'Farmerese' - The Brickhouse Dialect

If you live in or visit a rural area you might overhear something like "We hauled the heifers from their old pasture this morning, we'll need to fence off a few acres of pasture so they don't founder on this flush of growth."  Heifers? Founder? Flush? What is this person talking about?  Well my friend, you have just been introduced to 'Farmerese'!

Farmers work in a unique field, one could correctly call them specialists, and just like specialists in any other field they have their own dialect.  These terms are specific to the details of daily life on the farm and describe animals, machinery, landscape and procedures in terms that other farmers readily understand.  For those looking in these terms can be rather bewildering, but now you have the inside scoop and can impress your friends with your new and expanded vocabulary!

We will be using and expanding an excellent list originally compiled by Our Ohio and hope to teach you some new words over the next few months so that when you hear a sentence like the one above you will know exactly what is going on!  Yes, I promise these are all real words, how about we start with a couple you will hear regularly around here?


Terms frequently used for female cattle (bovines):


Cow - A cow is a female bovine that has had at least one baby, or calf.  Just like other mammals, cows cannot make milk until they have had a baby, so all of the milking cows in our herd are mommas!  Our cows usually have a calf every year or so with a break of several months before the new calf is born where they aren't producing any milk.


Heifer - A heifer is a female bovine that has not had a calf yet.  Normally she is under two years of age.


Freemartin - A heifer who was twin to a bull (male) calf.  Freemartins are almost always sterile.  True story.



Tune in later for more terms from 'Farmerese'!

Milkyway: Our Poster Cow

Milkyway is a second generation cow in our herd.  Her mother, Starlit, came to our herd in 2004.  Milkyway has a unique bloodline that makes her very valuable on our farm.  Her great grandmother was a cow called Aron-P who was a record breaking producer of milk and national champion show cow.  Aron's lifetime production record was over 300,000 pounds - 100,000 pounds is considered an average lifetime production for the dairy industry.  (A gallon of milk usually weighs ~8 pounds, so she milked over 37,500 gallons in her lifetime!)  Milkyway has lived up to this family history and is a top milk producer in our herd, while we still have several years to find out what her lifetime average will be, we enjoy milking her every day.


Milkyway just turned six years old on May 7th and has a heifer and a bull in our herd.  Her daughter, Galaxy, was born in 2011 and we look forward to adding her to the milking parlor sometime next year.  Her son, Mars, is currently a sire in the herd.  We have high expectations for his daughters and Milkyway's grand-babies for generations to come!

 

When trying to design our label we took some glamor shots of several cows and Milkyway was the winner!  She has a beautiful, very Jersey face and we felt like she perfectly represented our herd.  She is now the "Poster Cow" for Brickhouse Cheese!  

Cow Tales

Here at Brickhouse all of our cows are individual, they each have their own history, personality, strengths and weaknesses - so we think it best they all have a name, not just a number.  Naming the cows has gone through many phases over the history of the dairy.  We have tried Bible names, naming through the alphabet and when the kids were studying Greek history we even had a few mythical names mixed in there!  These days we just look for names we haven't already used, and sometimes we have 'family theme' names (like the Starlit line you will soon here about, Starlit's descendants have names like Galaxy, Milkyway and Mars).

Oh, darling, let me fix that!

 Whenever you see pictures of our cows you will notice they have their names in their ear-tags along with their numbers, this way we can know them by name and also keep their records straight through their numbers.

We would like you to get to know these outstanding ladies since without them our quality cheese just wouldn't be possible.  So keep an eye out for the 'Cow Tales' label where you can learn about some of the individuals who make up our herd!

Mail Order Chicks

Roger is working ground, calves are being born, pastures are getting lush and chicks are arriving in the mail - Spring must be here!  Almost every spring we get a fresh batch of chicks to replace any lost the following year, or just to try a new breed.


We go to pick up the chicks at the post office so they don't have to ride the whole, bumpy route to our house.  Everyone is so excited to get the call that the chicks have arrived and are ready to be picked up!

Here is the peeping box!

And here are the peepers inside!  The hatchery has a minimum order limit of 25 chicks so they keep each other warm on the ride to their new home.  The brown chicks are Welsummers and the black and white chicks are Anconas.

The chicks are one day old when they are mailed and are two days old by the time they reach us.  They won't have their first meal until they get to our house where we 'dip' their beaks and show them their food and water.  They aren't as hungry as you might think because they are designed to absorb the remainder of the yolk in their eggs right before they hatch - this keeps them satisfied for several days giving the mother hen (and us) plenty of time to teach them where food and water is!

Here they are drinking from their chick sized waterer!

Until they are big enough to live with the other chickens they will stay in a big box with a heat lamp to keep them warm.  We use newspapers to cover their floor so it is easy for them to see their food!


Stay tuned for updates as these chicks grow!

Spring at the Brickhouse

Calves are being born, flowers are blooming, the garden is being planned, chicks are arriving in the mail and Roger is in the field planting - Spring is here!  The cows aren't the only ones excited about the new flush of growth, our chickens are out happily pecking at the new grass and the dogs always love a good roll!

Udders swinging, these girls are excited to get on some fresh pasture!

It just isn't Spring without bulbs popping out of the ground!

The cows grazing by the pear trees...