Dairying Dictionary

Before I get too deep in farming stories, I think a few terms should be explained.


(Edit: This post is really long. I'm sorry.)

General Livestock Terms

• Calf: A young or newborn cow. The term "calf" is typically used for any animal under 1 year. There are bull calves and heifer calves - bulls are boys, heifers are girls.
• Weanling: A calf who has been weaned off of milk, and is eating hay and grain as their main source of nutrition. 
• Heifer: An animal from about 1 year until she calves.
• Springer/Springing Heifer: A bred, confirmed pregnant heifer.
• Cow: A full-grown female bovine. Cows can't be called "cows" until they have had their first calf. Also, cows can't produce milk until they've calved. 
• Dry cow: A cow who has had at least 1 calf and is currently not producing milk. Cows are typically bred to calve at 1-year intervals, and when they're about 7 months pregnant, they "dry up" - that is, stop producing milk. They start producing milk again when they calve.
• Fresh cow: A cow who has just calved and is producing colostrum - a high-antibody, high-protein milk that is fed to newborn calves at birth to give them immunity against calfhood diseases. 
• Dam: No, not a cuss word, but the mother of a calf. 
• Sire: A bull - the father of any given calf. There are hundreds of sires available to breed cows, and over 70% of breedings in the US are the result of artificial insemination. Some popular Ayrshire sires are Burdette, Normandin, and Reality. 

All proven sires have "proofs" - tests that show the heritability of the traits they can pass on to calves. Farmers look at these proofs and select bulls that will improve on the cow's faults - for example, if a cow is really short, a farmer would choose a bull that has had tall daughters. 

• Semen: A straw of semen has thousands of sperm and is used to artificially inseminate cows. Semen straws are purchased from AI stud farms and are stored in liquid nitrogen, where they never go bad - a straw of semen stored in liquid nitrogen never expires. Farmers can purchase "sexed" semen, where they are 99% guaranteed a heifer calf. 

Farm Buildings

• Calf barn: The place where we house our young calves, up to 3 months of age. Our calf barn is set up like this: 

Our bottle calf barn - the black circle is our small feed silo. 

The calf barn is where bottle calves, up to 3 months of age, are housed. There are 10 stalls where calves are tethered individually with leather or plastic collars and ropes. The stall partitions are wire paneling that allows air flow, and they are framed with wood. We use these to hang bottle racks, which look like this (the top hook hangs over the partition):

Individual Bottle Rack, Side View

The empty square in to the right of the stalls is an addition, built on last year, that can be used for 5 more stalls. The partitions haven't been added as of yet, so we're currently using it as an additional weanling pen or for extra bottle calves that we don't have stalls for. 

• "Lower Hill" Pen: The pen where we house weanlings right after they've been moved from the calf barn. It has a small pasture so they can run, and a little open-front barn. 
• "Back Alleyway" Pen: Another weanling pen, where calves are moved after they have stayed in the lower hill pen. This pen is located in the main barn.
• "Alleyway" Pen: The pen where cows give birth. Also called the maternity pen, although the cows are only there for the very end of their pregnancy. 
• Milk House: The room that houses the bulk tank, the office, and the various chemicals used to sanitize the hoses and pipes. Also, this is the room where we mix milk replacer to feed calves. 
• Milking Parlor: Our parlor is a pit-style herringbone parlor. That means it looks like this:

Pit-style Herringbone. It looks like the ribs of a herringbone fish. Sort of. 

The parlor workers (or milkers, or "milk technicians", as my Uncle calls them) stand in the center aisle, which is lowered so that the cow's udder, when standing in the stalls, is at about shoulder-level or a little below. It's easier to clean and attach milkers at that height.

The cows enter from the back (right side) and leave through the front (upper left-hand corner). The four long diagonal lines (two on each side) are swinging doors that we can open and close as needed. The parlor holds 8 cows at a time. A group of 8 cows is casually referred to as a "bunch" when it comes to milking.  

We milk at 6 in the morning and 5 at night. There are typically two people needed per milking, and it takes a little over 2 hours to milk all 85 cows.  

• TMR Barn: (See "Dairy Nutrition Terms" for TMR definition) The TMR barn itself has headlocks, which don't actually lock unless we want them to. We only lock them to do herd checks or vaccinations. The rest of the time, cows can come and go as they please. There are 90 headlocks. The cows put their heads and necks through the headlocks to eat - the TMR is served just in front of the headlocks. That way, cows can't step on any of their meal and they don't have to fight for space to get in to eat. 

The rest of the barn is what's called a "pack bedding" style of housing, which looks just like it sounds. When the barn needs fresh straw, we bed it down with the fresh bedding over top of the old bedding. The barn is scraped out every few months as needed, and then new bedding is put in. 

• The House: This is the house at the main farm. 
• Home: The house where my family lives. 

Dairy Nutrition

• Feed: Contains various grains, including corn, oats, and complete pelleted feed. 
• Starter: A high-protein, molasses-coated feed that we feed to young calves less than a month of age. The smell and taste gets them started eating feed.
• Grower: A slightly less high-protein, non-coated feed that is fed to calves over 1 month of age. Fed to calves until about 5 or 6 months of age.
• Hay/Alfalfa: Pretty self-explanatory. Alfalfa is cut a few times a year, as it grows back quickly. First-cutting hay is the lowest quality, with more stems than leaves. Stems contain lignin, a difficult to digest starch, that's not very tasty. Second-cutting hay is slightly higher-quality, with more stem than leaves but a not by such a large margin as first-cutting. Third- and fourth-cutting hay are the best, with a lot of tasty leaves and a little stem. 
• Milk Replacer: A powdered milk, with several additives, that is mixed with water (kind of like baby formula) and fed in bottles, at least on our farm. (Some farms feed milk replacer from buckets.)
• Tube Feeder: Sometimes, when calves are born, they don't have a "suckle" instinct to help them drink their bottles. If a calf can't drink their colostrum, they run the risk of contracting calfhood diseases due to lack of immunity. To solve this problem, we use a tube feeder, which looks like this: 

Esophageal, or Tube, Feeder

A long, hollow plastic tube slides down the esophagus of the calf, allowing milk to flow directly into the abomasum (the only stomach a calf has at birth). Interestingly enough, calves have an "esophageal groove" that allows them to breathe and drink at the same time, up until the age of 3 months, when this groove stops functioning and the calf has to essentially choose between breathing and eating and is forced to do one at a time. That's when we wean them. 

• TMR: "TMR" stands for "Total Mixed Ration". A TMR contains all the nutrients a cow needs to remain healthy and produce milk. Our TMR is made up of corn*, corn silage*, haylage*, soybean meal, and water, all mixed together using a giant feed mixer. This is mixed once daily, in the evenings, and half is used then with the remaining half to be re-mixed and fed for breakfast in the morning.

Milking Terms

• Milker/Milking Unit: The milker has four cups, each of which have a rubber lining. These cups have a gentle suction provided by a pulsator - the pressure on the cow's teat is similar to the pressure you would feel if you grabbed your index finger and squeezed gently. Each milker has a plastic tube that leads to a milk line. All of the cow's milk is put into the same line, which leads to the bulk tank. 
• Milk Technician: My Uncle's fancy term for the people who milk cows. Most people just call them "milkers". 
• Pre-Dip: A tincture of iodine that is put on the cow's teats, left to sit for 30 seconds, and wiped off with a towel. This dip kills bacteria that are on the teat and prevents them from entering the milk line.
• Post-Dip: A thicker tincture of iodine that is meant to stay on the cow's teats until the next milking. It, too, is antibacterial, and is put on after the cow is finished being milked. Before the next milking, the teats are thoroughly washed before being re-sanitized prior to the attachment of the milking unit. 
• Teat: Cows have four teats, each hanging on the bottom of the four quarters of a cow's udder. The teat has a muscle called the "sphincter muscle" that keeps the teats from leaking when they are full of milk. This is the part of the udder that the milking unit attaches to. 
• Udder: The milk-holding part of the cow, located between the rear legs. The fore udder attaches to the body wall of the cow, forward of her back legs. The rear udder attaches high on the back end of the cow, just under her vulva. 

The udder, from side and rear views, showing the two main ligaments of the udder. 

The udder is divided into quarters by two main ligaments: the median suspensory ligament, which divides the udder in half lengthwise, and the lateral suspensory ligament, which crosses the median suspensory ligament widthways, dividing the udder into quarters.  

• Blind/light Quarter: A quarter of the cow's udder that has stopped producing milk or produces less milk than the other quarters. This can be caused by both injury and infection. 
• Bulk Tank: The giant tank, located in the milk house, that holds all the milk produced by the cows. Our bulk tank holds 1,000 gallons of milk at a time, and the milk man comes to empty the tank once a day. He collects two milkings' worth of milk at a time - the previous evening's and the current morning's milk. 
• Holding Pen: The area just outside the back doors of the milking parlor where cows are held prior to being milked. 
• Mastitis: An infection or inflammation of the udder caused by bacteria. Mastitis can be caused by bacteria or the environment. There are many different kinds of mastitis-causing pathogens (staph aureus, strep agalactiae, and mycoplasma), and there are a few different types of mastitis:

• Clinical, which is easily seen and diagnosed

• Subclinical, which is difficult to see and is usually caught by a dramatic decrease in production
• Acute mastitis
• Chronic mastitis, which usually results in the cow being culled from the herd 

Mastitis can be treated with antibiotics, and usually clears up within a week or so. During the time of treatment, all milk from the treated cows is dumped, so that it cannot go into the human food supply. Any milk from cows treated with antibiotics does not enter the food system. This is illegal and punishable by law. When you buy milk from the store, you can absolutely guarantee that it is 100% antibiotic-free. 

Milk is one of the most highly-regulated and tested foods in the U.S., undergoing at least 10 tests for antibiotics or bacteria during its processing - at least one at the farm (before it is put in the tanker truck with milk from other farms), and at least one before the tanker truck is emptied at the processing plant. 

• Dump Milk/Treated Cow Milk/Fresh Cow Milk: Milk from cows who are sick, recently fresh, or treated with antibiotics. Dump and treated cow milk are thrown down the drain and not fed or used, and fresh cow milk is fed to newborn and other young calves. 

Farm Equipment

• Skidloader: Some people call this a "skidsteer". A skidloader is a relatively small, compact vehicle - about the size of a smart car, or maybe a little larger - that has implements and attachments that can be used for various jobs around the farm. 

The most common attachment is the bucket, which is used to move hay, straw, feed bags, young children...pretty much anything that can fit in the bucket. Another implement, a long spear, is used to move round bales by spearing the bale and picking it up. There is also a tire, cut in half, that can be attached to the skidloader and used to scrape manure. Skidloaders are very versatile and extremely useful - we have two at the farm. 

• "Ranger": Our family's farm truck, a 1980-something Ford Ranger with over 100,000 miles. Up until last year, this truck ran without sans muffler, fuel gauge, and speedometer, though the muffler has been replaced and the speedometer fixed. This is potentially the most reliable vehicle I've ever driven. It's loud, it doesn't move very fast, and it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it gets you from Point A to Point B every time, no problem. (It even grows a garden of weeds in the back during the summer, if you forget to scrape the sod from the bed. Very pretty when you're driving, and the weeds are blowing in the wind.) 
• Stock Trailer: A 20-something foot trailer that can be hooked to a truck or tractor. It has a partition in the middle that divides the trailer in half widthways. We use this trailer to move heifers from farm to farm, or to haul supplies and cattle to the state and county fairs. 

I wanted to explain these terms because there's a decent chance I'll end up using them a lot in my blog posts, and it's just going to be easier to refer you to this "dictionary" than explain something every time I use a term. If there's something technical that comes up, I'll explain it in that post, but I think I've covered all the bases. 

- Eileen