How I Trained My First-Time Milk Cow (Step by Step) In 3 Days

Effy day. In this vlog, I'm showing you how I trained a first time heifer to be a milk cow, to be milked. Maybe most importantly, I'm gonna share with you what did not work and wasted a lot of my time, gentle training, versus what did work, which is gentle pressure, give you the step-by-step to save you a lot of time, all while we're doing the vlog. First, let's check on the boys in the igloo and get the cows out of the front yard. Nothing like waking up to some cows in the front yard. Okay, we're gonna have to go get the boys sooner than later. They made it, they're not here. Wonder how the igloo held up. Wait a bunch. Okay, there's your fire. Can I go get the boys now? Wait, the dog bailed. Can I go get the boys now? I don't wanna, I don't wanna go with you. Well, why did you want a fire? Because. Okay, are you gonna stay? I'm gonna go check on the boys real quick. Sunrise before screen rise, as Holistic Hilda says. I think the snow is probably weighed down the vents. These cows that got out. First, let's check on the boys. How'd y'all do? Good. Are you warm? Warm enough. Are you dry? Yeah, the top of the roof did melt a little bit and get the sleeping bag wet, but otherwise. Oh, wow. It just melted a little bit. It's dripped? Yeah. Probably from your heat? Maybe, or just that it's not freezing outside. This is solid piece now. It's icy. Let's see if we can herd them behind the house back to their fields. Hey, Henry's calling me. Can you herd them back? That'd be impressive, dude. You get a bonus if you get them back by yourself. Let's get Henry before he becomes a disturbance. In the house. He's moving them. Henry, we're not putting cows back. Do you actually want to do that? Okay. Okay, well then you get dressed and you go up there and say hey to the boys. Wow. He's gotten them over there. Across the creek, which I think is the hardest part. Hey, going right over. Lucky day. That's how nature feeds its animals in the winter. Gravity fed, running water. Wow, that was rather uneventful. Gideon got three of them. Did you find where it was down? Yeah. Where was it? Over there, just down. Okay, good job. First, I tried a really gentle approach and I started a very long time ago. She was unhandled, so we just started feeding her alfalfa and got closer and closer to her as we went. We had to get our collar on her, so we just got closer and closer as she ate. No matter how many times we tried or how long we went, she was sort of getting on to us and it was actually getting harder to get the collar on her. Top these pigs off. Since she's smart and she's getting on to us, let's see if we can't lead her into the stanchion, trap her head, and get the collar on. This would be really lucky. There you go. Oh my gosh. Last chance. Okay, let her get through. Let her start eating some. I did this a long time ago. This is going on like this. Surprised she went in. All the way in. Me too. Just go pretty tight. And that worked. Eventually, she's just gonna be tied up to the side-by-side and we're gonna be milking her out in the field, so we thought we'd train her like that. And we could get her to come over to the alfalfa. We could attach the leash, but the more we did it, the harder it was to do. We were going backwards. Then it was time to go on vacation. I said, I'll start training her again when I get back. I have to. She's due February 1st. We got back. It soon snowed. I said, I'll train her after it snows. It was February 1st and she had this baby on her due date. So we tried to lead her in gently. Maybe we would get lucky. Cause she is crazy for alfalfa. But I saw that wasn't gonna work. Remember what we ended up having to do with you and you had a calf? Wow! This didn't end at all how I thought it was going to. There was a struggle, but it wasn't the one I thought it was. I knew that it was going to be a struggle to train her. She's never been milked. This is a new mama. This is a heifer calf. Essentially we put up a gate like this in front of the stanchion to funnel her in. It's solid. She can't jump through it. A net to be a bigger funnel. Get her inside the big net. We can herd her inside the chute and then she'll go in the stanchion. And it worked. Also what we had to do with crazy Aunt Phyllis. Remember Aunt Phyllis? She kicked me in the nose. Yeah, when we first got her, we had to train her to our system. And she's wild and crazy. And we just set up a chute in here. Yeah, you got a little bit of a crazy aunt. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. All right, let's just do that. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. That didn't work. She was so nuts. What we learned you could do in that case is put a tarp over the gates like this. And then they can't see it. And it's more of a blind barrier at least. So in the worst case, you got a Phyllis. You can do that. We took lessons learned from the past. And it's not so much about gentle approach as it is gentle pressure. We got a big homestead to run. We got other things to do. We can't be fooling around. Coddling them for half an hour every day for months on end. Just apply some gentle pressure. Work with her. She's afraid of us. Use that gently. I don't have a stick. I'm not hitting her. I'm just gently applying that pressure. And it's working. And she's going in. I'm gonna show you now, step by step, what's happening. This is gonna be the third time milking her. And I'm gonna try it without assistance. And I'm gonna walk you through each step. Okay, number one. Prepare. We have some alfalfa here. This is like y'all's coffee. What's the drug to this, right? This is like crack. They're not crack heads. They're alfalfa heads. They're coffee addicts. Now, it's not enough to lead her in it. Fear, at some point, overrides it. But it is enough to show her, hey, once I get in here, I get my drugs. When she's released, too, she's gonna eventually, over time, associate this stanchion, this milking, as something good. Alfalfa. I've got the leash. I'll set it in place. And we've got a physical, let's just call it a funnel. It's in there, in place. You'll need those three things. You'll need those things. You'll need a stanchion. This is a classic, hold the cow head in stanchion. Let me show you some tricks to it. It's four by fours. Two by sixes at the bottom. Bolted so that our two by fours here can pivot. That's about nine inches in between this. And it's probably about four feet tall, the head gate part. And probably, the top of this is 18 inches. So the bottom of it is just 12 inches. Giving you an idea of spacing here. It's probably two and a half feet across, maybe. And this is a really cool trick. You have a little board on a hinge. So we're gonna open this up. Just teaching you how to build the stanchion right now. And then she can figure it out and get her head in. And when she does, you can collapse these and the boards come down and then these can't open. And she cannot get her head out until you do this. Now, this is supported in here in our deep bedding. You got a bar across there. She's kind of getting in the drill. She might do this. If you don't have deep bedding, and let me show you what I would do if perhaps we were out in the field with the milk sled. Maybe it's not winter. We have a stanchion on our milk sled. Now, you could do a stanchion into T-posts. So here's the same deal. Stanchion, okay? And if I were to have to train her out here, I would take a gate and attach it from here to here. And then I would do another one from here to here. I would do a T-post to support it. And notice how it gets wider opening here and it narrows as you run her in the chute. And you use her fear of you to your advantage. You can just be behind her and she's gonna go forward. And then when she gets in there, she gets the reward of the alfalfa. If you have more complications, you put the chute here. You run a Temple Grandin. You run a bit of a spiral and it gets wider and wider. Okay, so then out here, it's, I don't know, 15 feet wide. And you run, you know, it could be from there to here. And you run them into the chute and it gets more and more narrow as it goes around. The animal likes to go around instead of straight and curved. Time out. Or sorry, what is that? Does that make sense, Minty? You're probably gonna be a lot easier. You're already letting us pet you, hmm? You're already letting us pet you. But we ain't gonna fool around with anything but just training you to a stanchion, hmm? We're just gonna train you to a stanchion. Everybody's going nuts for this alfalfa. The sheep, you can get the sheep to do anything. See, we've got our gate, basically tied up. Alfalfa, gate, stanchion, I think that's it. Oh, leash, just in case. I'm gonna show you how to do this as if you're all by yourself. Don't have to. Maybe she'll go in. Okay, three days. Three days, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. Didn't mean to scare you. I got a little carried away there. Austin, you remember what I told you to title this thing? Austin, name of video is how I trained my first-time milk cow, parentheses, step-by-step. No, call this how I trained my first-time milk cow, step-by-step, in three days. I think it's worthwhile because she didn't like the pool. I didn't even need to use this. I'll just walk you through it. You could go, would you rather go back to the live action or would you rather me walk through it? Go back to the live action, Austin, the last times we milk her. Show them some clips, day one, day two. I might try. We got her in the stanchion. More alfalfa coming. Do you need me in there? Maybe, just one second. She's really close. I'll explain what happened there and why it worked. We had a stanchion, or sorry, we had a gate. It's more open, it's more broad, okay? We get her in this general area. We get the calf over if we have to. They get kind of crazy about their calves, especially the first few days. She's already chilled on it. She's already okay with leaving it a little bit. If you have to, put the calf over there, put a collar on the calf, tie it up near the stanchion, have somebody hold it over there. It could be because there's not all the kids about it. She went in there too. Hold this gate open. She gets in there, you use it. She's in there. You just kind of use this, closing it, making it tight. Just ready to jump out of the way if you have to. You don't want to die for this. First day, we had to leash her and then kind of coax her through. Second day, we didn't need to leash and we're just kind of pushing her, pushing her. And then eventually, you could even, she can't even turn around. She has to go through you or through this wall. Go to the alfalfa, good choice. Stage one prep, stage two, getting her in the stanchion. Stage three, milking her out without getting kicked. You saw on the first day, we just weren't taking any chances. We left this gate on her as a squeeze. You know, it kind of squeezed her. She's only got so much movement. She can't kick through these and get me. One of our family members had said, oh, we could tie her legs if she's kicking. I don't like that. I don't like that because I've done that before and the cow has tripped and falled and then you have a fallen cow in the stanchion, frantic, scared, can't get up. It's scary because it's like a horse. If they break their legs, it's over. You're eating them. How to milk a cow without getting kicked. Get up right beside her. This may seem scary. You want to, ah, she just stepped on my foot. It may seem scary to get close, but if you're out here, and she kicks this way, she's like when you saw Flossie kick me, right, okay? Unfortunately, Flossie was not showing any point of aggression that day or possible aggression, so that's why I was milking like normal. When you first milk, you have the advantage of going in on the defense. It's like if I punched you right here and you're far away, I could get you, but you know, you see the boxers, they clench and they grab each other because you can only do so much damage from close up, even though it's scarier. Let her know I'm here. You gotta squirt the first few out, right, see? And you don't stop. You don't stop until you're done, not her, or else you show her, oh, I'll kick, and it's over. You don't want to show her that, okay? See, I'm still real close. She might knock me over, but I'm not gonna at least break a bone. And maybe I'm just milking with my right hand today, until she gets used to this. Both hands, all right. See, this is the third time in her life she's been milked. They come from a long line of milkers, so it's in their genetics to do this. She pees or poop, just hold the bucket away. And they give you a little bit at first. It's colostrumy, the sooner, right after birth, it's got the most amount of colostrum, then that, it wanes, wanes, wanes, and then she'll, it'll be what you call milk comes in. In a few days, it'll just be explosion of milk. She's not even in any rush to come out. She kicked me a couple times today. I think that'll get less and less over time, and when it does, we might just tie her up to the side of the stanchion, instead of in it, just as she's eating her alfalfa. Eventually, she'll just be milking in the open, in the field, like everybody else. Notice, I didn't quit when she kicked me. Don't, you cannot. That's like, if you get kicked off a horse, they say, you gotta get right back on, or that, or the horse wins, and you lose, and you gotta show, you gotta not reward it. So the reward is, you got in the stanchion, you got your feed, and now the reward is, when I'm done, when we're done milking, the reward is, you can get out. Not when you're kicking. And if she were kicking at the end, I might wait until she was more calm. I might rub her udder. I might sit down there until I get progress, and then reward her by releasing her. Some tricks, if she doesn't stop kicking, is to just stay down there, keep rubbing her udder. You've gotta milk her out, so, cause she's in milk, so, put the gait up, eventually, or just stand there beside her, and just, with one arm, milking her. And you might have to milk out onto the ground, and that's okay, during the training process. Some common mistakes and safety notes. One, you wait till she has the calf to do this. It may look like that's what we did, and I guess we did, but we did not work on her, okay? We didn't not feed her some alfalfa in a pan, to put a collar on. It's still good to be working on her, getting used to you, in the future. Whoever gets this calf, whoever gets February, I would suggest, yeah, get her some alfalfa, try to get her used to you, try to get it to where you can pet her, get a collar on her, get it at least to where you can get a collar on her. I would just start training to the stanchion. I think we're too ambitious, trying to get her trained just to the field. Let's train her to the stanchion first, and you saw how easy that was. And we could do that before the calf come, like we did with Vanilla. Inconsistent timing, once you're on this, you need to do this every day. She's in milk, she needs to be milked about the same time every day, maybe an hour-ish in difference. Come out here, same routine. It's the alfalfa, it's the stanchion, it's this gate. Cows like habit. Don't give up too soon. It's very frustrating, it's part of it, all good things. Come with a price. It can take seven, 14 days till she gets used to this routine. I say she got used to it in three days, probably because of our preliminary work. Don't give up. Give it seven to 14 days, and you're good. Don't take it personally. Don't milk in anger. They don't speak English, but they do speak energy. They know when you're angry or nervous, and it transfers over to them. So take some deep breaths. Don't take it personally if you get kicked. I mean, you are grabbing their udder. Imagine if that were happening to you, ladies, and getting milk out of it. We're a totally different species. We're the dominant species. We're milking it, okay? It's gonna be an experience for them at first. Key takeaway here is just good management, gentle pressure. Right, Harriet? Get in, can you get her some water? You're a good mama, you're gonna be a good milk cow. The boys are ready. I'm ready. Are you ready, Harriet? I think it's time to blend the cows. We've been separating them just for them to get used to each other. You think it'll be all right? What? We wanted mom and baby to bond. Harriet is third on the pecking order, so we didn't want anything to happen. I think this calf is spry enough to keep away from the cows, not accidentally get stepped on. Cows are pacifists, and they know better than to kill their own species. Oh, she don't even care. I thought she'd at least go smell her. Vanilla will go smell her. See? Like Big Deal. Honey goes right for it. You go right for her, honey. You're waiting in line, Vanilla. Don't get stuck in there. Did you fart? Hey, don't you know that's global warming? That's a joke, by the way. That cow farts, but she sure does make, look at all this, hundreds of pounds of compost a day, all these cows. 50 pounds of manure every day, mixed with these wood chips. That's a lot of compost. I think you're making up for your farts. All right, we're gonna have to shut them out, because what's gonna happen is, come on, they're gonna get in there and get stuck. Come on. They didn't think nothing of that calf. The calf's not alarmed. Add to our colostrum collection. Done showing you the heifer training. Don't leave, though. Hear that noise? You'll wanna see what the boys are doing on the bookshelves, and we're gonna do same things outside with the cows that are often neglected, but super important. Some thick colostrum from day one. I'm excited about it. I think once we get a cork, I have plenty enough to make me some colostrum custard. That might be today. Whoa, whoa, that's today. I think we're good. What are y'all doing? Building shelves. Yeah. That doesn't look like shelf instructional. Hey. You got one side done. Next side, except this one's gotta go all the way to the roof. This is where I like to keep my salt licks. Henry, you wanna go with me to do minerals? No, I'm on my bike. Okay. Taking care of basics. This Redmond's salt on a rope, excellent. The way this works, there's been a hole drilled through the middle of this rock of salt. Just pure salt mined from the mines in Utah. I would say they need it. Ike's trying to eat it. How about let's get this chore done. If we get it done in enough time, we'll start that colostrum custard. 16 different minerals. Whoa. Man, my work cut out for me, if they all look like that. They're not gonna eat that. Now that'll become compost. Best way for marking your minerals, mailbox lettering. You screw it in, they can't rub it off. Markers don't work, too cost prohibitive for a branding kit. This is what we found for now. You can only do two minerals, kelp, and then salt's over there. Don't worry, we got you some minerals. She's given so many minerals to that calf. It's very important that we make sure she can get all she wants. Look at all these. And she'll know which one she needs, which one she doesn't need. Three more, huh? Yeah. I know, you would think that, but they were dying. I cannot wait. We're gonna have a Florida ceiling library. It's like the Bill Maher house. One more to go. It's gonna have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully. Lord willing, the creek don't rain. Supposed to be more snow. Hopefully. We're putting these books and those books on shelves tomorrow. One more treat for you guys. Hey, Jonathan. How's it going? Good, how are you? You're off to a good start? Yes, sir. We got the quick plant fabric. You said you wanted something for onions, so I grabbed one. Four by eight, so it's four rows in a bed with eight inch spacing. Heck yeah. So that's a great pattern for onions. What else would be good for it? You know, head lettuce. You could use a head lettuce. You know. Kale. Lots of different stuff. Yeah, yeah. Well, kale you would want more spacing. So you'd probably want to do like our two by 18 spacing. That's better for rocks. Spinach and peaches. Yeah, you could do. Yeah, you could definitely do spinach. You could do more than one in each row for the spinach. Yep, so it comes ready to roll out. The holes are burned in it. You can see that here. So it's. That's game changer. It's really intended for like roughly a 30 inch bed. Yeah. And you have some margin that'll blend out into your pathways to keep those weeds from getting crazy there. All right. Yeah. This changes the game because virtually zero weeds. I mean, there's some does come up through the hole. Yep. And two, we used to have to burn our holes and it almost made it not even worth it. Yeah. So now you've just come. Yeah. And now we got holes. I mean. Pre-burned. There's plenty of people that have spent hours and hours and still do, you know, burning their own holes. Yeah. But it's just a mess. And then you're, you know, potentially exposing yourself to those fumes. And a lot of people do it directly on the soil, which to me seems like a bad idea. Like lay it down and then burn. Yeah. So this is a solution where you can just get all that dirty work done for you. We've produced this in our facility. So we've invested a lot of years and money into the machine that actually produces this. Oh, wow. So if you ever come and visit, you'll have to check that out. Yeah, we'll come. It's pretty cool. Made in America. Tennessee. Yeah. So we buy the product because there's no manufacturers of the woven landscape fabric in the US, unfortunately. At least none that I'm aware of. And I've talked to a bunch of people. So, this product actually comes from India. So we import it and then do the processing and distribution from our facility. So, yeah. We used this last year and it was absolutely a game changer to get our feet back on the ground after the hurricane. So my family has used this extensively and we have obviously lots of customers. And it's a UV treated product. So it's stable. You want to make sure you buy from, you know, a reputable source because I've seen people, in fact, we had somebody locally that had purchased some of this from, you know, just some cheap online source. And it just completely disintegrated within like a year, I think. And so then you're dealing with a real big mess because you get all those little fibers that are breaking down. We definitely don't want that. But this stuff will last for years and years. So with yours, the plastic, the leaching isn't such a big issue. Yeah, I mean, you're going to get a lot of controversial takes on that for sure. But the, what I can say confidently is that it has UV treating and it does not degrade like a polypropylene that would not be treated. That's it, the cat doesn't take advantage of the box. He's like a chipper. I mean, the other interesting thing about this is it's not just about weeds. You're actually benefiting the plants because they're not fighting for nutrients. Yeah. And then this also actually retains a lot more moisture in the soil, keeps the soil. Yeah, so there's more mulch on the soil too. Keeps the soil temperature cooler. So we've consistently, from our personal experience and also hearing from customers, heard reports of higher yields and crops just doing better. You guys experienced that from what I remember with your sweet potatoes. Oh yeah, did you see those sweet potatoes? They were crazy. Massive, yeah. And my family's experienced the same thing. Highest yields. Broccoli. Yep. Okay, I got to show you what your hot tunnel's up to this. Oh, I can't wait to see it. This winter, Jonathan and his company not only donated a high tunnel, they came and installed it after we lost ours to the hurricane. That was the greatest gift we could ever imagine. Got us back on our feet for our garden. It's been busting. Now look what it's doing in the winter. Yeah, it's awesome. That's not on by the way, I don't want to talk to you. Check it out. Feel how warm that is? Of course he knows. I wish you guys could feel this. Oh yeah. Stand back like a mean old goose. You can feel the heat just radiating out. Right, right. And it doesn't look like you've had any issues with the chickens like pecking the plastic or doing damage to it. No, not yet. We're prepared. We'll just put another layer of tin if they start doing that. Yep. Yeah. And it might be that we need to raise it up and we'll have to put something down. Okay. Poultry wire or something. And then we'll just build the bed back. They're adding soil by breaking down the wood chips and then we'll just build the bed back. Jonathan, a good guy. You can check out his stuff at farmersfriends.com. Justin for all the stuff we use from him. From silage tarps to high tunnel to weed fabric. Definitely check that out. We're going on a podcast together. That'll be out later. Happy day.