Back with a Theme - 30 Days of COWS!

Ok, so since Ainsley got tall enuf to reach the keyboard & mouse; blogging (or anything computer related) came to pretty much a screeching halt, but we are back with a theme to join in on the 30 days of blogging in November.
What else would we talk about besides.....COWS!


Their quirks, interesting stories, all the things that make them individuals and let us identify them from the "business" end.  I once read an editorial about a new dairy that was being built in a neighboring county.  It was a "factory farm" according to the writers and the cows were nothing but "robots with interchangeable parts".  I've used this statement many times to tell consumers that if they are robots with interchangeable parts, I would LOVE to know where the parts store is, as I would be a frequent customer (for some reason rear feet seem to be the issue of the week).  If I could just replace the cows, it would be easy, it would make it easy to just go to bed and not haul feed and water to Jelly who survived a bout of milk fever last week to be in the barn again for her 4th lactation or Lucke who seems to have a catastrophe every time she calves, but somehow, with a lot of TLC comes out of it.  But, we can't just go out and replace them.  It takes a lot of time, money, and blood, sweat & tears to get these cows in to the milking herd.  It takes years of genetics and decisions and work to get them to this point.  The farmers in South Dakota are realizing that you can't just go out & buy cows to replace ones lost in the Atlas Blizzard, and it is the same with our herd.  And there are cows without names, just #'s, and they are no less important to our farm.  In fact, they are usually the ones that make the milk that pays the bills, and just go about their business without all the fuss.  Our farm has 98 cows on it right now, along with about that many heifers and calves.  I'm going to profile 30 of them - their full name, what we call them, their age and # of calves, info on how much milk they give, and anything interesting about them.  If our farm had 3,000 cows, I'd be able to profile cows for 365 days without thinking too hard.  I made my list up in the parlor tonite, and since it is still November 1 - this counts for starting.
Meet the herd @ Po-Cop Dairy!

Day 1:  The Highest Scored Cow - Lucke
Day 2:  The Oldest Cow - #864


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