Milking cows - an expose...

I like milking cows.

Despite the 3:30am starts and my fingers being so swollen now that I can no longer wear my wedding ring there's something enjoyable about it. It's not the fact I'm groping cow's teets all day that does it, I think it is because it is like squeezing a stress ball for 5 hours a day.

I may wake up barely able to move my fingers in the morning, but when the first cow comes mooing to me and the milk starts flowing I soon forget the pain. I've managed to beat my four a day habit and am now managing to milk 14 a day without any problems. The most I've managed in two hours was nine and a half (for some reason they didn't want me to finish the last one all by myself - it was probably because I was starting to look like Ozzy Osbourne with my DT) - they seemed impressed with that.

Contrary to what I believed before I had ever milked a cow, it is not simply moving your hand up and down which produces a torrent of white liquid, it is more of a clenching motion. Imagine rolling your fingers down at each joint and then pressing into the palm of your hand as hard as possible whilst moving up and down. It is something like this. You can feel your triceps tense with each squeeze, and the tendons in your wrists start to ache as the morning or afternoon goes on.

Mind you not all cows are equal. There are a wide variety of different teets, some are long and thin (usually very easy), some are small and thin (ridiculously difficult especially if you have big hands), some are thick and long (a little bit tough, but not too bad - the downside is you usually end up with blisters on your index fingers), and those that are thick and small (once again extremely difficult). The amount of cows with superfluous nipples when compared to humans is quite astonishing. It is not unusual for them to have more five or six teets sometimes. Obviously these teets don't work and are generally just there to throw you off your stroke (so to speak you filthy minded individuals). Some of the teets produce a constant flow of frothy milk that comes up and splashes you in the face when it hits the bucket while others produce a fine stream of the white stuff which leaves you straining over the bucket for a good half an hour. Some are tough to milk and others aren't - you can rarely tell before you get a grip on them.

But in general cows are nice creatures anyway (not their ugly male counterparts however). It always reminds me a little of hometime at a boarding school when I head down to the milking pen as the Bezerros (baby cows - amended spelling to be correct now...) are kept separately all day and this is the only time they get to see their mums. The mums enter the pen (with a bit of coercion and Michael Jackson) and after they have chilled out a bit start to moo to their children. I've realised that they've got several different kind of moos. There is the more commonly known 'moo' which just seems to be something they do in their own time, there is the grunting 'moo' which seems to be when they are calling for their children, and of course the more sultry 'moo' to try and coax the bull into only having eyes for her. Once we decide to milk a cow we let the bezerro out of its pen and watch it try to find its mother - it generally knows who it is (apart from one cow which tries to feed from every cow much to their annoyance). Once found, we let it suckle a small amount of milk (there's obviously a fine line between feeding the children and letting them drink your profits) before tying a rope around its neck and tying it to its mothers front legs. We then tie up the mother's back legs so she can no longer move. Once this is done she is powerless to stop us having our wicked way with her. The bezerros always call to their mum's. It's quite sweet in a way.

My ability to tie up these hefty heffers is getting better and better. I can tie a slipknot round their ankles and the babies' mouths faster than they can run away from me (just the way I like it). Once I have done the deed and let them run away from me the filthy creatures.

Whilst my opinion of cows has gone up highly through waking up to them every morning, my opinion of chickens has gone down rapidly. I see them every day scrabbling through cow shit and urine eating it and gobbing it down. They're horrible animals.

On the subject of bovine excretions, I am slowly getting used to being covered in cow poo. The worst moments come however when you are tying up their hind legs and you suddenly see their tail lift up in the air. Then you know you're in trouble - you're either going to be on the receiving end of some fecal matter or a golden shower. Not sure which is better. There have been times when I've run away like a girl I must be honest. Every day when I come home Cristina quickly orders me to have a shower and leave my clothes outside. It's odd I can't smell any difference, I'm probably used to being surrounded by it all day.

On average we fill about 500 litres a day by hand three of us milking together day in and day out. Every day I try to beat the amount of cows I did the day before and love to milk those dirty cows more and more. We fill up 50 litre urns through a filter which skins off the cream from the top which we then put in a bowl and give to the cats and dogs - possibly where the phrase 'the cat that got the cream' came from. Maybe not, but it's a nice thought.

At the end of the day to some up my opinions of milking cows:

If there's no shake in your milk you're doing it wrong.

The search for the missing Bizerros

Me trying to get Daniel used to the pony... Honest..

After an unsuccessful morning trying to get Daniel used to riding his pony (it didn't work, he's a mechanic at heart and loves the tractor) Cristina's dad Carlinho saddled up a horse and told me to get on the pony as we were to go and look for bizerros. I hadn't ridden a pony before, but having ridden horses a few times thought that it couldn't be too different. I did look like a bit of a prat however as the pictures testify.

We set off at a slow pace exiting the main part of the farm and crossing through a stream at the bottom of the horses' paddock. We climbed the steep bank on the other side and started to patrol the field with Carlinho looking left and right in search for the bizerros and me taking in the scenery. Once again I had left my new glasses at home in fear of them getting scratched or broken. I wasn't too sure how much help I was going to be on this trip. I was ill-equipped and unprotected from the sun at its highest – I was going to burn and I knew it.

Once we hit the open field, it became apparent to me that riding the pony may not have been the wisest choice. For those of you unaware a horse has much longer legs then a pony and as such for every one step a horse takes a pony has to take two or three. Therefore my pony was permanently at a canter trying to keep up with the horse. Add this to the lack of padding on the saddle and you can imagine that after a short while my behind was a bit sore and I my fist clenched from having to pull hard on the reins to keep the pony in check. This obviously led to a rather amusing sight of me stopping, starting, cantering, walking, and bopping up and down on the saddle. It appeared as though my plight hadn't gone unnoticed as Carlinho pulled over (if you can do such a thing on a horse) and offered to exchange vehicles. I gratefully accepted his offer and climbed aboard the nicely padded horse saddle. With Carlinho now leading on the pony and me following behind on the horse it was much easier for me to keep up.

Now I have to be honest that my Portuguese isn't that great, and although I'd picked up that we were searching for bizerros, I hadn't quite figured out what a 'bizerro' was. I enquired to a perplexed Carlinho (we'd already been searching for a good half an hour) what exactly we were searching for to which he replied 'bizerros' to which I replied 'yes I know, but what is a bizerro?'. After a puzzled expression in which he was obviously trying to find the most basic words for me to understand, he said 'a baby cow'. Now you may have thought that this was obvious being that it was a dairy farm and they only kept one sort of animal there, but logic has never been my strong point.

We carried on for another 15 minutes until we hit a wide river. Carlinho trekked down on his pony managing to get it to navigate the steep bank and cross through the water over to the other side. While he was doing this I was still trying to get my stubborn horse to go down the same path. No matter how many times I dug my heels into it's hindquarters it wouldn't budge. It kept on flicking its ears back at me in what seemed like anger. Carlinho was over the other side chuckling to himself muttering words of encouragement (I assumed). After what seemed like ten minutes of inertia on horseback I slammed it into reverse (pulled back hard on its reigns) and found a different route down the riverbank eventually making my way across to the other bank. Once there, after two minutes of searching this narrow stretch of land Carlinho decided that the calves were definitely not there. Much to his amusement we headed back to the river and I had to endure another attempt at getting my stubborn horse to go down the river bank.

An hour passed until we found the calves, and at this point I was truly burnt red. There were five of them all huddled together next to the fence. Carlinho indicated to me that he would open the nearest colchete (gate) which led to the the main grazing fields, and stay by it whilst I chased the bizerros towards it. With him standing there the calves wouldn't run past him and would have to pass through it. Now, despite my earlier apparent lack of skills driving a horse, I'm not atrocious. I mean I'm not amazing, but I have rounded up cattle on horseback at a fair pace before. So I circled round behind the calves and started to push them back towards the open gate. The sight of the horse, and me shouting and making lots of noise (they don't like that) urged them forward and they bolted. I had to steer the horse from left to right to make sure none of them broke lose from their little herd. I managed this successfully and got four through the gate, the last calf saw Carlinho and turned at a right angle and ran in the opposite direction. We both pushed our horses fast up the hill and moved the calf back through the colchete before closing it behind us. At a slow pace we then chased the calves all the way back to the milking pens and their mothers' comforting moos.

Our work done we headed to the farmhouse for a refreshing drink of water (you'll be grateful to see that there is no mention of alcohol in this post!) and some shooting practice as I was to get ready to help kill a bull over the next couple of days...