It’s 4.15 am as the alarm goes off. I’m wide awake anyway, knowing I’ve got my first morning milking on my own. I drag myself out of bed, wipe a flannel over my face and stumble downstairs. The light is on in the kitchen and my mum, bless her, has got up to make my flask.
‘Go back to bed please!’ I whisper. ‘You really don’t need to do this.’
She smiles and makes the flask up for me anyway.
‘Well, at least, don’t do it again,’ I say. ‘I’m going to be doing this regularly now Ian’s in hospital.’
‘Thanks,’ I remember to say, as she turns to go back upstairs.
In my year off before university, I’d gone to Ian’s farm to learn about dairying and cows, but so far I’d done very little other than feed the calves. The regular cowman kept himself to himself and jealously guarded what he saw as his domain. The other men reckoned I wouldn’t learn much from him anyway and even the boss hadn’t really got a good word to say about him. Eventually they fell out and the cowman left and Ian took over the milking. I was then finally taught to milk so I could act as relief when Ian wanted a day off or was busy elsewhere. Unfortunately, shortly after my induction, Ian became gravely ill for several months, which was a blow for him but an amazing opportunity for me.
I walk quietly out into the still-dark morning and jump into my old car. Mercifully it starts first time and I make my way through the lanes to Ian’s farm. Driving at this time of day is strange. There are no lights on anywhere, all the houses and cottages are in darkness and I see nobody on the road.
I arrive in the yard at about twenty to five. Too early really – I can have a few more minutes in bed tomorrow. It’s just getting light as I walk down the track to fetch the cows and there’s a cacophony of bird sound coming from the woods – my first dawn chorus. They’re waiting by the gate, the boss cows at the front and they push the gate open as I release it and make their way, calmly and unhurriedly up to the collecting yard. I follow them, making sure we’ve got them all. I’d missed some one afternoon when it was foggy and had to go back for them, much to Ian’s amusement.
The cows stand quietly in the collecting yard while I turn on the milking parlour and connect up the pipes and valves.
My early milking career was defined by a series of, ‘Whatever you do, don’t….’ warnings.
‘Don’t leave the pipe unconnected and spray milk all over the floor.’
‘Don’t forget to turn the water heater on and fill up the cold water tank during milking or you’ll have to wait for ages at the end to wash down.
‘Don’t forget to double check the valve for the wash cycle at the end or you’ll put cleaning agent in the tank and the whole lot will have to go down the drain.’ This was folk lore on that farm as a previous employee had actually done it and a whole day’s milk had to be thrown away.
And finally, ‘Don’t leave any cows behind in the field!’
I briefly look around the parlour. It’s old fashioned even for the 1970s, with four machines and space for two cows standing either side of each – a so called ‘4:8 abreast’ parlour. I remember just in time to swill down the floor with water to make it easier to clean at the end and then I open the door. The first eight cows make their way in. They’re always the same ones – the boss cows – and they step up onto the concrete standings and start to nudge the feeders with their noses. They know that sometimes they can dislodge a few loose nuts of cow ‘cake’ before I give them their proper ration. I start by cleaning the udders to remove any muck and to encourage them to let down their milk. I’m pleased that my efforts, using udder creams and salves, to sort out the sore teats left by the old herdsman. It makes this a much easier job now and one where I’m less likely to get kicked. I then put the machines on the four cows on the right and feed each cow her cake. And we’re off. The jars fill slowly with the fresh creamy milk and I stand back and watch. It’s just after five am and I’m completely on my own.
As the flow of milk slows, I pick up the ‘teat dip’ – a plastic cup with iodine solution in it and move towards the first cow to finish. She’s a good milker but at the end of her lactation now, so we’ll be drying her off soon so she can have a rest before she calves and it all starts again. I remove the machine, dip her teats and push the lever forwards to open the gate in front of her. She walks slowly out, through the passageway and back out to the holding yard. Her milk whooshes and gurgles through the pipes into the tank as I release it and I place the machine on the cow on the left. I do the same with the other three so I’m left with four cows milking and four empty stalls. It’s now time to bring in the next four and the process repeats until I’ve milked all 80 cows.
It takes about two hours and is a deeply relaxing – almost cerebral – process, driven entirely by routine. The same cows come in pretty much in turn each time, the boss ones first and the timid ones last. ‘Panda’ is always last and I have to go out fetch her. She got her name because her pedigree name is ‘Preston Castle 49’ or PC 49.
As I’m washing down, Horace, our tractor driver, peers round the parlour door. ‘Just checking to make sure you got enough milk for your cornflakes?’ he laughs. In his eyes I’ve now gone over to the dark side and become a cowman – not to be trusted and definitely inferior to the rest of the team. But his eyes are twinkling and I know he doesn’t mean it. He told me yesterday that Alistair, Ian’s brother from the other farm who’d been helping us out, told him how much the cows’ health had improved since I took over.
I let the cows back out and walk down to the house for breakfast. It’s a warm sunny morning, one of those days when you feel good just to be alive. Ian’s wife Anne has my breakfast ready and takes the milk jug from me as I step through the door.
‘Horace was worried that I wouldn’t get enough milk for my cornflakes,’ I say.
‘Daft old fool,’ she says. ‘I hope you put him right! Alistair is very happy with what you’ve been doing in the afternoons. And the good news is that Ian’s through the worst and will be home next week.’
I settle down to my breakfast, suddenly aware that I’m very hungry and rather content that my first solo morning milking has worked out so well. But pride comes before a fall…
Some weeks later, the milk recorder is due. She comes to two milkings, one afternoon and one morning, takes a sample from each cow and records her yield. This will only work, of course, if I can recognise each cow. Which I can’t. I know the boss ones and the timid ones and Panda and her mum who’s still in the herd and just as daft, but I can’t recognise them all as Ian can.
The idea is for Ian to sit in the parlour as I milk in the afternoon and tell me who each cow is. We get on fine, the milk recorder takes her little pot of milk from the jar before I release it and records the yield from the gradations on the side. That measurement will be added to tomorrow’s recording to work out each cows’ daily yield. The final job is to put a ‘tail tape’ on each cow with her number written on in permanent black marker, so I can identify them in the morning. It’s a slow job, adding no more than a minute to each cow, but with 80 of them, that’s an extra hour. But it will all be worth it tomorrow.
I arrive early the next morning, about 4.30, so I can get the cows in and get organised before the recorder arrives. As I walk up the track behind the cows listening to the dawn chorus and marvelling at how peaceful the world is at this time, I notice that one of the tail tapes is dangling from a tail. I walk up behind her and stick it back on but as I do so, I notice another and another and one or two where it’s completely gone. My stomach tightens; this is going to be a tough one. It’s rained in the night and these tail tapes are clearly not rain-fast.
I decide to try and wing it, but the recorder notices as soon as the first cows come in.
‘It’s OK, I know these ones,’ I say breezily. She looks unconvinced but we muddle through a few batches. Some I know and some still have their tapes on. And then eventually, we’re faced with a row of completely anonymous cow backsides and tails.
‘Can’t we just ignore these?’
‘Not really, or the records will be incomplete. I’ve got the ear numbers here as well as their herd numbers. Can’t we use those?’
‘Well, we can, but it means scrambling up to the front of each cow to read the tattoos in their ears and the light isn’t very good in here.’
‘Don’t worry, I have a torch in the car!’
I shrug my drooping shoulders. This is going to be a very long job and my breakfast seems a long way off.
I eventually get my breakfast nearly two hours late and Ian is amazed that I struggled through reading ear numbers.
‘How on earth did you see them?’
‘With great difficulty,’ I mutter.
‘I’d have told her to get lost.’
‘Yes but you’re the boss.’
He smiles. ‘Well done anyway. I think we can claim that you’re a real cowman now you’ve survived a milk recording.’
‘Just don’t say that to Horace!’ I say.
This piece is an extract from Andy’s work-in-progress titled ‘It Wasn’t Meant to be Like This’ – a tale of Farming, Food, People and Sheep.
Find out more about Andy on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Kaye Farms)
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