Cow Lost her Calf | Now Hoping for Milk

All right, first day milking Flossie without her calf. Bless her heart. We got all the milk and stuff. We got all the chidlers. Come, let's go! She's going strong right there. Doesn't look too stressed out. Hopefully she's got some colostrum. I think she's still looking for her baby. We got really fortunate and she's really hardy because my cow guy says you You know, that's some bad luck. I mean, it can happen to any cow, but for her to be able to deliver that without help, without dying— it was the placenta came first, so the calf had no chance. Good job, Flossie. Proud of you, honey. It's gonna be a little tricky because Flossie's used to going. Good job, good job, Jonah. Get her in this routine. Not you, Phil. Not you.

You have to lift it way up high because it's warm.

Wow, she's letting Phyllis steal. Okay, I didn't think that would happen, so Let's get a 50-foot net. Is that one? And we gotta, we gotta get Phyllis out of here. We need two stanchions, don't we?

We can put her in there with the cows and then bring her back in.

That's harder. They don't come back in after being in that green grass. She grabs it every time. Flossie! Well, Flossie, that's nice of you. I thought Flossie's dominance would just roar and this would not happen, but oh well. One idea, long term, guys, is is what if we did another stanchion and then maybe we could milk at the same time?

But let's—

any other ideas besides putting this net up?

Uh, we could— if she has a collar, we could get a leash and there's a T-post right there.

That's not a terrible idea.

And then there's poles on this side.

We have this rope halter. I don't know if we'll get her now that she's not after the alfalfa. Give her a scoop We could maybe just tie it to her collar. All right, we'll try it. Look who's behaving. A little tiny rope. Good idea, my man. Lily, where are you at? Well, maybe I should just do this one. She's— there's not much in there. Just colostrum, and there's not much. I'm hoping there's gonna be a downpour in a couple of days. So look, we got, we got a little more than we got yesterday right off the bat. So I think I'm actually— this is good colostrum. It's not too, too much. I'll mix it with Phyllis's milk, and that's what we'll make our yogurt with. Today that'll be a good gut boost. I think you can do colostrum in the yogurt. Oh, that's the beautiful one before. But if not, the worst case, it'll just be drinking milk.

I'm not drinking.

Not a big fan of colostrum?

I hate it.

Why?

Tastes salty.

Yeah. All right, we're done with her, but she's still got a little bit left. Josh said to give her her full ration. Josh, by the way, from Our Father's Farm in Virginia is where we got these guys, and he's kind of a— well, he is a bit of a coach to me. So we're gonna let her have her full ration. That'll help induce her milk. That alfalfa. Well, see, I would hug you if I thought you would enjoy that. So appreciative of you. At first I was thinking, I don't know, maybe this was a genetic thing, maybe it was her fault, but Uh, she's actually a heroess. She's like a champ. Hardy to do that herself and to survive herself. And buddy, she struggled pushing that cow, didn't she? All right, let's go. Come on, let's go. That was actually a really good idea with the leash because we can herd her and she stays there. I was doubtful at first, but I let him go about it, and it turns out the boy's idea was better than mine. And look, I wonder if we had another pan of alfalfa, if she could have been eating alfalfa and we could have just milked her right there on a leash. No stanchion needed, because we could put a stanchion here, but it would, it would cut the flow of them being able to come in and out of the shade shelter. Where are you two going? All right. Oh, oh, all right. Hey, come back, come back, sir. Come back here, come back. You know the drill. Come on. That leash is kind of handy directing her a little bit. Come here. There you go. Wow. Hey, that leash, man, game changer in many ways. We will bring out a better leash, but I think we're on to something. I think she's largely moved on. I saw her roaming a little bit a little earlier. Perhaps she was looking for her calf, but she's moved on. It's amazing how quick they just keep on going.

I can feed them by hand.

I got the gas and the brake. You got the steering wheel. All right, good job. I already filled one jar here. Let's, uh, show you my smooth recipe for yogurt. We're gonna heat it up to 110— no, 100— shoot, I forget. I think it's 110, enough to warm it up nicely but not too much to take away the rawness. This would make 1.5, so we're gonna add some of our already cold milk that we have reserved to this, and then add a whole nother half gallon to make 2 gallons of milk. And then add this one. Now, a third of a cup for every half a gallon, so that would be 2/3, that'd be 1 cup and 1/3. Now, I like to add the store-bought yogurt just for a starter, just to have some consistency. We've used it all, so I'm gonna use our old yogurt, and we're gonna hope for the best. There's probably too many variables here. The colostrum, some cold milk. It was kind of older, fresh milk. Maybe this is kind of a gamble. We'll see. Now I'm gonna whisk that in and get this to 110 degrees. Snowball kicked mom's butt last night. See how she's doing. Hey, Snowball kick your butt last night? Yeah. You feeling better?

Yeah, I slept like a couple hours.

Good.

Till Teddy was at my door barking.

Oh, Teddy, you naughty boy. Question: I got a little bit of colostrum. I just wanted to mix it in with milk for the yogurt. Is that okay?

Okay. Did you filter it?

Were you able to filter it?

Yes, that's fine.

Okay.

Um, how's Flossie doing?

She's doing great. She doesn't have any grazing, eating alfalfa, no discharge.

Because that was— well, I think that— I'm pretty sure her placenta, everything came out with it. So that was just my one thought.

She's a hearty beast.

She is. She's an amazing cow.

I got it to 110 degrees. That was kind of a great equalizer. You could put cold milk in there, warm milk, doesn't matter, gets it all the same. Put the starter in, and then now I'm just getting a little bit off the top so that I can pour this jug. Let's put the, uh, yogurt in the dehydrator. Not because we're dehydrating them, but we're going to keep them at 105. It's 9 o'clock now. We could probably do it until 9 o'clock at night. That'd be a good 12 hours. That wouldn't be too sour, but it would be a good ferment. This is Y for yogurt. That's my symbol for yogurt. This is where I'm going to be headed about 9 o'clock to remind me to get it out of the dehydrator. All right, that's good. We happen to have some yogurt left. Let me show you how smooth. Oh my, not one dimple. Now, one thing that we did, we did cheat a little bit. It was still a little, a hair clumpy. We took an immersion blender And all that made a little runnier. It did make it smoother, but it's tart but not too tart. It's good. I actually just went to town, came back, checking on my teeth. I am getting implants, but it looks like we have to wait another 2 months for my jaw to heal.

Said everything's looking really good, but you don't have enough hard bone. He said it still looks like a soft bone according to the x-ray.

Yeah.

The x-ray jab.

You know, you look really good.

Thanks. I'm really tired.

That piece of chocolate there on your lip. You do look good for the, uh, you don't, you look a lot better than what you're telling me you feel.

I feel so bad, y'all. I just, uh, I'm not sleeping at night. I'm just not getting good restful sleep. Like, I'm getting very restless sleep.

Like—

is that what you call it? Restless?

Yeah.

Like where I move a lot and I can't— like, I was telling my friend, I was like, I feel like I'm laying on a rock.

Yeah.

I just can't get comfortable. I have lots of pillows.

Maybe tonight's good.

I was really hot last night. It's like our weather. I'm really angry at the weather right now.

But we turned off the wood boiler and now turned on the AC.

So it's November— what is today? November 11th. Happy Veterans Day, and it is so hot outside. I was wearing pants and I was burning up. I was like, I wore the wrong thing to town.

Arun's here. Indian Wednesday coming up. I'm getting the beautiful warm pizza going for lunch. We batch made a bunch of these crusts. Now all we got to do is put the toppings on. I heated it up a little bit so it wouldn't be soggy. Put the toppings on and go for it. All right, I got my baby's mama, a pizza coming out soon. This is a very interesting topping— purple. What are you putting on that chicken, Arun?

So this actually is a purple onion.

Oh, it's our purple onion.

Yeah, and, uh, from the garden. And ginger and garlic here. It's kind of like a breading.

Okay, cool.

So I mean, is this is like gonna make a yellow cumin? It's a turmeric.

Oh, turmeric. Okay.

And now please cut it further.

That's her pizza. Almost. And now it's done. Beck, here you go, Beck.

Thank you, darling.

You're welcome. Just finished editing. Got a little bit before supper. Gonna set up some lights for our shoot for our Motivational. You can farm, shoot. Oh my gosh, now you are soaking wet.

I am.

So this is your tree house?

Yeah.

You've got a bucket rigged up to pull up. Yeah, man, this is cool. Okay, this is cool. You, you load— you put something in the bucket and then you can bring it up with that string. Look at that.

It's more of a tree couch than a tree house.

Okay, and you've got a ladder going up the Trunk, man. I like it, guys. Good job.

The tree couch.

You got you a tree couch?

Yeah.

Nice. Shall I go for it?

Oh, be careful. I don't trust them on those.

What, are you afraid of the old man? Afraid the old man can't? It's too heavy. Here we go. All right. Okay, you guys be careful up here. Man, that's cool.

You can even dance up here.

Oh boy. All right, okay, you guys be careful. Let's just leave those guys to their fun. A mic? What's the mic doing out here in the, in the field?

Must have been stuck in Sally and fell out.

Remember how we rented this cinematic camera for our little micro master class? And remember how We didn't realize it took a different memory card. We went to Best Buy, that was wrong. And we ordered something on Amazon.

And it was wrong.

It came today. And it was wrong.

I saw on the package, it said— I saw the memory card, I was like, oh, that's it. Open it and then I'm like, oh.

It's not it. So finally I text a friend who's got one of these cameras. What does this use? And uh— We got it. Thankfully, somehow it's able to come tomorrow, Amazon Prime. But anyway, I've been watching some videos on how to set up lights, so Jenna, let's get our lights set up. All right, well, that's the best we could do. We got— it's hard, you can't— well, you can kind of see it through there. Jenna's lit up nicely. We got a side light, we got the key light, we've even got a backlight to highlight him. I think I need more backdrop lights though. That little light I tried to hang there, it's kind of lame, it's not really doing it. Put that lamp back out again just so maybe we could see some potential. I'm kind of thinking if we could get some lantern-like stuff, maybe battery powered or plug-in, that would go more with the barn theme. That might make more sense. Come stand in, Jonah. That's, I guess, kind of what it's going to look like. See if we had more lamps or lanterns throughout, that might look good. Maybe we need to move the coop. And this is hard. Here, come just hold that across. That probably needs to be a lot closer since there's such little bulbs. We'll move those boards. We might be getting a hair better bringing those lights closer. Yeah, I think we'll bring— let's bring them even closer. Well, shoot, no, it won't matter because there's only so much in frame here. Yeah, that's just right, Jonah. Okay, it looks super washed out through this, but it looks pretty good through the, through the lens. I do like those lamps in the back. Let's see if we can find something. I'm kind of starting to think maybe I should do this outside, you know. I'm sitting up in there because it's cooler But what if I had a designated time at like golden hour in the evening? I don't have to worry about all these lights and we can be out on farm. I mean, that sunset light is pretty epic right there. Of course, it's supposed to rain all week. This is kind of a nice peaceful spot right here, so maybe if this weather holds out, we'll just do this bit outside. Look at this, what Arun came up with. Everybody looks forward to Indian Wednesday. Chicken, rice.

This is leftover rice, so that's how kids can eat nicely.

Nice.

So we won't waste any. And the saraita.

Cool. How is it, my man? Is it good? Everybody likes it? We got a kids table. We got an adult table. How is it, Rebecca?

It's great.

Oh good. What about it, Grandma? Oh, wonderful.

Okay.