Yes, I have actually been home for a few days now (1 week tomorrow), but honestly, very little happened for a while there - the highlight of my first few days back was DVDs at Dani's house and making good pasta sauce for dinner...
However, I've now started working with some very nice dairy cows and the people that own them - Thompsons' Keery Holsteins, if you're interested. It's a cool place to be for farm work, since they keep pedigree cattle for showing as well as milking, and we currently have three calves (I say calves because the owner does, they were born in October/November) to prepare for a show within a week. This will be quite interesting, since as yet they're not halter-trained.
For the non-vets: halter-training means enduring a process vaguely similar to trying to teach your puppy to walk on a leash - only instead of having a puppy-sized animal trying to pull and wriggle itself loose, you have something slightly taller and easily over 6 times as heavy as yourself (and that heaviness resting on relatively small and fairly hard feet) trying to run itself loose by throwing its head and body about in whichever directions currently present themselves. These directions generally seem to be chosen with the aim of reaching an open space where the cow can really get its speed up; however, it should probably be noted that once chosen, the favoured direction will be followed whether or not the person on the end of the halter rope is "obstructing" said direction. Thankfully, since the farmers don't like the potential outcome of a not-particularly strong ~60kilo human attempting to control a slightly wild ~500kilo cow, they've not asked me to halter-train yet, just to stand by, watch and see how it's done (and therefore understand why such training normally begins within a few days of birth).
Ooh - and one of the calves was only entered after I admired it - she'd better place well. :D
So, dairy farming.
(I think you should know that I first typed that as "diary famring". My typing skills have gone down the toilet.)
The milking parlour's pretty cool as these things go, and is centrally controlled by computer. There's a small computer-type unit attached to each cluster (the 4-piece thing that sucks milk out) where you key in the numbers conveniently marked on each cow's back end; the computer records which cows have been milked and how much each gave, etc.; another button starts the vacuum and it stops automatically when the flow slows down enough. Probably all more interesting to me than it is to most other people...
Anyway, I learned a fun fact about how it must be to work in other milking parlours... basically, you're usually on a platform behind and slightly below all the cows so you can easily attach the clusters without having to bend down and gradually kill your back over a few sessions. In our parlour there's a perspex guard sheet behind the cows which extends roughly from spine level to about below the level of the bottom of the thigh. This is a beautifully understated protective measure, which simultaneously stops kicking hindlegs picking up enough of a swing to make an unwary milker suddenly able to lick the back of his own head, and also deflects the fairly frequent showers, golden or otherwise, that occur.
All very sensible. However, many many places prefer to use a few horizontal steel bars in place of the guard sheet. Well, while this reliably prevents kicking... :S
Also saw a couple of cows being AI-ed today. Didn't look like much fun for either the cow or the inseminator (heehee... sounds like a WWF name).
Other than that... not much to add. The cows are fairly tame; even the bull is quiet. There are three very sweet border collies around the place which keep following me looking for attention (I wonder how long this whole dogs-love-me thing will continue after I qualify? Not long, methinks...).
Hand-milking actually requires very firm squeezing. Everywhere you find cows, you will find a thin layer of shit. Tractors are quite easy to drive. My working day is now 9am - 7.30pm roughly. It's now well past my bedtime...
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