Third Base

On Wednesday I milked a cow; well two cows actually*. Or more, I stuck vacuum pumps to their nipples and hoped for the best. Now Frank had warned me that cows aren’t great with strangers, for they are creatures of habit and all strangers may be the vet; and they don’t like the vet. This results in nervous cows.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a milking parlour but the set up is simple enough. There’s a pit in the centre of the floor and the operator stands in this, with all of the apparatus at about shoulder height for him, or udder height for our milky moos. The pit is encased with bars, so the cows can’t kick you; “but they can shit on you” as Frank so eloquently pointed out.

Now, Dan was going about the milking, for he normally goes about the milking, when myself and Frank arrived into the pit. Cue nervous cows. Also, it’s important to remember that the pit is sunken, so the cows, each weighing more than a tonne, are racked above us.

Frank showed me how the nipply thing worked; turn on the switch and and hold up upside down to get the vacuum going and then just stick it on to the tit. Fair enough. I was a wee bit nervous about sticking unwieldy piece of equipment onto this large female’s mammary glands, and cows can sense that you’re nervous. Cue even more nervous cows...

Cue shitworks! From across the pit, Daisy lifted her tail; right up in the air it went. And then she let rip. Mother Immaculate, I’ve never see anything like it. Imagine the flow of liquid of an average good, strong human piss, now multiply that, so that the flow is about in inch in diameter. Now replace piss with horrific cow shite. Suddenly a fountain of slurry was arcing out of this animal’s arse and splashing into the pit. I screamed. Frank rapidly silenced me, or they’d all be at it.

It was a close call. Had I have been standing a foot to the left, I would have had the most atrocious power shower known to man. So what can we learn from this - don’t milk nervous cows.

*These two animals were successfully milked with absolutely no shit explosions and this milk was collected by the creamery and is now hopefully sitting on a supermarket shelf somewhere in a nice Avonmore carton.