My cow who nurses on herself

My cow who nurses on herself. My saga of our family milk cow that unlocked the unlimited self-serve buffet and what we did about it.

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Ever seen a cow take advantage of their built-in, self-serve buffet?

Well my cow unlocked the unlimited supply of delicious milk at her hoove-tips.

You heard me right.

Sometimes cows do nurse on themselves. Crazy!

However, it is quite a rare problem to have, so don’t go and start worrying that this’ll happen to your cow too.

This whole journey with Lois has been quite a saga! From thinking Eleanor was stealing milk. To thinking the neighbor goats were nursing on her. To thinking maybe even the neighbor himself was sneaking a snack! Then to finally realizing it had to be her! It has been quite an interesting learning experience.

My cow who nurses on herself

When we brought Lois home in February the problems started the very first day.

She was not halter broken.

And she’s a full grown cow. So we all had a crash course in halter breaking cows that week.

The first day trying to get her into the milking stanchion she broke away from me and got loose on our 20 acre property. It took us maybe 15 minutes to catch her back since she was dragging her lead rope, we didn’t have to get up as close to her.

Then she drug Luke and my brother Caleb on their way back to the stanchion as she tried to break away again. Thankfully they are a lot stronger than I and she did not get away from them.

So over the next few days we used the truck to halter break her.

After that I thought all our problems were over and it would all be magical.

Nope.

She started coming into the stanchion with one quarter completely empty.

I’m talking drained. Shriveled up. Empty.

But then other mornings it would be full.

I immediately thought the heifer calf we brought from Montana, Eleanor, had to be nursing. So I put a weaning ring in and watched them closely. Still not totally sure if she was or not I completely separated them.

But yet again Lois came in with her front right quarter empty.

That night was the night she was up against the neighbors fence where he keeps his goats, and I knew they could come through our fence. So I thought maybe the goats were nursing!

So I put her closer to the house and set up a trail cam.

I excitedly went out the next morning to check the cam and it was off. It had turned off shortly after we went to bed even though the battery was full.

I grew even more suspicious of what in the world could be happening!

I thought maybe even the neighbor himself was coming over here stealing milk!

So I put her in a small pen right next to the house and tried again with the trail cam.

This time there was footage. All night it filmed while she wandered around, slept, ate, drank water. Nothing came in there and stole milk. And yet in the morning when we milked she was empty.

It suddenly dawned on me that the only culprit left was Lois herself.

So I looked back through the footage.

There were several points through the night where she layed down and layed her head way over by her udder and just held still for awhile. The first watch through I thought she was just sleeping. But then I realized she was probably nursing. The video quality wasn’t amazing and the angle was bad, but through seeing that and process of elimination, I came to the conclusion that she had to be stealing her own milk.

I was so discouraged.

Out of all the things it could have been, this was just about the worst option in my opinion.

We could have kept Eleanor from nursing, we could have kept the neighbors goats out better, we could have even called the cops on the neighbor if he was doing it. But I can’t separate Lois from herself! So how was I going to fix this problem?!

So I started reading online.

But so many things I was reading were saying it’s almost impossible to fix this issue and you just have to cull those cows.

I felt heartbroken.

I feel attached to my cows so fast and I already loved Lois.

So I decided to ask one of my online milk cow mentors. Suzanne at Reverence Farms. I told her what had been going on and what I was suspecting Lois of and asked what I should do. She was so helpful and made me feel so much better about the situation and honestly just calm down a little bit.

What I started doing was really working on Lois’s diet. Making sure her rumen was full all the time so she would hopefully not be tempted to nurse. I put her on Chaffehay. We kept them rotating pastures often. I put out regular hay daily with molasses on it. I upped her little milking ration of alfalfa pellets, oats, barley, sunflower seeds.

Then I also just determined in my mind that I was not going to worry about it AT ALL for a whole month. I was going to stop thinking about it, stop checking her udder to see if a quarter felt emptier, stop researching about it.

I was just going to get her into a super consistent calm routine, keep her full, keep her mineral feeder full, and let her get really used to us and her new home.

Y’all. It literally worked.

She stopped nursing.

Slowly but surely she started coming into the stanchion in the morning being completely full more often than not.

Then eventually she just stopped altogether. We were getting such a consistent amount of milk, and she always felt full in that quarter now, so I knew she wasn’t nursing.

We kind of came to the conclusion that she had been stress nursing. Trying to soothe herself. The stress of a big move several hours away to a new home with new cows is a HUGE deal to a cow. They thrive on routine.

I’m not saying this is the how-to of self-nursing cows. It’s just Lois story. But it sure is an interesting one!

Drying off

As we came up on the month I would need to dry her off though, I began to worry again.

Would the stress of stopping our routine make her start nursing again?

How on earth would I dry off a cow that could just nurse whenever she wanted?!

So I decided to dry her off a few weeks earlier than we needed to incase I ran into issues with it and it created mastitis or anything like that. Because then I would need longer to get it cleared up. I just wanted the whole process over with.

We bought a couple different kind of weaning rings and a “cow bra” to have on hand incase she did nurse. I needed to have some plan in place to force her to stop before giving herself mastitis.

The day finally came where we had decided we would stop milking.

I put her near the house so I could keep an eye on her, but not anywhere near her stanchion so she wouldn’t start letting down her milk.

I was trying to keep a balance of keeping her nourished and her rumen full but also stopping supplemental feed to lower her milk supply. We stopped the grains and the Chaffehay. But kept her on fresh pasture and kept giving her hay with molasses drizzled on top.

The plan was that we would not milk for 5 whole days. Then milk her out one last time, and inject the herbal solution called UdderWell into each quarter. And at that point she would be completely done.

That’s exactly what happened.

She did so fabulously well I could have cried.

I kept an eye on her udder during the first 5 days. They were all inflating evenly. I would spray fly spray if they looked irritated from bites.

The 6th morning we milked her out and gave the milk to the pigs and livestock guardian dogs. I injected the UdderWell, which I had been super nervous about, but it was super easy. Then sprayed her with fly spray and put her back out with Eleanor.

All done milking until September when she has her calf Lord willing.

I still check her almost every day (partly because I just freaking love being with my cows).

Her udder still looks even and it’s slowly going down.

It has been such a massive relief that this step is done, that she dried off successfully. Whether or not we would keep her as a permanent family milk cow was all dependent on how hard this process was. If it was impossible to keep her from nursing while dry then she would not be a good cow to keep long term, as heartbreaking as that thought was.

But I am so thrilled with how she’s done and she really has fit right into our little farm so perfectly. This is the place she needed to be, somewhere that would give her a chance to just be calm and be able to get past her stress nursing on her own without being forced.

I do realize she may relapse when she calves, from the stress of it. But if that’s the only time she relapses then I’m totally fine with that. She’ll be being milked at that point anyway and she’ll settle into her routine again and stop.

So, that there is my saga of my milk cow who nursed on herself.

And blessings.

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