I woke again this morning before six and made my way outside. Opening the door of the house I noted that Esse was not bawling, and I could hear the vague ringing of her bell, normally letting me know that she is in the small barn eating on some hay fodder left over from the night before. As I approached the barn paddock the pigs greeted me eagerly and greedily, but I kept moving so I didn’t give them indication that I was going to stop and feed them yet.

I need to get Esse on a routine in the morning of being calm and having breakfast in the barn so that when she is in milk she is already used to being there for a certain amount of time before going out to the cow yard to graze for the day. I threw some more hay down into her feeding trough and gave her a pet, an encouraging word, and checked for any signs of heat. She was recently AI’ed on the 11^th of May and today starts her heat window in which she may go back into heat. I’m watching for behavior changes and a clear stringy mucus to begin to discharge from her vulva. If I don’t detect any signs of heat by next Wednesday, and more specifically this Saturday and Sunday, I will feel more optimistic that she is with calf. A little after 30 days from the 11^th, I can come have a friend ultra-sound her to positively determine if she is in fact pregnant. The cow man who AI’ed her said that she had a not in her vaginal cavity that was keeping him from being able to get past the cervix to AI properly and that if this didn’t take we should consider taking her to a bull to have her bread naturally. We shall see what I decide to do once I recover from the disappoint should that happen.

After delivering her breakfast to her, I went and set up her paddock for the day. I have the cow yard sectioned of into a space of about a half acre and then I am breaking that up into about 37 daily paddocks. Esse is small thrifty cow and if the pasture were very productive this would be plenty of forage for her to spend from say about 8:30 in the morning until 7 in the evening, at which time I bring her hay – and in the future will bring her hand cut forage and fodder that I have found, grown, or otherwise procured. During this paddock set up I can examine the previous days paddock, this morning I am noticing that she overgrazed. Which isn’t surprising given that there is not much pasture/forage in this paddock. My plan right now is to move her through these paddocks, even in poor condition, so that even though I need to bring forage and feed to her I am adding manure and urine and the hay that she does not eat (which will then turn into grass under the right conditions. I was able to notice that the cow peas and pearl millet that I broadcast are coming up nicely, even though I just broadcast them onto the top of the soil. I’ll continue to watch these.

Esse did bow up on me several times once I began to move her from the barn paddock, but did not require grain to let me attach the lead to her halter and begin to take her out to her paddock for the day. Overall I think that we are making great progress in training a family a milk cow.