Reminder of why I hate horses and never milked cows!!!

Last week was the full circle of livestock care for me. Ending the week with the great Sunday cow chase!! LOL

A very good friend went on a four day vacation to Branson, Mo. First time he had been away for more than over night in over eighteen years. I did all of his farm chores. That included milking his 38 Holsteins in a stanchion barn. The biggest PIA was the fact he does not have a barn cleaner. You have to push/shovel the barn 3-4 times each day to keep it clean. Let me tell you I did not have to be rocked to sleep the first few days. Carrying the milkers cow to cow and the bending over to put them on/take them off, very tiring. I kind of got used to it by Sunday. Then on top of the milking he has twenty bottle calves to take care of as well. The other calf chores where not too bad.

So from Wed. to Sunday I started my day at 4 am. Did my chores and then went and did his. By Sat. I was getting done around 10 am. Then start the whole thing over again at 4 PM, usually got done at about 8 pm. Made me feel every day of being 62. LMAO

Then on Friday I got to shoe horses between chores. Great fun!!! Not!!! LOL. My Sister-in-law is taking the grand daughters on a three day trail ride down around Ft. Smith this coming weekend. They also have six other friends that are taking their horses too. So that makes a total of twelve horses all going. They all brought them to my place Friday for a little practice riding around the pastures and fields.

I told the grand daughters that I wanted to check their horse's shoes and feet over before they went on the trail ride. The grand daughters talked to the other girls and they thought it would just be great for me to check all of the horses out. LOL Don't you like how Grandpa get led around by his nose.

The horses of my SIL and grand daughters did not take much just a few loose nails and a trim on one of them. I had just done all of them last month. Two of the other horses had a good job done on them. The other four where a different story. The Farrier that did the work on them should be shoot. He did not fit the shoes correctly. He had tried to just use shoe blanks without sizing them to each individual horse. I got this from the girls that owned the horses. They told me he did not use a forge to shape the shoes. I guess the only thing he knew how to do was CHARGE. He charged them $150 per horse for a terrible job. They do board their horses at a pretty fancy stable north of Chicago. They pay $1000 a month per horse. (They are nice kids whose parents happen to be very well off. My SIL went to college with the parents) Anyway, the guy had really screwed the job up. I noticed a big bay colored gelding was walking real funny like he was lame with just a 75 lbs girl on his back. The guy had a few of the nails too far toward the center of the hoof not in the hoof wall like they are supposed to be. Luckily there was no permanent damage to the horse's feet. I am amazed the horse was acting as well as he was. He is real tame and gentle with the young girl that owns him. So I had to make completely new set of shoes for him. Plus his feet had been trimmed very poorly too. I did take pictures that I showed the girl's parents.

The city girls had a blast helping me make the new horse shoes. I made them from scratch out of 5/8 bar stock. I started keeping some cold rolled bar stock around. It makes a real nice shoe when you are done that will wear great but is still light. They thought I was pulling a trick on them when I went and got the straight bar stock to make the horse shoes out of. The oldest girl about wore her cell phone out taking pictures.

I did let them "help" nail the shoes on too. They had fun. I did too until it came time to milk. I was so stiff that I could hardly stand up straight. I am too old for this stuff.

So they got to have a good ride Friday afternoon and Sat. after the morning rains. All twelve horses are at my place until Thursday. Then a semi truck horse transport outfit is moving the horses down to the ride for them. ( The well off parents treated the others to this service) All the rest will follow down in cars.

So by Sunday night I never wanted to see another horse or milk cow!!!!!

I hated milking cows. Got roped into doing neighbor's chores while he went deer hunting. Only did that one time, declined all other offers.

I really liked our purebred Shorthorns, but not sheep or chickens.

Good hot bowl of SPAM soup'll warm up the old bones and relieve the stiffness...
Let's see some pics...

He milks 38 cows, still using buckets, no pipeline milker? No barn cleaner? And why clean 3-4 times a day? No gutter??? I milked cows for 30 years but it didn't take me long to get modern. Year and a half for the cleaner, maybe five for the first pipeline. He must be a glutton for punishment.

I'm all crops now, & dont really miss the beed cows. I thank'ed the Good Lord often for no dairy animals at all!!!

About the horse shoeing sounds like a lot of work and some sore muscles but PRICELESS memories for you and the kids, and I bet the horses appreciate it too. Those kids grow up to darn fast don't they?

Yep, I grew up on a dairy farm- steady work, way TOO steady.

Guess I just assumed most everyone was in elevated milking parlors by now- but I guess the stanchion barns do have advantages in cold climates. Is he still using bucket milkers? Or a pipeline, and you have to move the unit down the line as you go?

Sounds like you barely had time to make it to Hooters.

Me too, 10 years on a dairy 57-67. We milked between 60-70. Bottled and delivered it too. Best reason I had to go to college.

I want to thank all those who work hard on the farm, so I don't have too.

sounds like you had a full day lol i feel for you, but i did think of something good about it, be glad you wernt born before the auto was invented this would have been a regular occurrence, those

guys back then really had a hard time , grrr, somehow i messed this post up aint sure why this last sentence dropped

JD; You need to share your skills at Living HHistory Farms in Des Moines. You could work the 1800's farm in the morning and 1900;s farm in the afternoon. That way you could show all the school kids that visit what it was really like on the farm. I do appreciate your input on this website. Your skills and knowledge and experience are greatly appreciated....gobble

JD I should have Marilyn read this. She grew up milking somewhere around 95 Holsteins with stanchions and no scraper. They did put in a pipeline when she was in 10th grade so she didn't have to lug the milkers the last two years. This was 40-45 years ago and that was the norm then. Today she won't even look at a cow. Jim

He has a pipeline system. So you just have to move the milkers. The trouble is he has automatic take offs. That is nice in one way in that you don't have to watch the milkers so much but it makes the units heavier.

Tom I feel like I should be in a museum most days. The wife says I should be an exhibit at the mental ward. LOL

HE has a pipeline but there are not really any gutters. Jut a 2 inch step behind the cattle. Then it is flat across the alley to the other row of cows. If you don't push/clean it out several times each day then the manure is so deep that it is real hard to push to the end of the barn.

He does not own the barn or farm he milks on. He has rented it since 1969. He and I went to school together. He did finally buy 80 acres of ground, next to where he rents, ten years ago. HE has a real cheap rent but not much to show for all the hard work now he is in his sixties.

JD, I wish there was a quick inexpensive way to copy your shoeing knowledge and apparently excellent back to me (I'll be 66 in a few days). I know enough to keep the nails outside of the white line, but its been 20+ years since I had enough back to stay under a horse long enough to trim and shoe one. I've read about but never had or watched a shoer make a shoe from bar stock. What a treat for these riders seeing it done right!!!! Congratulations on being tough enough to do both the shoeing and milk 38 cows in the same week!!!

WOW ! You are a man of many skills. Not many of you left in this world.
Very hard for anyone to learn these things today too. Aprenticeships are a thing of the past too.

Nope not into milking cows . Now and then i do take care of my friends beef cows and his PITA SHEEP . and of course his three dogs. The cats fend for them self's . Now everything is done for the most part with the skid steer other them taking the twine off the bales. HE does not aprove with my way but it is faster then walking round and round the bale unwrapping the twine when a sharp pocket knife will get the job done in a min. Two round bales go to the brood cows and one to the fat cows every other day and also the sheep . Check the steer stuffer on the fat cows load up the old silage wagon with 14 scoops of silage and feed the brood cows everyother day and five scoops to the fat cows . Even if i have to grind a load of feed for the most part it is not hard Till the corn crib gets down to where ya have to shovel 2500 lbs of corn .

Grandpa may be stiff and sore, but he gave some kids memories they will never forget.

They are probably still talking about that wonderful grandpa that made shoes for their horses from a piece of straight metal.

Unfortunately, you are right about the farrier, err, shouldn"t call him that, that did the bad job. Lots of folks in it to see how much money they can make and don"t care whether they do a good job or not. BTDT

38 cows would be like a day off around here. I've heard it countless times from many old timers that a little hard work never hurt anybody. 33 years of it hasn't hurt me either.

Grandpa still don't know that the many years ago when he slid that ring on a girls finger that she hooked one through his nose.......yer doomed to be led by it for life once that happens!

Rick.....still being led by his in the form of grandkids....ROFL!

AH, that's what a good Grampa would do. That's what my young grandaughter told me one day when she wanted me to do something for her.

You should enter the world blacksmithing championship, forge 16 shoes from bar stock by yourself, fit and shoe 4 horses in what, 6 hours?

Somewhere among my stash of priceless artifacts(junk pile, to wife) I still have the old square-ended shovel we used to muck out our stanchion barn. We tried to anticipate trouble by watching the cows' tails when they were in the barn: one twitch and we had the shovel at the ready. Didn't work when the cow had the scours, so a water hose was used to flush off the big messes during milking. I may have told the story of how my brother grabbed the shovel and got in place behind a big holstein who seemed to always have the scours: right in the middle of doing her thing she coughed and my brother turned green from the top of his head to the toe of his Blue Gooses. (Our dad told everyone that if he hadn't had his mouth open it would have hit him in the face.)

Anyhow, when the last cow was out of the barn the whole floor was hosed.

I spent 12 of my growing up years looking at the back end of dairy cows. Every morning, every evening; there wasn't time for much else. I've got about 10 years on JD---I can't imagine doing that again twice a day for a week.

My Grandaughter IS the ferrier here. She is certified at 19 and fits or makes all Her shoes too. Like you said, it makes me proud to see her forge and pound out a set of shoes for a horse, or just "fit" factory shoes to a particular animal.

Larry NEIL

The coughing cow routine happened once when I was at the fair- caught an elderly, well turned out lady straight on- she didn't take it as gracefully as she might have. And I suppose my fellow adolescent showmen and I were a little lax in maintaining decorum, too.

I remember we discussed how cool it would have been had it happened about 5 minutes earlier, when Miss Washington went by, in white dress, sash and full regalia. Sandy Hill nee Marth, 3rd runner-up for Miss America in about '66, was a network news anchor for several years in the '70's and '80's.

That's even funnier!

(quoted from post at 17:27:07 11/13/12) You should enter the world blacksmithing championship, forge 16 shoes from bar stock by yourself, fit and shoe 4 horses in what, 6 hours?

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LLA if you would have carefully read JD Sellers first post you would have seen that he said he [u:afd9c33d69][i:afd9c33d69][b:afd9c33d69]made[/b:afd9c33d69][/i:afd9c33d69][/u:afd9c33d69] 1 set of shoes. Don't know where you are from, but around here all of our horses tend to have 4 feet, which would call for 4 new shoes

JD sellers post "[color=darkred:afd9c33d69]I noticed a big bay colored gelding was walking real funny like he was lame with just a 75 lbs girl on his back. The guy had a few of the nails too far toward the center of the hoof not in the hoof wall like they are supposed to be. Luckily there was no permanent damage to the horse's feet. I am amazed the horse was acting as well as he was. He is real tame and gentle with the young girl that owns him. So I had to make completely new set of shoes for him"[/color:afd9c33d69]

LAA I just made one set for the larger horse. The other shoes I was able to just resize and use them. They actually where a high quality shoes just the farrier was a dud. He did not fit them.

As far as shoeing four horses in 6 hours that would have been slow when I was doing it every weekend. The Grand Dads ( Great Grandpa and Great-Great Grandpa) both could make a shoe complete from bar stock in less than five minutes. They would race each other making blank shoes and could flatten the bar, rough shape the U, and put the holes in. I have seen my Great Great Grandpa do 15 in an hour. The thing that is more impressive about that is he was in his mid seventies at the time. He never wasted a stroke with the hammer. He never stopped the hammer. If he needed to look at the work he would bounce the hammer on the anvil rather than waste the energy to catch and hold it. That man forget more than I have ever known about black smithing.

Grew up with laying hens on the floor--no cages back then. Dairy guys milked twice a day, we gathered eggs four times, watered three times in the summer and fed twice all the time. I thought they had it good!

I did not say or imply it could not be done, I said you must be a good blacksmith.

EX 450 Owner -- I told the man he was a good blacksmith, our horses also have four feet, stick it up your tailpipe.

LAA I did not take your post as a complaint/knock. I am way out of practice for doing any speedy shoeing jobs. When we where doing it more regularly we usually could do a horse in 30-45 minutes if the hooves where not in too bad of shape.

Plus there are guys that make my few skills look bad. There is one young lad around here that is just starting out being a farrier. He does real nice work. He usually charges about $100 per horse for completely new shoes.