For most of my growing up years, we had a milk cow that provided milk for the family. The earliest memory I have of a milk cow was one we called “Old Red.” She was dark red in color. We had her when I was very small. She was struck by lightning and killed down close to where the high school is in Heber.
The milk cows in Heber were allowed to roam and graze all over town and also on the forest land around Heber. Many of the families had milk cows. In the morning after milking, the cows were just turned out of their corrals and they could roam and graze at will. Since the cows were turned out at about the same time and since they all drank at the same water tank after being turned out, most of the cows in town stayed together as they grazed throughout the day. Usually one or more of the cows in the group wore cow bells. The bells were used to make it easier to find the cows in the evening when it was time for them to be milked again. Because Heber was so small, if you kept very still, sometimes you could hear the cow bells and know where to go find your cow. The job of finding our cow and bringing her home fell to me a lot of the time. Usually if I found our cow, I also found every other family’s cow as well so I just drove them all back to town. Other kids did the same.
I think we may have had a Jersey cow after Old Red but I don’t remember for sure. The cow I remember best was Sleepy. We went to Joseph City to get her. Morn and Dad bought her from Uncle Burr Webb who ran a small dairy. She was a “real” dairy cow. She was a Guernsey and gave lots of milk. She was small for a dairy cow and she had a sort of sleepy expression on her face so we called her “Sleepy.” We had her until I was out of high school.
Because she had come from an operating dairy, she was used to being milked with hobbles on and in a stanchion or stall. I remember Dad had to build a milking stall and manger so he could milk Sleepy. The stall had a place to put a board behind her so that she was in snug and tight. Before milking her we had to put hobbles on her legs to prevent her from kicking. This was unusual because most of the milk cows in Heber could be milked about anywhere. They just stood out in the open to be milked while they ate some hay. Not Sleepy!!
Every year we would breed Sleepy with one of Uncle Laurald Bigler’s bulls and then when the calf was born and weaned, it was traded to Uncle Laurald for a beef off the range. He wanted heifer calves that were half dairy cow because they gave more milk than the normal range cows.
When I was about twelve or so, I learned to milk a cow. Fred Bigler, one of Uncle Alma’s boys, was about my age and he let me help him milk so that I could learn. He would milk two teats and I would milk the other two. Over a couple of weeks, milking twice a day, I learned to milk a cow. Up until that time Mom or Dad did the milking. I think maybe Ted also learned. Once I learned to milk, it became my responsibility to milk the cow in the evenings. Dad, or sometimes Mom, milked in the morning. The cow gave about two gallons of milk per milking as I recall. I figured out that Sleepy liked music so I used to sing to her while I milked. I used to sing her all the popular ballads at the time like “Frankie and Johnny,” “Teen Angel,” “Flight 1003,” and others. It’s probably surprising that we didn’t get sour milk with all the sad songs I sang to her. The barn was down at the bottom of the lot and there weren’t any other houses close by so I could sing as loud as I wanted to. She was a good listener and only kicked the bucket over a few times when I was milking. I wonder if all the Nashville stars got their starts singing to their milk cows?