The Milk Cows

The old barn had a shed on the east side of it with stanchions for milking cows,so Morris agreed to milk some cows for extra income for the Ranch/farm.

He and Uncle John went to the stockyards in Joplin where they had an auction every Fridays, and bought several cows. Then later, Morris saw an ad in the paper for 6 cows that a man down around Webb City had for sale, so they went down to look at them.

The man had a small acreage at the edge of town and sold milk right from the farm there. He was getting older and had decided to quit milking. John and Morris decided to buy them all, and as they were loading them into the truck, the old man said, “Maybe I should tell you their names as they come into the barn better if you call them by their names.” He said, “This it Mable, and this is Whitie, this is Gladys, this is  Lightening, and so on. The name Lightening ,just slid right by him.

With this addition, Morris had 18 cows and was milking them all by hand. Morning and night. That was after working on the ranch, and farming the fields on the Old Johnston Home place the rest of the day! Later he did get two milking machines.

 That evening he starts calling them in to milking, there were only 3 stanchions, so he could only get that many in at a time. Feed was placed in the trough, which the cows loved, and they were eager to come in and eat it and they usually knew just which stanchion was their place in the line also. As they put their head in the stall, he would close the bar to hold them in place if they decided they were NOT going to have anyone milk them!

He had milked all but “Lightening”, who was a little Jersey cow. Jersey’s are all small built but they are noted for giving lots of creamy rich milk! They are always gentle and easy to handle. She was already in the stanchion and enjoying her sweet sorghum coated feed. He put his stool down and placed the bucket under her udder, then grabbed a tit in each hand, when she swiftly kicked him off his stool!

Wow! He lifted the kickers from the wall where they were hanging and placed one on each back leg and place the bucket and stool back in place and started again, when Wham! She did a little dance and had those kickers off and kicked him against the wall!

This time he decided he would just tie that back leg to a rope and the rope to the wall behind her! That time she just flat out laid on him! That was when he had the bright idea to turn the little calves on her and let her feed them rather that feed them on a pail! She was so small that with four of them on her they would literally lift her off the floor and walk her around. Oh she hated that and was not so eager to come into the barn and place her head in the stanchion even though she loved the feed! But that took care of that problem.

Later Morris said…”Always listen carefully to what people say to you!”