Now that I have to milk again my hands are always sore! Ginger had a lot of edema in her udder, but it has gone down a lot now. I think I can see now why she was voted off the dairy farm. Her udder is quite low and stretched out which could lead to mastitis problems. So far we have been lucky, and the worst has just been a bit of blood in one quarter. Now that the edema has mostly passed, the blood is gone, but it still had me worried.
The bonus is having extra milk in the house! I made crock-pot yogurt and it turned out great! With the addition of homemade strawberry jam, it was good enough that my kids even ate it! I also made a gallon of chocolate pudding, that ended up as pudding pops in the freezer. The kids weren't too big on it until I put a stock in it and froze it! Yesterday was homemade mozzarella on homemade pizza, and it was a success. I am always looking for new things to try with the milk.
In other news, Fannie the sow now has a tiny companion. We bought a purebred Berkshire piglet boar with hopes that he will someday be our herdsire one day. He took to Fannie right away, and she is tolerant of him. He is so tiny next to her! Hopefully she is pregnant and will farrow in June. As long as we get some females in the litter, then Kermit the pig will have some mates.
