Beautiful Jersey cattle, delicious 'beastings' pudding, Spanish dresses

Bill clark tells us about the beautiful Jersey herd and calving cows, delicious colostrum 'beastings' pudding, of sitting all night nursing a sick mother and an incident with a Spanish dress.

A milk pudding: Credit: Chika / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

...The following morning, with milking and bottling finished and delivered, I returned to milk her, and was gratified to see such rich colostrum, – not just for the calf’s sake, it was also one of my favourite milk puddings, known as ‘beastings’ and various other names around the country.

It was tradition to offer enough for a pudding to the ‘house’ and the farmhands. Fortunately for me, it was not to everyone's taste, most probably because few folk baked it to the consistency of an egg custard – it was either solid and dry, or still liquid. I became a reasonable expert on it, and believe even today, some fifty years since I last saw any, I could still judge the percentage of water needed, if any, to make a perfect pudding.

That evening I glanced over at Tolande as I passed, she stood placidly with her head at the corner hay rack. In the dairy I readied all the equipment, then fetched the cows, again glancing over the door at Tolande, now laying beside the calf. As I milked, my mind kept returning to Tolande. Still feeling uneasy, I looked in on her each time I carried a bucket of milk into the dairy, she still lay there completely relaxed. At last with the shed washed, and utensils sterilised ready for the morning, I only needed to relieve Tolande of enough milk to leave her comfortable for the night, and I could return home for supper and bed. As I opened her door, like a bolt from the blue, the reason for my unease hit me – she had not been chewing her cud! I rushed over, and felt her flesh. She was boiling hot, and swayed when I made her stand. ‘Milk fever,’ I groaned.

Except for once seeing my father tackle a Shorthorn with it, this was my first time. Knowing that Jerseys were more susceptible than most, due to the heavy demand from a rich, heavy milk yield on their calcium supply and small frame, I had ready all that was needed for such an eventuality. Having done all I could, I settled beside her, for she was lying down again. I talked to her continuously, her now bulbous eyes, seemingly unseeing, and as her head sunk to the floor I lifted it up onto my lap...

Listen to the full reading from Bill Clark's, former warden of Wandlebury, autobiography of a journey from farming to conservation here:
https://archive.org/download/jersey-cattle-spanish-dresses/Ch4b-Jersey-Cattle-Spanish-Dresses.mp3