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Faunsdale, AL | I don't think I would want to train a hiefer to milk with a machine with a surge milker underneath her. They can have lots of fun with a claw on the end of a hose, much less the whole bucket and all sitting right there!
There's nothing cheap about a single cow/portable milker. I've been looking for the parts to make a real nice one cheaply for a long time. I've made a couple, but have not been nice or very portable yet. I saw something I might try sometime though. Had an air injection pump go bad on a Ford V8, probably 1994 model the other day. I wonder if that pump might work as a vacuum supplier? But if you get the vacuum supply figured out, you still need a bucket, pulsator, vacuum regulator, claw and shells as well as rubber parts to make it all work.
I would try to milk the cow only enough to get the calf sucking, not milk the cow and feed the calf. That way you're training them both at the same time for the way you want to end up, not training them for an interim situation that you hope doesn't last too long before you get the calf suckling on it's own.
As for the cow accepting the calf when the milk starts coming through. I think that is likely to be just a conincidence and the cow settles down and the calf figures it out about that same time. Folks sometimes forget about the one that never took to that one calf. Maybe there's something to it, but it's not a rule that the cow will always take the calf you want to put on her.
I supply quite a few nurse cows to purebred beef breeders in the state who want to salvage the situation when they have a cow with problems, twin calves, cow dies etc. Jerseys are about the best about taking calves, but have had one that never accepted the calf that I was trying to put on her. She would eventually let the calf nurse just as long as there was some feed in her bucket and then WHAM! and she was off! Poor calf probably wondered what he did to deserve it! When she had her own calf, there was never a problem.
Edited by ccjersey 12/3/2012 14:56
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Single cow milking machines
