The Edinburgh Experience: Maybe The Best EMS Week Yet

Time for another post from an airport. I am in Southampton for my layover flying home from Jersey. I had an incredible time in Jersey.

My placement week unofficially started Sunday evening with feeding the calves. I discovered that Jerseys make very cute calves.

Monday I officially started working. They had me start by feeding the heifers that were going to be shown on the weekend. The heifers were tethered in a small fields so that they could get used to wearing a halter and being restrained.

This young girl was in the under 12 month class

After feeding heifers I started taking them for walks. Those girls had never been led before so they had to be taught how to walk. This involved a lot of tugging on their halter ropes and periodically some input from another person pushing them from behind. But it was amazing how quickly they learned. By the end of each of their sessions they would walk without much, if any struggle. The next walking sessions with them involved trying to make them walk more like a show animal and less like a young animal excited to be out and about on a walk.

Next up was walking the cows. Most of the cows had been shown before so it was just reminding them how to walk properly. They generally walked really well and it was just like walking a very slow 450kg dog!

On a walk with the cow that I think had the best personality

Over the next few days I continued walking heifers and cows and did some other tasks around the farm. One of the days I fore milk stripped every cow during the milking. (Foremilk stripping is done to clear teat canal and also allows you to check if the milk is healthy and the cow doesn't have any infection in their udder. In the perfect world you would do it every milking but it is time consuming. The perfect thing for free labour like me to do!)

Towards the end of the week it was time to start prepping the cows for the show. This involved giving them a summer shave all over their body and also shaving their udders to make the milk veins look more prominent. The young heifers have more fur than the older cows, so they leave a strip of fur along their spine. They then shape it and cut it into a sort of mohawk to make it look like their spines are perfectly straight.

The weekend rolled around and it was time for the show. Saturday was the cows. We loaded up the cows into the trailer and took them to the show ground. When we got the cows there, it was time for a good scrub to make them perfectly clean. After their cleaning everyone was on the lookout for any cows pooping. If a cow pooped, the poop was scraped up right away (to prevent them stepping in it) and their bottoms were wiped with a baby wipe. I have to admit, when I signed up for a dairy placement I did not expect to be wiping cows' bums with baby wipes! Then it was time to grease them up. They sprayed their fur with WD40 to make them look shiny and keep any fly away hairs down. After that they sprayed their hooves with black spray paint to make them look perfectly black, and their tails were back brushed to make them nice and fluffy (I was in charge of that).

In the first class (Heifers in Milk) the farm I was working for had 5 cows to show. Not having five people to show them they asked me to show one. So about 2 minutes before their class I got a 30 second run down on how to show a cow. My cow placed 9th of 14. But my farm won the class which was fantastic. They went on to win every subsequent class except for mature cow. And when it came to the championship, the were both Supreme Champion (what a great title name!) and Reserve Champion. In non show terms it means they finished first and second overall which is incredible.

Ansom May Anemone, the supreme champion over Jersey June 2015

Sunday was the heifer show. The farm didn't do as well but still had a very respectable day. The show was such a fun experience. I had never even seen a cow show before so to be involved in one was incredible.

When booking my flights I decided to stay an extra day to be able to be a tourist for the day. I started by taking a walk along the cliff path close to the farm.

On a clear day you would be able to see France in the distance

Next I went to a Museum called La Hougue Bie. Throughout history La Hougue Bie has been many things. It was a neolithic site of worship 6000 years ago, has a medieval chapel on the mound and during World War II was a bunker for a German Labour Camp.

The Medieval Chapel

I finished the day off by going to Gorey, a small village on the Eastern Coast. There I visited Mont Orgueil Castle. It was first mentioned in history in 1204, but most of the modifications and buildings that remain today were built starting in the 1500s. Its location was strategically chosen to protect Jersey from French invasion. After the castle I spent a little time walking through the village and along the beach.