First milking & kidsitting

Last night was the first night I separated Mystery from her kids.  They did just fine despite temps dipping near freezing for the first time this fall.

Mystery wasn't thrilled about being milked, but was mostly cooperative and gave me 1.6# of milk, which after filtering works out to about 3/4 of a quart.   I didn't milk her out completely as I wanted to be sure her boys were able to get a warm meal in their tummies.  

Since I'm milk sharing with her twins she won't be milked this evening.  Her production this morning is doubled as an estimate for what she would have produced if she wasn't also feeding two growing boys.   So for today she would have been at 3.2# so I'm quite hopeful that she will be up to 5# or better a day (her dam peaks at 6#) by the time she hits peak production.

And speaking of two growing boys I noticed Will & Col playing in the upper pasture yesterday afternoon and at first assumed they were playing with their dam.   Then I realized that their dam was grazing in the lower pasture with the rest of the herd and Tsunami was the one kid sitting.   She was being very patient with them, despite apparently being their "king of the hill" target.   This morning I noticed that Mystery didn't shove Tsunami away from the feeder like usual, so I'm guessing that's her reward for watching Mystery's kids.    In the past Mame' has also taken on kid sitting duties for her herd mates so I guess you could say it takes a herd to raise kids.  :)

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