Take a Paws, page-38057

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    My first ever cow, was an old Jersey. She was previously owned by an old Colonel who was really kind.
    He never sent them to the abattoir, but when they reached the end of their days, he would put them down quickly.

    We had this beautiful cow who was in calf when we got her. I shared her with a relative who lived next door. She was big, but totally docile and gentle.
    I would milk her in the mornings and Aunty in the afternoons. She walked between our small farms.
    Those were the days in England when we were trying to lead The Good Life and be self sufficient.

    My, did she milk! I had gallons every day. I had a hand cranked cream separator, that was hard work, I am struggling to recall all of this.
    We had 6 young pigs in the barn, they were fed the whey and I set a big pan of full cream milk on the Aga and when the cream reached the top, I would scoop it off for clotted cream.
    I also made ice cream. I had an old churn for butter, but the butter always smelt of cow.
    We made a soft cheese as well. Heavens it seems like another life, looking back. Now I think I am getting dementia.

    I remember one day, going to the village bank, I was still wearing the old tweed jacket that I had put on in the morning and I suddenly realised that I stunk of cows milk....nice

    We kept all of our veggie scraps and mixed them with milk and bran, I cooked it on the stove, it smelt awful. I would give this to the chooks or was it the pigs?

    We used to go to the local bakery on Saturday afternoon and they gave us sacks of left overs, some was great and we used it ourselves and the rest we fed to the pigs.
    We often had dead chickens which the damn foxes would kill, just bite their heads off and leave them in the paddock, so we just chucked them into the pig pen. That was a very bad mistake, because these nasty pigs liked them and when the chooks walked into the barn, they would drag them through the bars and kill them, poor things.

    We also got some fertile turkey eggs, which we put in a home made incubator in the kitchen on top of our fridge. They all hatched!
    We fed them with veggie scraps plus some pellets. Lovely odour in our kitchen haha.
    Then we moved them into a barn and reared them, but when it got near Christmas, we had to deal with them.
    So we read up on it and apparently THIS IS HORRIBLE we read that you should put a broomstick over their neck, tread down hard and PULL.
    Well that did not work, so in the end we had to shoot them in the head with an air gun, gross!
    But I have never tasted such delicious turkey in my life.

    I have so many other tales which I could tell, but lets leave it here, I am sure this is enough yuk for today.

    But luckily I never had to deal with a Jersey bull. There is another breed, which I cannot remember the name of just now, they are very small black cattle and I was told that the bulls were really fierce, you may know what breed they are?


 
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