We needed a different family milk cow. Our family had quit milking cows, separating the milk and selling the cream, in 1967. I had built a small, 150-200 head feedlot that was going to take the place of the dairy herd and yet provide us with the cream sales income.
We had dried up and sold the oldest milk cows, they had gone to “The Golden Arches” as one of our farmer friends had put it. We kept one as a family milk cow, but she was a large, old cow, too old to be taught to lead and tether. Her calf nursed her when we didn’t need milk for the house. In the winter months, we bought milk from the grocery store.
When that cow passed on, we tried to teach a purchased beef heifer, an all brown shorthorn cross, to be the milk cow. She was fairly wild and stubborn and kicked fiercely when I tried to milk her after the birth of her first calf. She was a good mother, but would not let her milk down unless her calf was nursing while you were milking on the other side of the cow.
As the calf grew, it was a race between the calf nursing on the back teats and the milker on the front teats, to see who would finish first. One would think that, with two hands milking, it should be the milker finishing first, hands down, so to speak! But the calf nursed and sucked more quickly than the hand milker. It knew about the location of the front teats as well and tried, with the side of its head, to push the milker’s hands away. There was slobber and foam on its face. You didn’t want to get any in the milk pail, so you held it firmly between your knees further towards the front of the cow.
Sometimes without warning, Brownie would kick reaching forward with her back foot, hitting your leg or the milk pail. Either the milk pail was knocked over, or if some milk was still in the pail after the kick, it was often too dirty to use. The barn cats feasted on those days.
Brownie had recently given birth to her second calf. Technically she was no longer a heifer. At the birth of her second calf, she became a cow. Brownie didn’t want to be a milk cow; she wanted her calf running beside her and to be with the other range cows. Even with her calf locked inside the barn, hungry and bawling, she didn’t want to come inside and be stanchioned. I had to put a three-plank wooden corral panel, 12-feet long, beside the open barn door. Then I had to be right behind her as she called for her calf and put her head inside the barn. I shooed or literally shoved her into the barn, closed the door and coaxed her to put her head into the stanchion by having a small pile of grain in the manger in front of it.
It was a laborious, stressful and unpleasant chore to get milk for the house.
We needed a real family milk cow, a small, gentle Jersey or Guernsey cow that we could tether around the yard, lead to the barn or a new tethering spot. We needed an easy milker with enough milk for a calf and, once-a-day or every second day, a gallon of milk for the house.
It was hard to find such a cow in a relatively non-dairy area of east-central Alberta. As well, nearly all dairy farms have large, high-producing Holstein dairy cows. I didn’t want a Holstein cow; I preferred a Jersey.
It was probably early April in 1974. I found an ad in the Vegreville News – Advertiser.
FOR SALE JERSEY–SHORTHORN CROSS 1st CALF HEIFER EASY MILKER, GENTLE, $600.
I phoned. It was a farmer about 15 miles north of Vegreville, in total about 45 miles north of our farm. The heifer had lost her calf at birth. The farmer had been milking her, but didn’t want to keep her.
I got the directions and, after chores and supper just a few days later, I made arrangements to come and have a look at her. We laid the stock racks down on the back of the ’65 Ford pick-up, ready to use. Dale, our son, eight years old at the time, came along.
We found the farm. A friendly, young, hippie-looking farmer met us at the house and took us out to a small, old barn. There were two cows inside—correctly-speaking, they were both heifers—standing in steel stanchions.
The first heifer was small and an unusual colour. She was speckled and spotted, red, white and brindle. She turned her head around in the stanchion to look at us. Her head was small, but it looked almost too long. It was dished like a Jersey, and flat on top between two crooked stub horns angling upward at different angles. She had two big brindle-black ears. Her eyes were large. They bulged out like a real Jersey.
The other heifer was also a dairy-cross mix, a nice red and white colour, no horns. She had a live calf, but the roan and spotted and brindle heifer was the one for sale.
“Her mother was a Jersey,” the man explained. “Her father was a pure white shorthorn bull. She lost her calf. She’s an easy milker. Try her and see. I just don’t want to milk her two times a day for the next ten months.”
I tried her. She was an easy milker. Her front teats were somewhat longer than her rear teats. They were just the right size.
I looked at her closely, again. She was small, gentle, an easy milker, half Jersey. She was an unusual colour. She had a funny-shaped head with stub horns. Her eyes were too large and they bulged out.
Dale had noticed my serious interest in the young cow.
“I think she’s the cow we’ve been looking for,” I said to the young, back-to-the-land, laid back farmer.
“Dad, Dad!” Dale said to me, quietly but urgently, pulling on my sleeve. “Can I talk to you first?”
We took a few steps away from the farmer. I bent over. “But Dad,” Dale whispered seriously into my ear, “Don’t you think she’s kind of ugly?!”
“Well, she is kind of ugly,” I agreed, “but she’s got all the qualities we were looking for in a milk cow. I think we should take her.”
We went back to the owner. I offered $500. We settled the sale at $550.
She loaded easily up the small loading chute built for a pick-up truck. We got her safely home. Late, and in the dark, we unloaded her in the large, wooden-plank fenced yard behind the barn. We put out some of our best hay for her. She appeared to be completely at ease, and at home.
The next morning my wife Inez and our daughter Joyce, age six, looked out the kitchen window at our previous evening’s purchase.
“She looks like a ladybug!” said my wife.
Ladybug turned out to be everything we had hoped for. Brownie was immediately turned loose. She galloped through the open gate, her calf by her side, to join her friends and the rest of the range cattle.
Somehow, somewhere, we got a small beef calf to nurse Ladybug’s surplus milk, far more than we required for the house. We always had enough milk for a neighbouring family as well. Ladybug let down her milk readily, after brushing or washing her udder, without requiring the calf to nurse on the other side.
Ladybug soon accepted the new calf as her own, allowing it to nurse when it wanted. She didn’t kick. I purchased a small size, new nylon horse halter for Ladybug and we easily taught her to lead. When the grass grew lush and green around the farmyard, we tethered her to a 40-foot light chain, anchored to a steel peg we drove into the ground. We moved the peg to a new area every day. Overnight, she stayed in the large fenced barnyard. We separated the calf from her overnight if we needed milk, and always milked Ladybug in the morning. Inez or Dale or Joyce could lead Ladybug back from her daytime tethered spot to the yard after school or before supper if I was busy seeding or making hay or harvesting.
Ladybug was a low maintenance, easily handled, gentle little cow. We bred her to our Simmental beef bull, to calve in February or early March just before the rest of the cow herd began calving. We tried to leave her outside with the rest of the range cows when she was “dry,” probably beginning in mid-December. The larger range cows bossed and bullied her. She stood by the yard gate humped up, not able to take severely cold temperatures. We put her back in the yard, and into the barn if it was cold or stormy. We built a smaller open front shed behind the barn specifically for her. We also used it for a sick bay and special needs pen and shelter when the range cows began calving. She shared her space, with empathy it seemed, with any cow or cows we added. Besides, she was too small to fight or even boss any of the larger beef cows.
She needed some assistance when she calved for her second calf. It was a fairly large calf sired by the large beef bull, but it was born alive and well. She was soon up and licking and talking to her own new calf.
A year later, Dale and Joyce watched, close up, as Ladybug calved. It was their first full-length view of a cow giving birth.
Ladybug was half Jersey, and though Jerseys are a small-size breed of dairy cattle, they have a slightly different-shaped pelvis from the other breeds. In general, Jerseys are able to give birth more easily, and their calves are often smaller than other breeds as well.
We began to notice that Ladybug made a lot of noise as she entered the heavy labour period of calving. From a long distance away, from anywhere on the farmyard, you could tell that Ladybug was soon going to give birth. Long, loud, extended cow moans and cow groans could be heard, repeated over and over at every hard push.
I called it Ladybug’s histrionics. Some of the range cows moaned or groaned just before delivery too, but none could equal Ladybug! It stopped the instant the calf was born. Then like every other cow, she was standing up, turning around, licking, cleaning and talking to her new baby. It’s called “mothering up.”
When a mammal gives birth, the first milk from the mother is called colostrum. In cattle, it is dark yellow, thick, creamy, sticky and full of nutrients and antibodies for the new calf. Ideally, a new calf should receive colostrum 20 minutes to an hour after it is born, for the greatest benefit. The colostrum changes to regular milk in a few days.
Ladybug had a lot of colostrum. We were always able to save and freeze several ice-cream pails of colostrum to give to extremely chilled calves or weaker calves or calves who had difficulty standing after a hard pull. Ladybug’s colostrum saved or helped a lot of calves. Even neighbouring farmers sometimes got colostrum from us for their needy calves.
I enjoyed milking Ladybug. Her front teats were medium-carrot size, perfect for hand milking. The first few strong squirts into the bucket made a nice ringing sound. It slowly became muffled as more and more milk entered the pail. Then as milky foam began to build, it changed to a softer, deeper sound with every stroke. It was a satisfying and pleasurable experience. The gentle little cow was generously and freely giving all of our family useful, needed, healthy nutrition. Once or twice each summer, we made homemade ice cream with friends or family using Ladybug’s milk.
I had a radio in the barn. It came on when you flipped on the light switch. At that time, I listened exclusively to a small country and western station located in our nearest small city of Camrose.
One morning, while I was milking Ladybug, Johnny Cash came on the radio singing his popular hit song “I Walk the Line.” I discovered that “I Walk the Line” had the perfect beat and rhythm for milking a cow! No other song I heard before (or since!) was like it. Amazingly, it came on the radio coincidentally quite a number of times through the years while I was milking Ladybug. The song has four verses, then J. C. repeats and ends with the first verse. I could get enough milk for the house in one complete rendition of “I Walk the Line.”
One year Ladybug had a large light-brown and roan, white-faced heifer calf. As with all of Ladybug’s calves, they became pets around the farmyard. This calf liked to dance around Dale and Joyce, wanting to play and butt heads as calves did with each other. The children lifted their knees and used their knees to butt heads with that very playful calf. It became a regular, almost daily game.
One day Grandpa Lutz was at the farm when Ladybug and her calf were in the yard. The children showed Grandpa their pet calf and the game they played with the calf dancing and pushing its head against their knees or thighs.
Grandpa wasn’t impressed. “You’re going to be sorry you taught her that,” he warned. “If you keep her for a cow and she’s big and strong.”
We kept the calf as a beef heifer. She was a lot larger than her mother. She needed help calving with her first calf, though she was quiet and gentle like her mother. But when I was squatting or kneeling beside her, helping her newborn calf to nurse for the first time, I suddenly and unexpectedly received a strong hard bunt to my side. It came from the new mother! We named her Mean Jersey because as she grew older, she pushed anyone around after calving if you ventured too close or attempted to help her calf in any way. Grandpa was right—it wasn’t a good idea to teach a heifer calf to bunt, even playfully. Mean Jersey raised a lot of exceptionally large calves; the dairy genetics inherited from her mother contributed to the extra size of her calves.
Little changed for quite a number of years. Ladybug was a great cow and a member of the family.
Then one year, right after calving, she couldn’t get up. I recognized an ailment or disorder usually only occurring in dairy cows, called milk fever. The cow releases so much calcium, stored in her large, expanding udder before calving, she can’t get up. By this time, Ladybug always developed a very large udder prior to calving.
I called a local dairy farmer. He no longer had dairy cows, but he still had a few bottles of calcium that countered the loss. He came over, bottle and equipment in hand. He knew how to administer the calcium solution intravenously through a large needle inserted in the lying-down cow’s neck. The process required both knowledge and experience.
A few moments after the solution had emptied into her bloodstream, Ladybug stood up as though nothing had happened.
It happened again the next year, with the same neighbour, same process, same result.
Before Ladybug calved again, I got two bottles of the miraculous fluid from the vet. That year, she didn’t get up after receiving one bottle. We had to use two, then she got up.
The next year we administered three bottles, but she still couldn’t get up. I called the vet, who came over. I don’t remember exactly how, but eventually we got her up, shakily.
“You can’t keep this cow any longer,” the vet advised. “There’s a limit to how much calcium you can give her if she won’t respond. At the end of this lactation, she’s got to go!”
With heavy hearts, we sold Ladybug late in the fall. She had been part of our family for ten years.
In the spring, we found another small brown and white, dairy-cross cow. She was a good little cow, but she wasn’t Ladybug.