Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [18]
Before applying the milker, we washed each cow’s udder with a cloth and warm soapy water. This removed any caked dirt or manure, but it also stimulated her to let her milk down. By the time you returned with the milker, beads of milk were forming at the end of each teat. Our De Laval Milkers were composed of a stainless steel bucket that sat flat on the floor and was capped with a detachable top sprouting several sets of hoses. One set was plugged into the overhead vacuum pipe. The other two hoses—a narrow black “pulse tube” to provide vacuum, and a larger clear tube to carry the milk—were connected to a shiny silver claw from which radiated four hollow rubber tubes called inflations. The inflations were collared by individual stainless steel shells that created a potential space wherein the air pressure was alternately lowered and released by means of a revolving mercury switch and a wonderfully named unit called the pulsator. The pressure changes drew the milk from the teats through the inflations. Almost immediately after you opened the vacuum valve and swung the inflations into place, a white trickle appeared in the clear tube, and shortly a steady wash of milk was pulsing into the pail. If the cow was a good long milker, you had time to go scrape cow pies into the gutter or perform some other small chore before she was ready to have the milker removed. Sometimes you’d hear a suck-whooosh! followed by a muted clatter, and when you got back to the stall the milker had been kicked to the cement and was vacuuming straw chaff while the cow flicked her ears in irritation.
If the cow was a regular kicker, I’d stick right with her, pressing the top of my head into her flank and weaving my left arm in front of her near leg and behind the udder to grip the large tendon just above the knee of the far leg. When the cow raised her near leg to kick, I pressed my head in hard, hung on tight, and raised my left shoulder to keep her from getting a hoof over. Usually after about three or four rounds, she’d give up. But now and then you got a cow heavily into bovine karate, and you’d have to take additional measures. Some farmers used a piece of binder twine to tie the cow’s tail to a nail driven into a beam overhead. Others had someone else hold the cow’s tail in a twist until she milked out. Some farmers used hobbles. Others designed medieval anti-kicking devices. We once had a cow who treated every milking as an audition for the Rockettes. We tried everything I mentioned above plus a few other tricks. Nothing worked. Night after night she peeled the milker off and stomped it to the straw, occasionally nailing one of us in the thigh, or flicking our ears with her dewclaws. Dad must have been talking about her at the feed mill, because some farmer lent him a homemade anti-kicking tool, which was basically a giant horseshoe-shaped clamp that fit around what you might imagine as the cow’s waist. The clamp was held in place by means of a screwjack apparatus.
Dad put the clamp in place and snugged it down. Then he attached the milker, and the cow kicked it off immediately. He tightened the clamp a few more twists. She kicked the milker off again. I have never heard Dad cuss, but he must have been close. I will say that by the third time he gathered up the milker unit, he had developed a firm set to his jaw. Taking a deep breath, Dad gave the handle two more vigorous twists, at which point the cow collapsed in a heap atop the milker. The cow was fine, if flustered, but it took us the better part of ten minutes to tug that milker out from beneath her.
Dad hung the clamp on the wall. It dangled there for a few months until the man came to pick it up, and we never did get that cow to stop kicking.
When the milk thinned out and streaked through the clear main hose like white raindrops wisping across a windshield, you cut the vacuum by twisting a petcock and lugged the suddenly heavy milker to the walk. Occasionally a cow topped the pail, but Dad never went crazy pursuing production. He’d add a little salt and mineral to the cow feed, but