Day 2 of A Very Cold January.
The snow stopped early this morning leaving us with 5-6" of un-meltable powder.
The warmest temp today was still less than 15 degrees. Thankfully we haven’t lost electricity, the milker hasn’t frozen, and our kitchen water thawed without incident this morning. Praying we make it through the month with no frost bitten teats on the cows or goats. Sometimes it’s a minor tip that’s damaged and it heals without incident. But the ones that make me fear frostbite are the teats that turn purple the first morning, halfway up the teat. The best case scenario would be that the quarter simply dries off. My experience has been that the outer layer of flesh is dead, and it scabs and bleeds and peels off over the course of a week or so (all while you keep milking), then you’re left with a raw bleeding half teat that’s sore as hell and forms a scab between milkings over the orfice and the scab has to be removed in order to milk the teat. About halfway through this blood stained healing process she’s likely to develop mastitis in the that quarter and you’ll go from having deep compassion for the poor cow to wishing you’d have butchered her after that first morning. Once you live through 1-2 of these experiences you’ll understand my dread of frostbite, or maybe after reading this you’ll build a barn for the 2 nights in 365 that are wickedly cold.
Yesterday I made a Cayenne infused Tallow cream to help add circulation to the teat end. I added Cinnamon for the same reason, plus it smells nice. I really don’t know if it’ll help. The farm dog thought it was a calorie rich snack. I’ve also ordered some powdered teat dip that claims to eliminate the risk of frostbite and with free shipping it’s only like $50 for a gallon. Of course this sounds like highway robbery compared to a regular price of $20ish, but my dread of frostbite makes it sound cheap! Frost bitten ears or tails, they seem to heal without a problem on the newborns. They may look a bit funny and earn the name of Frosty or Ears, but that’s the only abnormality.