On the moo-ve!

Hey guys!

Happy wednesday! Wednesdays are my start of my days at the farm and this week is going to be so exciting!

I woke up bright and early (like I've been doing) and headed to the farm. I was really confused because I believed that the 2nd year students would be at the farm again. Turns out there is a rotation system and there wouldn't be students today, only on saturday (and I think next wednesday? I'm not too sure)

So, first day working at the lecheria! Jenny, who's a 4th year student, ran the show. She showed me how to test for mastitis (an infection of the mammary tissue), how to clean the udder, and taught me how to put the milking device on the cow. The hardest thing was definitely taking the mastitis test.

The Mastitis testing material

What you have to do is take this sampling tray with one little dish attached on each of the 4 corners and squirt some milk into each dish. After you're done that, you put this purple dye in it, swirl it around, and then look to see if any milk is sticking to the dish or if it turns into a color that isn't pale purple. You're probably wondering, what's so hard about this? Well, milking a cow is more difficult that it looks. In the movies it just looks like you pull up and down on the teat but I found out that you had to pull down with a certain amount of force and you have to hold your fingers a certain way, and even after you get enough milk there's always the occasional kick that will cause you to spill you milk. People say not to cry over spilt milk, but after trying to milk a cow for about 7 minutes only to have the tray kicked out of your hands makes you want to challenge this saying.

Once you've finally taken the mastitis test and the cow is clean, you open up a door and allow a calf feed for about a minute or two to stimulate milk production. These little guys go to town and suck up all the milk they can! You have to spray them with a hose to get them off. Once the calf is out and you shut the door between the cow and the calf, you have to hose off the teats and make sure there isn't any saliva left. They you use a solution of water and alcohol (2% of the entire bottle is alcohol so it's not potent at all) and dunk each teat in the mixture quickly. You let that dry for about 3 seconds and then you go and dry them off using a paper towel. Now is the fun part. The next step is to put on the milking device. It's basically a pump with four tubes, one for each teat, that uses suction to milk the cow. You have to turn it on by turning this little arrow on the hose connecting it to the overhead tubes where milk is brought to the container. Then you hold the center of it under the cow and put the tubes on each teat, one by one. The pump stays on for 5 minutes and is then taken off. The cows have food throughout this process so they don't mind for the most part.

The milk pump

The milking stall

Me milking a Jersey Brahman hybrid

Now, not only did I get to milk a bunch of cows (this was the number one thing that I wanted to do on this internship) but I also milked some animals that you wouldn't find in New Jersey, or anywhere on the US Eastern seaboard.

That's right. I milked not one, but two water buffaloes. 

A mama buffalo I named Buffy (I'm unoriginal)

 These guys were huge! They were a lot heavier than the cows and their feet were huge! Luckily I didn't have to test them for mastitis since they don't get it, so I didn't get kicked. We did everything else that's in the regular milking process and these guys were so much easier to take care of than the cows. The best part about the water buffaloes? Their babies are adorable and love people (compared to the calves who just ran away).

This little guy's name is Swithers and he wasn't afraid to rub up against me.

These little guys were sucking on my fingers and the tie on my apron. They were hungry!

#selfieswithwaterbuffaloes

Wilson (the smallest and hairiest) and Swithers

I had a great time milking them! Once all the animals were milked, Jenny showed me how to put information about how much milk each cow produced onto a special computer program for dairy farmers. It was really interesting! After that, I worked with another 4th year student named Claudio on the grazing system. We went on different plots of the pasture, threw a 12in by 12in square made out of pvc, measured the depth in the area, cut the grass in the square, weighted it, and then recorded the results. Once we were done Jenny brought the brahmen cattle out to feed.

After working at the farm, I took a quick shower (a quick and cold shower), got changed into clean clothes, ate lunch, practiced a little pool (I'm going to be just as good as the other students by the end of this internship!), and went to a spanish lesson. I'm starting to understand the past tenses and preterite so that's really helpful! Once I was done with spanish I went to dinner with Paula, Lina, Marianna, Arnaldo, and Daniel. It's fun to sit with them because even though they're all a lot older than me they understand me, especially the girls. They're all interns like me, so we've made a small family. Marianna is from america and she speaks spanish perfectly so she's often my translator/ big sister who makes sure I don't humiliate myself by saying the wrong words. Lina is the eldest and is the mother of the group. She's so nice to everyone and does her best to help me with spanish. Paula is like my aunt since her and Lina are both from Colombia and are basically sisters. She's a lot quieter but she is really fun to be around. 

Dinner ended and Paula, Lina, and I went to the game center to play, you guessed it, pool!

Well, it's really late and I need to be ready to go milk some cows and buffaloes in the morning! Good night guys!

-Allie