My jersey freshened 16 days ago, and I am a city girl. So, with 16 days of experience behind my belt I will be happy to share my experience.<<for what it's worth>> :haha:
We milked Isabella out the day after she calved. This was because she was huge and obviously in need of milking. The first day I milked a pint, that was not even close to being enough. The second day I milked a gallon in the morning and a gallon that evening. We froze all the first milk in case we ever had a calf that lost it's mother or for some reason could not get the first milk.
I saw a real difference between the first milk (colustrm?) and the milk that you'd drink. It was a sandy dark color. The real milk is white like you'd expect.
The book I have (Keeping a family Cow) says to wait two weeks to comsume milk from a freshened calf, so, we have been drinking it for two days now. We haven't dropped dead yet.
Last week I had the problem of Isabella not giving any milk hardly at all, even though I could feel that her bag was tight. I discovered (through Homesteading Today) that she was holding back the milk for her calf. So, I seperate her in the morning and milk her at about four in the afternoon. I am now getting over a gallon of milk a day.
I feed her 2 coffee cans of grain (14% protein) and 1 coffee can of alfalfa in the morning and at afternoon when I milk her.
This is working really well for us.
The only real problem I have is the fact that her back teats are pretty short. I can only use two fingers to milk and my hands cramp something awful. Therefore, it takes a good 45 minutes to milk. That does not include the time it takes for me to clean up.
I milk into a plastic 10 quart bucket that I have a wet never before used cloth diaper over the top held down by a really big rubber band (it's a new hair band for the head). I wash her really well with warm water that has 1/4 cup vinegar and a small squirt of dawn. Her bag is always slightly dirty and I take my time in cleaning it, this also helps her let down the milk.
Since I have seperated the calf, when I am milking I let the calf out and around Isabella while I milk, yesterday the milk was streaming out. However, it was strange to be milking and feel the hot little breath of 'sugar' on one side while I milked on the other. She lost interest pretty fast and patiently waited until I was finished and back in the pasture.
Hope my experience helps, I know I would hurtin for certain without 'Homesteading Today'
Arkansas Transplant