[clayfoot-sandyman]

Nice photo John….hope your haylage/silage worked out…..well I’m still dithering and am beginning to think I should turn away from the endless forecast watching on the internet and instead just follow the old Yorkshire saying

If there’s enough blue sky to make a pair of trousers it’s a hay day!

They must have had some really awful hay in the old days, my granny remembers in Swaledale years when the hay was cut and it got rained on so much it went black on the surface but it still eventually made, when the sun eventually shone again.

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Do you know what prompted them to use extended lactation management in the first place? Is it part of the Krishna practice/doctrine or is it something newer?

There motive is primarily to not to kill any cows as they believe that killing cows/animals has serious karmic implications but they also believe that the cow/bull/ox is a gift from God to man and should be utilised but cared for. They see milk as a very sacred substance but meat is entirely forbidden.
By going for the standard 305 day lactation/one calf born yearly they’d be overwhelmed with animals very quickly – Syam reckons he’s almost at the level now where he has four die per year and four born per year i.e; a stable herd number. I think he said that to milk around 30 cows it means a herd of around 70…..
He describes the bull as being on a ‘serious ration’ – four cows per year. He leaves the cow to run with the bull after being served so as to satiate his interest in other cows and avoid the bull smashing through fences to get to the other cows! He says this works but that keeping a bull is unavoidable in getting cows pregnant after long lactations as described earlier.

Good luck with your hay, it’s raining buckets here…..need another nice high pressure to get the rest of my fields cut. Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Hi Geoff – I sent your questions to Syamasundara the farm manager – have pasted it below for you……

>Did they give you any idea of conception rates (or ease) when they did
>try to breed back?

in some cases we did have difficulty getting cows pregnant again after a very long lactation of 4 years plus. this was especially the case in using AI. We bought a bull as a consequence and generally dont have problems keeping our breeding quota. Some cows do lose fertility still. As we dont kill any of our cows it does not matter to us if some of our cows can conceive as long as we can breed four a year.

>How about body condition after 2 or 3 yrs of lactating? Which, in turn
>can affect conception.

Our cows do seem to put on a bit more body fat than may be noticed in surrounding herds. This is something I have seen in other ISKCON farms. I dont think it is just in the cows that have a long lactation but indeed any cow or ox that is not producing milk or draft. To keep the overweight cows in better condition we found feeding straw in the winter rather than hay did the trick.

>Other management related info? Like maybe, mastitis (any) and if so,
>more in one quarter vs another (nursed vs hand milked).

As we hand milk we dont get mastitis very often. That said we recently had two cows that had it and we treated it with silver water and that didthe trick very quickly. I can see that hand milking is better for the udder than machine milking. I have read that 40% of dairy cows suffer from mastitis.
Our figure is nothing like that.

>Estimate of total milk production from an extended lactation?

I am not sure if our figures will be helpful to you because we start with a specific type of cow that is not one of the biggest milk breeds. We also give 25% of the milk to the calf until it is 6 months old. we also dont cull out any low yielding cows so have records from even low yielding non dairy type cows or sometimes cows that only give milk for lesser time. We also dont feed our cows like athletes but just give them a simple diet of crushed grains and vegetable with their hay or grass. That said we estimate that we get 10,000 litres per calf with an average lactation of 4 years. We have a cow now that has been giving milk for 9 years and is stillgiving us 18 litres per day. Without checking my detailed records for her we could estimate that she has given us about 45,000 litres of milk so far.

Hope that’s useful. As for milk processing all their milk is used within their community, they primarily turn it onto ghee and barfi, delicious boiled milk sweets

This is also quite interesting, a project connected to the Krishna’s producing ‘slaughter-free’ milk for delivery to North London http://www.ahimsamilk.org/

Hope all’s well. I’m dodging rain clouds trying to get hay made…..! Take care, Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

You started cutting yet John? I’m in two minds, been nice for a couple of days now raining REALLY heavily – glad I haven’t cut yet….it’s a tricky call this year, the weather maps show a good robust high but the temp’s are quite low and it’s really humid – I don’t make silage/haylage so just got ot hold my nerve for a clearer spot for hay…..what’s happenning up your way?

Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

I’m getting the feeling that April and June swapped places this year?

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Bivol, I watched in amazement at this short atmospheric film – thankyou for posting.

The scene where they struck the first furrow looked pretty wild, I kept thinking ‘this ploughing’s gonna be a mess’ but it really showed their skill and their ability to work together that with all the complexities of wooden implements, the soil conditions and a very large and excited team they made a beautiful job of ploughing…..

Especially liked the ploughman’s spade for cleaning the mould board – brilliant. And what nice soil they had.
That’s a real treasure you’ve discovered!

Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Fabian,

I got some equipment sent over from Alyson at New England Ox Supply to the UK, she was really helpful although it took us weeks to sort how to do the payment electronically – amazing that in the ‘digital age’ it still seemed to easier to just put some cash in an envelope and send it!
I warn you now, shipping plus import duty adds a lot onto the final bill – BUT there’s not many, if any craftsmen producing ox bows commerially in Europe (she buys them from an Amish chap apparently)…..try again with Alyson, she probably just missed your e-mail.:cool:

Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

They just seem to be at each other wether in the barn or out and about. One of them got his head stuck in the gate today and the other was straight into him with his horns and trying to mount him, I just walked in, haltered the aggressor up, walked him off and freed the stuck one, they’re gentle with me….interestingly they had their pecking order worked out as one was bigger then the other, then I started feeding the smaller one up and now they’re the same size so they’ve got some sorting out to do I guess.

I also swapped their sides in the yoke recently to try it out as I had problems with my nigh ox with hanging back in the yoke. He walks better in the off position but the whole fighting malarky has escalated.

Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Hi Nat,

Are you finding her easier than your steers? – I’m interested because I’m seriously considering getting a pair of heifer calves in to train – my steers are fine with me, but with the special needs guys I work with they spot immediately who they can take advantage of when they’re being led around and I keep having to step in…..maybe it’s just an age as they’re just past a year??

Hope all’s well by the way, Ed

PS. I’ve got a heifer called Peach too!

[clayfoot-sandyman]

@bivol 21118 wrote:

“Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety”

…..I have even heard it said that an animals suffering is more intense than a humans because they don’t have the capacity to find strategies to escape their suffering….people who’ve been held captive for a long period of time often describe praying or imagining their loved ones or a favourite place or how it will be when they escape.
Animals (who lack reflective consciousness which you need to do all of the above) are simply trapped in the consciousness of their condition and suffering.
Hence animals wither and eventually die whereas history has shown it is possible for humans to overcome their conditions however cruel.
This only illustrates further our duty to care for animals.

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Apparently they’re commonly used as oxen in Africa, got this bit from the ‘Orlando Sentinel’ on-line, an excerpt from an article about a Florida Watusi Breeder;

….’Rarely slaughtered for meat except in special ceremonies, Watusi cows were frequently milked and then bled to produce a yogurtlike high-protein drink……Even so, Watusi cattle have begun to lose their significance in their homeland. Prized as beasts of burden for thousands of years, they have been replaced by tractors and other farm equipment.
“Watusi were used as oxen in their native Africa,” Strimenos said. “They weren’t eaten for meat — the cattle were seen as sacred.”

Hmm, not sure about that high protein blood/milk yoghurt drink.:confused:

[clayfoot-sandyman]

@Tim Harrigan 22586 wrote:

Ixy, I believe the NA style neck yoke was strongly influenced by the English neck yokes. Both had dropped hitch points. I am sure there were plenty of regional differences due to load and use but there are probably more similarities than differences. Do you have any information or references on the English neck yoke?

Got a couple of pictures Tim/Ixy of English yokes

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They look to have less of a drop on the hitch point than the North American yokes and seem to be a bit ‘cruder’ in shape but the bows seem to ‘wrap’ more than the ones I’ve seen from the US which are more U shaped….. Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

Thanks Nat, I would love to have a look at it when I come to visit you….YES I will get there when I’m up North next if it fits in with you…..:rolleyes:

By the way, had a chap come to do my cattle’s feet today who lives over in Shropshire. It’s the first time I’ve used him and turns out he’s from New York State originally and has done some work with oxen AND knows how to shoe an ox….there can’t be many if any other people in the UK who know how to shoe an ox??
He really loved seeing my 2 little steers (although I’m not sure that they’d say the same about him!!!)

Hope you’re having as much fun as me carrying water endlessly with this cold snap, each cold winter that we have convinces me just a bit more that I really should lag my pipes! You must be up to your knees in snow?!

Cheers, Ed

[clayfoot-sandyman]

@CharlyBonifaz 22262 wrote:

if there are any questions, feel free to ask!

OK great! – I somehow didn’t connect that you’re in Germany Charly….Been trying to find out about 3 pad collars, makers/users, fitting them etc for ages but to no avail……could you help?????

[clayfoot-sandyman]

I was in this situation a while back when I bought a supposedly well handled cow from a neighbour which turned out to be very unco-operative to the point of being dangerous when I tried close handling and milking her.
Admittedly feeding and regular contact will gentle a cow over time but not enough to get her as steady as I wanted (safe enough for special needs teenagers to work with).
My experience now tells me that the only way to really have a bovine who is totally steady is for that animal to see you as being 100% in charge. A friend who shows cattle and halter trains them at a year or so when she can really see their confirmation said that she battles them into a halter then ties them onto her tractor with another person holding a second rope off the halter. She drives the tractor at a very low speed until the beast walks without fighting with the second person also walking alongside, giving the impression that its the handler overpowering the cow. Once she walks steadily (maybe after a few attempts) they take away the tractor, and as the cow has the impression that you’re as strong as a tractor they follow!!
I personally don’t want to get involved in all that malarchy and by far the best experience I’ve had is to buy calves as young as possible from a dairy farm, the earlier the better. They immediately connect to you as you will be the one providing milk and are vastly easier to handle as they get older with very little battling to establish yourself as leader.
If you’re fixed on having Highland cattle then this will be difficult as they’re run as suckler herds and nobody with sucklers will wean before 4-5 months in my experience. Halter training a 6 month animal requires a lot of will and determination, they’re strong! Remember they need to see you as the dominant force.
If it were me I’d feed you’re new friend, get her settled with a view to having some good Highland beef in 12-18 months and look around locally for a small dairy who has some calves. For home use even a beef cross will do, a friend milks a Hereford/Holstein who although she doesn’t produce quite the vast quantities a pure bred Holstein might she produces ample milk and is much healthier than some highly bred super dairy cow and has a lovely temperament. Hope that’s of some use…Ed

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