Things Have Gotten Easy... Not!

Just when we thought things had settled down, they got complicated again.  When we tested the milk last Friday, it looked like the mastitis wasn't improving so we used an antibiotic that you squirt into the affected teet.  That seemed simple. We've been milking out that quarter separately and throwing it away, along with an extra milking for that quarter in the afternoon.  So we only lost one quarter — one gone for four days, jerky got one, and we got the other two.  Then we talked to the lady from the diary and she said we should have thrown all the milk out for four days.  Dang.  Today is the four-day mark, so our blunder is almost behind us, and we haven't had any problems.  The good news is that when we tested the milk this morning, it looked really good.  I think we have beaten the mastitis.

We talked to the vet about getting some regular stuff done and he asked about the calcium we gave Christina when she had milk fever.  He said that the way we gave it to her can be really irritating and give them abscesses.  We had noticed something on her neck, but today when we looked closer, it looked nasty.  Hard lumps at the bottom of her neck and possibly even an open area in the skin.  Ack!

I've got to tell ya, I am an educated person and I'm used to feeling competent.  This learning curve with farm animals is humbling.

Our grain corn has dried so we ground it up and made cornbread.  We used our same old recipe, but it tasted noticeably different.  The flavor was more pronounced and it was sweeter.  Normally I like lots of honey on my cornbread, but I prefer this bread with only butter.  It has a distinctive corn flavor, not strong, but perhaps more complex. We have declared it a winner.

Our first sour cream this freshening.  Now we are completely stocked in dairy stuff.  This sour cream is thick, but isn't as uniformly smooth as the store-bought stuff.  I warmed up some cream to 86F, add a "fresh" starter, and let it sit for 24 hours.  At 12 hours, it still seemed kind of liquid, so I put it in a water-bath in a crock pot, warmed it back up, and gave it a good stir.  The next morning it was thick.