Good dual purpose cow?

Michigan Farmer - I agree with your summary on the Modern Holsteins. High Grain Prices will make it financially painful to keep them in good body condition. The next few years will show the value of the Old World Colored breeds that can carry their flesh with only modest amounts of grain supplementation.
My view on Dairy - Beef cross is this: IF I were to breed or milk such a cross(and I planned on actually milking it), I would *prefer* a Herford/Dairy over Angus/Dairy Cross. Why?...Herford has more milk and less Kick.

I am currently milking a Jersey/Red Angus cross. She gives about 4 gallons per day at peak production. She is gentle and produces beefy calves when bred to a beef bull. I AI'd her to a Jersey last year and got a beautiful little heifer.

that sounds like a good cross to me

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DixieDoodle,

It sounds like your milk needs aren't so great that you'd be forced to go with a dairy breed, so one of the dual purpose breeds would be a good choice. That way, you could get your freezer filled with high quality beef at the same time.

Cattle prices are depressed in Canada right now, so you should be able to pick and choose. Get either a trained milker, which will cost you more but may be well worth it, or a young heifer from a gentle breed. If you choose a heifer, get one from the earlier maturing breeds, so you can milk sooner. If you choose an older cow, be sure to go visit before buying, to make sure you can handle her.

Dexters and Highlands are both very hardy and make great beef. The Dexter is a gentler breed. That's important if you're hand milking.

As pointed out, some dairy bulls are eagerly sought out by butchers. That's because they can get them so cheaply. 3 day old dairy bulls regularly sell for $5 to $50 each around here. When brought to slaughter weight, they bring considerably less than good beef cattle. I wouldn't let the thought of selling dairy bull calves for profit enter into my decision.

You can find listings for Dexter cattle for sale in Canada at:

http://members.allstream.net/~jbush/

A search for other Canadian cattle associations should also put you in touch with reputable breeders.

I like the Dexters because they are so gentle and easy to be around. They're easy to train. I love the taste of their beef.

There's a lady near here who is milking Hereford cattle. She gets a higher percentage of butterfat for making cheese and butter. She just has to milk more cows to get the same amount of milk. She only milks them a few years before replacing them, just like a dairy cow.

On the other hand, it's not uncommon to milk a Dexter well into her teens. My oldest Dexter is 11 this year. She just gave me a calf and shows no signs of her age. A lady posted on a different board that she's milking an 18 year old Dexter.

Genebo
Paradise Farm

I milked a milking shorthorn for awhile,great dual purpose cow. Raised and broke to milk a couple of jersey x hereford cows, good easy milkers and their calves sold good. Lord deliver me from anything with any angus blood in it to milk .
My alltime favorite was the milking shorthorn, my jerseys were great milkcows but their calves didn't bring near as much as the shorthorn's or the jersey x cows. A jersey hereford cross would be my first choice for a family ap cow.JMHO

IM glad to be reading this discussion. Im looking for a family milk/beef cross.

My dad has an angus/holstein cross that is bred, and due to freshen in May. He is going to let me milk her as long as I leve him enough milk for the calf. I want to make all of our butter, ice cream, and supply us with the gallon and a half of milk per day that we use.

There is a bred dexter cow on here for sale close to me for $800 that Id like to buy, and try, but money is tight. From what I hear $800 is a pretty fair price for a bred dexter. Ive seen pictures of her. She has good body condition, and is close to 4 feet tall. She looks well taken care of. If I had the money, I'd buy her even though Im kind of partial toward jersy for a homestead cow, and Ilike the sugestions about a jersy/herford cross.

I really want a nice quiet milk cow that will throw beefy calves

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And then, you could go with a good milk goat or two. Smaller, easy to handle, loving personalities and have beef for beef (goat meat is wonderful as well). If your son ever tries the milk, he will find that it is just as good a cow's milk. I have heard that Toggs produce stronger milk - great for making cheese, but not as good for convincing someone that goat milk and cow milk are equal. You might check out the goat board for more opinions. No offence intended to the cow people I would love to have a Jersey or Jersey cross but goats are great too.
Dawn

i sold a 1/4 holstien 1/4 jersey 1/2 angus cross heifer at auction as a weanling,about6-8 months old for about 700 bucks...

many beef breeders want something with holstien because mamma can raise big calves with all the milk...so no trouble getting rid of them

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Now poorboy, they aren't all bad!! We milked a full Angus for several years. However; if you do want to handle an Angus like that, she needs to be bottle fed and bonded to people. It was great having her though since we could just throw her out with the herd if we didn't want to milk or bring her in a couple of years later to milk. She also made a decent foster cow. We got two or so gallons of rich milk a day with the calf locked up overnight and full market value for the calves.


Sherry

A good dual purpose cow is ANY cow that will stand and let you milk her and also have a calf once a year to sale or slaughter. I've drank Jersey, Holstein, Milking Shorthorn, and Ayshire from the Dairy Breeds, and have never had any better milk than that of a "non-kicking" Angus that was hand raised as an orphan. Depending on what your homesteading experience and your milk needs are, (Do you and your family drink 4 gallons plus per day, do you intend on making a lot of butter, cheese, etc.?) you may consider a "beef" breed for a dual purpose cow.
I was part of a large family that could consume a lot of milk as well had a mother that was pretty handy at utilizing every last drop of all that the old milk cow could produce. On the other hand, today; my family of four can nowhere come close to using the four gallons of excess milk after my old Jersey feeds two calves with once a day milkings. It has resulted in either a lot of wasted milk, or a lot of happy feeder pigs.
One thing to beware when getting into the homemilking theme: all of the friends and neighbors who go on and on about how they'd love to have access to raw milk don't always come through. The generation we live in today will hardly drink it if you milk it, strain it, jar it, and deliver it.
These are not arguemenative statements, just my "two-cents".

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My brother lived as a share cropper on a beef/tabacco farm for many years ( so did I for a season during hard times), and while he was there he was milking an old Jersey (he had a wife and 3 bairns). One day the owner of the farm dropped off a new bunch of Angus cows for brother to tend, and there was a surprise among them. That first evening, when he called his Jersey up to the barn, an old Angus cow with her udder bulging full came with the Jersey. Brother milked the Jersey and left the door open to the milk stall to see what would happen, and that old Angus cow strutted right on in for her turn. She milked as pretty as you please.

The next day brother called the owner to tell him the news and ask if he intended to sell the cow anytime soon; he wasn't going to be selling her for some months and he added, "You just milk all the buffalo you want."

Brother went out and bought a half dozen weaner pigs to raise on all the extra milk he was getting, and during the day he'd let the the pigs run loose to graze in the paddocks with the cows; he lured them in at night with a rasher of grain. By the time the old Angus was dried off, he had some pigs ready for market. Milk fed to pigs is hardly wasted, it's money in the bank.

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My 3/4 GuernseyXRed Angus gives more than enough milk for the three of us adults...up to 4 gals. per day the first few months of lactation. And it's plenty rich with cream,nearly a quart per gallon. Her 1/2 Jersey steer is doing very well so far at 7 mo. and over 3# per day weight gain being maintained. We'll be eating him by the time he's 12 months, probably, at this rate.

People say they want your extra and love the raw milk, but do you think they'll come by your place to pick it up? Hardly!!! Most prefer the ease of getting it at the supermarket.

I don't have any other farm animals to feed it to ...yet! But my dogs love it. My Pyr doesn't hold her water on it very well though for some reason unbeknownst to me.

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A question for the folks who milk crossbred dairy-beef animals: How well does the milk flow persist?

Due to a mix-up in communication between myself, my wife, and the AI guy, my Ayrshire got bred with Angus semen and the result is a pretty little black heifer. I was pretty bummed that it wasn't a Ayrshire-Holstein cross but my neighbor said she could be a good milker. I thought he didn't know what he was talking about, so I asked around in the diarymen's group and several folks had, at one time or another, had Angus-Holsteins in the milking string (for a while dairymen were breeding heifers to angus bulls for calving ease). Four of the five said that while production was okay (less than a purebred but worth more than the feedbill), but that the persistancy curve fell off after five months. Evidently persistancy over a 305 day lactation has smoothed the dairy breeds' production curves out. What has your observation been?

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What is this business about Angus cattle jumping fences? I have nothing on the place other than registered Angus cattle. Two sides of my place are fenced with two-strand electric fence 38 inches high, and all my interior fences are single strand electric. I have yet to have a grown animal cross a fence. Baby calves will crawl through, not understanding what is kicking them, but by two weeks of age they KNOW to stay away from the wire. On the other hand, I sold a five-year old bull and the buyer never penned him, just jumped him out of the trailer into the pasture. That bull walked thru two barbed wire fences and a couple of gates before they put up a hot wire.

I prefer Jerseys for a homestead milker. That goes back to my childhood, but here I have three cows that can be milked in the pasture. Any one of my cows could be broken to milk in a week. It all goes to strain--there are wild strains of Angus just as there are crazy strains of Brahman or Holstein.

It is said of an old man here that he can lay down a string of baler twine and his cattle will not cross it. His fences look as if they were put up sometime in the l7th century, yet his cattle stay inside. It is also said of him that any cow that crosses one of his fences is at the butcher the next week. Over time he has developed a very docile set of cattle.
Ox

That is too funny, Ox.

We raise Dexters. These are perfect for a small family because they produce only about 1-1.5 gallons of milk a day. We just butchered one of ours (yep ... he was wandering ) and now have about 280 lbs of meat in the freezer which, especially with a pig or two, is more than enough for us to last a year.

Dexters are also very gentle and hardy.

her is crazy the angus jersey






here is her milk with the cream skimmed after fridge all nite, note the cream line

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So a gallon and a half of milk and 280lbs of meat is average for Dexters? Are there different kinds of Dexters? That sounds about perfect for us though. We don't need gallons of milk.

The other thing here: I only have pagewire fencing. Is it a pretty good bet that a cow will push it over? Do I need to support it with some electric fencing? How many strands do I need if I did use it? Or maybe just one cow wouldn't do much damage? LOL Yeah, I think I know the answer already......

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