Dairy Work Experience

When the heifer that had mastitis was checked on today, it was noticed that the teat and the udder on the infected teat side were very hard when compared to the other side. When the teat was massaged to remove any fluid, very little emerged and blood began to appear. As I said in my last post this means that the teat will almost definitely be unable to be used in terms of milking and it is now necessary to try as much as possible to limit the risk of the mastitis spreading to the other teats. If this were to be the case, the heifer would loose her value as a milking cow as less teats could be used and therefore less milk produced.

When calving today I asked the farmer about twins in cattle. Interestingly, which I had not known, if a cow has twins, and one is female and one is male, the female will be useless in terms of both going into calf and milking. This is because the female has male hormones, and this will occur in most if not all cases with cattle and is something that I would now like to know more about in terms of why this happens and how.

A cow that I helped to deliver a bull calf this morning was milked today, but, it is essential that the milk does not get passed through the system with the rest of the milk and is instead milked into a separate container. This is due to the fact that the milk contains high levels of colostrum to help make the calf strong and healthy but is not required for humans. Therefore the milk is collected and is used to raise the calf once it is separated from the cow so that the calf can make use of the colostrum in the milk. generally the cow will be able to be milked for human consumption after the fourth milking after the birth to ensure that these high levels of colostrum have passed from her system.