do only a teaspoon of bleach to a gallon of water - not a 1/4 cup to a quart. This constant burning with bleach might also be contributing to the chapped teats.

Her husband had to go out and lead Rita in from the pasture for her milking - and Rita threw a small fit jerking her head back to avoid going into the barn to be milked. So she was in no desperate hurry to be milked - again, maybe because there wasn't much. But she did want her grain.

They dumped her grain in front of her, hooked up the milk-machine, and it was all over in less than 10 minutes. We definitely saw milking flowing good through the tubes - so she had milk. I highly doubted 1 1/2 gallons, but maybe half that.

The milking was very sort of 'get it over with'. There was no grooming, little communication - only dunking each teat in the bleach solution. The machine-milking seemed like a cold medical procedure - without the 'hands-on' interaction of hand-milking. It also fit in strangely in the dark half-finished barn with no power and only a flashlight to see with.

Rita didn't kick or fuss, and at the end nosed her owner a little, the husband, so it seemed maybe she might be friendly, but possibly didn't get enough attention. They'd put in some blood-work on Rita to see if she had set, and we told her that as soon as they hear back from the vet that she is indeed bred we'll come out and pay for her and pick her up. We never bothered negotiating over the price - $800 is cheap for a dairy cow.
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