Is Your Life Fun?

Not too many people get to have the sort of fun that I often experience. It is one of the aspects of farm life that I love. There are routines on the farm and the animals KNOW these routines well. They respond well to them and they provide a bit of humor along the way.

Each evening my husband hooks up the milker and faithfully milks our cow. He then brings the big milker bucket in and pours it through the strainer into 2 gallon jars and then the rest of it into a gallon pitcher. He then heads out to clean the milker and I wipe off any milk spills and put the jars in the milk fridge in the proper date order. The milk in the pitcher goes mostly to animals. It has been cold here, so our outside doors have been closed. The dogs know that the first animals to get their share of the milk is them. I have 3 bowls out on our utility porch. I put a little bit into each one. Then I go over and open the door. This is what greets me!!

Star and Belle are always just sitting and waiting, but Dixie the pup has to dance. She jumps in the air, sits, then jumps again, then sits, then lays, then gets up. It is the milk dance!!! I let them all in, they all run to a bowl and start LOUDLY lapping it up. I call it Lapland!! It is their anthem!!

I grab a scoop of cat food and head out the door with the pitcher. All, the cats come whining around me making it hard to walk. I fuss at them and tell them to get out of my way. They run over to their bowls. I pour the dry food in one and then put milk in the other. I leave them all there being noisy. The one female adult cat always goes for the dry food first, so you hear her crunching. The others are all around the milk doing their own version of the Lapland national anthem.

Then I go around the corner to the 3 little calves up by the house. I try to sneak up so that they don't see me (it is easier to get in and out of the pen if they are still outside). They have been getting a little milk lately, and since then, they are all there waiting on me. Since the pasture and hay have been so bad due to drought, we have been giving them a bit of beet pulp soaked in water. I have been adding some milk to it. I put the beet pulp in a bucket and add the water it needs. Then I go over and fill their water buckets, while letting the pulp soak a bit. We have one large hanging feeder in there. Two calves can comfortably get their head in there, three calves can FORCE their heads in there. I go and get the milk pitcher and then I get the bucket of soaked beet pulp. I stand outside the fence and pour the milk and the beet pulp at the same time into the feeder. Did you know that calves can DIVE?? Two immediately get their head down in there and start inhaling the food. The odd man out tried to get his nose and mouth down in there. He goes to one side and tries to force his way, then he sucks on the ear of the calf on that side to see if somehow the food will come up through there. Then he runs to the other side and the same thing happens. This is the calf milk dance. Then he gets really serious and pushes his head down in there as well. That is where I leave them... three calves unusually close doing their version of the Lapland anthem.