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Bella's cloths

One of the key parts of our milking routine (here and here) is washing Bella's teats.  We do this after she is settled in her milking bales eating hay, and before the milking cups go on.  Washing her teats is both for cleanliness and to help her to "let down" her milk, by relaxing her and signalling that we are going to take some milk.  At a commercial dairy, the cows' teats are washed with a blast of cold water, I'm not sure how that helps them to relax!  For Bella, we use a cloth to gently wipe each teat with warm water, then squeeze out a few squirts of milk and put the milking cups on.  At first we used a couple of old face cloths, but it was difficult to keep them clean and ready to go when we were milking twice a day, so I decided to make some more.
The very well used cloths on the right and some
new ones about to be sewn up on the left.
Occasionally there is a stall at the Nanango markets that sells old towels and sheets from hotels.  We were lucky enough to get a bag of 5 old towels for $2.  Two of the towels were perfectly good for dog towels.  At first I just cut one ripped towel into suitable sized squares and then overcast stichted around the edges (would be even better if I had an overlocker, but I just used the sewing machine, even a zigzag stitch would be ok).

While Bella was dry, these cloths have found there way into the house and campervan as very useful cleaning cloths, so recently I cut up another towel and made another batch.  We just throw them in the washing machine when there get too dirty.  It only took me about an hour to cut the towel and sew the edges.  Its nothing fancy, I just leave all the finished towel edges and sew any raw edges.  I did think of maybe colour-coding with different coloured stitching for different applications, but didn't get around to it.  This time I also made some larger hand towel sizes to put in the car with some soap for hand washing etc.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you a cheap way to make some reusable cloths.  If you have a source of cheap towels, this is a quick and easy.

For more on the importance of towels when travelling - refer to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy :)  Any frugal tips related to towels?  dairy cows?  or farmers markets?

 You might also be interested in my series on getting started with homestead dairy
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Comments

  1. Lucy HouseOctober 24, 2012 at 9:20 PM

    Can't think of a good use for old towels, but I liked your reference to Hitch Hikers Guide - one my all time favourite books...(amongst other favourites!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fiona from Arbordale FarmOctober 24, 2012 at 9:57 PM

    When one of our towels goes I try and down size it to a bath mat with any excess used as face cloth size rags.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KristyOctober 25, 2012 at 10:24 PM

    yep. Here we start with towels (or when the baby/ies were small, bamboo wipes) and they make their way down the cleaning chain until they either go to the worm farm/compost or the shed for honest-as-rags. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 28, 2012 at 5:34 PM

    good to know that everyone is on to this one already :)

    ReplyDelete

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