Miracle on the Homestead: A Calf’s First Steps.
Meet Smokey
Our family Milk Cow gave us a beautiful miracle on the Homestead this morning! We woke up to finish baking for the farm stand and lo and behold, a calf was in the barn!
Our favorite time on the Homestead: When Babies are Born.
Marybell, our family milk cow, is our most prized animal on the homestead. We love them all of course, but you really cannot beat the nutrient dense, absolutely delicious milk that gives us so much! Ice cream, smoothies, butter and cream. And honestly, we just LOVE sharing this milk with our community. If feels amazing to be able to provide such life giving food to those around us.
Each time Marybell calves, she begins a new cycle of lactation, and that means, FRESH RAW MILK! On top of that, we get the great pleasure of hanging out with a newborn calf. There really is nothing like it! We will love him and care for him well, and he will eventually become nutritious beef for our family. It’s a beautiful cycle to which we are extremely grateful to God for these things.
Marybell
Marybell came to us in February of 2022. I, Tiffany, struggled with IBS and knew that Raw Milk would tremendously help! We finally had land to keep a family cow and one day, we sat on the couch enjoying our fresh morning coffee and Gods word and decided, “lets drive to Kentucky and get our first cow!”
We honestly had no idea what we were doing. We literally just got in the car, rented a trailer and went to a field with 50 other Jersey Heifers (young cows that haven’t had babies yet) and picked the first one that seemed nice! hahahahaha God was so gracious because thankfully, Marybell was also MILKABLE lol. We never thought about looking at her teats to see if they were long enough to be milked or anything of the like… we just thought she was sweet because she let us love on her.
So, there we are, driving home with our first cow, pregnant and due a month later. We grabbed the book “Keeping a Family Cow” and just ran with it. She gave birth like a champ, raised her first calf who nursed on her till the day he went to freezer camp. We have NEVER experienced such delicious beef before. If felt amazing to raise our own beef from, literally, start to finish, completely on grass, and come out with amazingly fatty, marbled nutrient dense beef. now here we are again with her second calf! We cannot wait to get started again.
How Smokey came….. the birth!
Well, it’s kinda like your first kid…. you set up the nursery with adorable paint on the walls, signs with the kids name perfectly placed next to the crib, stuffed animals in perfect posture, baby socks folded ever so perfectly in your organized drawers…. only to have a few kids later that get a mattress on the floor in your bedroom and you call it fantastic – and everyone is happier lol.
It’s kinda like that! With Marybells first calf, we went out everyday to see if she was close to calving, set everything up perfectly, watched the whole birth (which was really quite amazing) and didn’t sleep a wink because we wanted to experience it all!
This time, we knew what to expect and honestly, just let her do it on her own! We knew she was close, in fact, we knew she would calve last night because of her tail bone! The bones right next to it get super soft and squishy! And sure enough, she was eating her Placentia when we checked on her this morning! She was a rockstar and did it with ease! Baby was nursing mamma and getting good colostrum and we are on our way back to fresh milk! We are so excited!
We are pretty thrilled at how well our AI timing went! It was our first try reading Marybell for heat signs and we got it on our first try!
Caring for a Calf
We choose to calf share. That means we let Momma and Baby be together all the time except for when we need milk. When we do, we separate them for 12 hrs (usually over night) and we milk Marybell then put them back together. It’s great because if we need to go out of town we can just leave the calf with Momma and everything is taken care of!
The first 24 hours we let the calf get all the nutritious colostrum. After 24 hours we will milk out Marybell to avoid her getting mastitis. Then we will milk her once a day and let baby have allll the rest. We sell all the extras to our neighbors so they too can have this nourishing living food to sustain their families.
Marybell is such a good Momma and because cows are herd animals, they all really love each other and look out for one another. At least we haven’t experienced otherwise yet! I’m sure there will be THAT cow someday who doesn’t haha. But for now. It’s all harmony.
Fresh Milk for days..
Have you ever tried fresh, raw milk!? If you’re local to us in Seymour TN, reach out and see if we have any open spots available for you to pick up some! If not, try visiting www.realmilk.com and looking for raw milk in your area! If you’re thinking of getting your own family milk cow, what are some question you have that we can help you answer!? You can read about how we rotationally graze our cows all year to provide a beautiful circle of care for our land and animals here.
