We lost Bessie this week. She was with us almost 3 years. Bessie had a calf in December 2016 and after the first 2 weeks we started separating her for 4 to 5 hours per day and milking her out, then she would go back to the calf. After about a month we started separating them for 1/2 the day, milking in the afternoon and leaving the calf on her at night. We did this for about 4 months until her calf was getting too big for her, he was a little bull and would butt her utter and after causing a bruise, we decided it was time to permanently separate then. This was more of a challenge than anticipated. He was very resourceful at finding ways to get over, under or around fencing to get back to his momma. Also during this time if the calf did not get back to her we had to milk twice a day, producing as much as 6 to 8 gallons per day. This was a lot of milk, so much of it went back to the animals as food, some got frozen but we quickly ran out of freezer space. This week we found Bessie passed away.