Milk Cow ?

evermoor · #21 12/25/04, 10:02 PM

Ann
I know what it is like to miss the girls. When my dad sold the cows he stated (this is not meant to offend anyone) I finally can live like a white man. No more tied down, no more frozen teats hands whatever, no more midnight calvings, no more dirty tail swatting you in the face, no more late for school event, ect ect. Then I would see him in the barn, just there, no particular reason. I hope he smiles down on me now as I bust through the drifts, clean the gutter, thaw everything out, haul the feed in and the other out. After he died I found a notebook with his goals about winning Expo. So now we both are striving to breed a Madison winner
On the other note I bet your cross will make a good family cow. Didn't you mention she had some Simmital in her. They seem very milky yet not as demanding as the full blood Red & white (why Holsteins?? just kidding). At a farm I worked at we had an angus cross ( crossed with another angus in my opinion) she tested around a 6% fat and 4% protein making close to 13000, in 250 days. Made the rest of the jerseys look bad. Her jersey cross calf was just as good.

marycipk · #22 12/27/04, 10:32 PM

I have bought a short leg Dexter cow who is very intelligent and a wonderful friend. I'm in a wheel chair so the cow had to be small and easy to handle. We had a few problems in the beginning (I've never owned a cow before but have many horses). Her milk is wonderful, nicer than Jersey I think, and I've made butter, yoghurt, cheese etc. They are small and very tough and suitable for small acreages. She is giving 4 litres a day from two milkings but is in late lactation as she's due to calf in March. I'll have to dry her off soon unfortunately.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to cut back to once daily milking without a calf at foot?

Dexters are an Irish breed and apparently the beef is also pretty special but I don't eat meat.

Laura Workman · #23 12/27/04, 11:48 PM

For just a couple of people, have you considered goats? A decent goat will give about a gallon a day over a ten-month period. You can keep two and rotate their lactation cycles so you're never out of milk. They're much smaller, eat less, easy to handle, easy to transport, etc., etc. However, the cream doesn't separate all that well. Just thought I'd ask, in case you don't want all that much milk or that much animal. By the way, calves do VERY well on goat milk, from what I understand.

cloverfarm · #24 12/28/04, 08:46 AM

As for how to dry off a cow before she calves again ... we would go to milking once a day, then every other day. To signal their body it was time to shift gears. It varied from cow to cow ... some would already be dropping in production but for others it took awhile.

As for the work load, DH has said if he ever DId go back to milking, not until the kids are teens. There is the outside possibility that a former chore boy who grew up, got married and is dairying with his cousin, might end up here. But I don't know how well that would go ... It might be kind of hard for FIL and DH to step back and let CB do things his way and make his own mistakes.

When there were two couples here able to do the work (my in-laws and DH and I) the dairy work load was not oppressive. We could split it up pretty well. Most of the time FIL and DH did all the work. However, the in-laws retired and they started to have health issues about the same time we were starting a family. And, although I did help DH while preggers, it WAS kind of hard. It got harder and harder to help with small children in tow, harder than helping while preggers.

DH got pretty burned out on it and wanted to do other things such as make lots more hay.

End of epic ... sorry to write a book! :haha:
Ann