Milk Overload approaching......

[RockyGlen]

Our Jersey gives about 4 gallons a day, while still supporting her calf. We usually try to buy a bottle beef calf to put on her, but even then I still have a hard time keeping up with her milk. This year, for the first time, we will have a heifer milking also (her daughter). Mama is due to calve this week, and daughter in July. I am already overwhelmed at the thought of all that milk!

Last year I had to make cheese every other day and it consumed my life! I am wondering about canning the milk? Has anyone done it and does it change the flavor? Can a person make evaporated milk at home?

Any other bright ideas? By the end of last summer the kids were tired of homemade ice cream...I still have not used all the butter and cheese I made.

Rachel

[jerzeygurl]

I just make cheese with the extra, 5 gallons at a time usually, we drink about a gallon a day, make lots of cream soups

I make quesso blanco often when i am to busy to mess with the other types, its a great meat extender. I grill it put it in meat loaf and fajitas. I find that the camebert and meunster takes alot less "supervision" while making, they are a lot less hands on time consuming, than something like a gouda or a cheddar.


other than home use, pigs and chickens will make good use of extra milk. I know people that milk sole to feed their hogs.

[linn]

Maybe you could buy more calves and feed them your extra milk. I have a cream separator. In the summer when we have a lot of milk I run some of it through the separator, keep the cream and give the skim milk to chickens, pigs, dogs and cats.

[Up North]

Best use is to buy two feeder pigs. With the milk, household table scraps, excess garden veg, in no time at all you'll have a butcher hog to fill your freezer and one to sell to friends or family. Feeding out butcher hogs natually matches utilization of cow's production curve. By time cows taper off hogs will be grown out, in you freezer before next winter sets in...

[montysky]

Another vote for a couple of -----> :1pig: :1pig: :1pig: <-----

[Haggis]

With corn ever increasing in price and pork prices linked thereto, my vote is get some little pigs, and then in a few months, when they are not so little, sell them and begin anew.

There is at least one member here who milks several cows to feed many pigs. Milk is liquid money.

[Ronney]

I vote for pigs too :1pig:

I milk 9 cows with a twice a year calving, rear the calves, and often another couple, and the excess milk goes into 40 gallon drums of which I presently have 14 full of milk - and that's the good thing about it, you don't have to do anything with it. This feeds my 7 breeding sows, 2 boars and whatever weaners and growers we happen to have at any given time.

I'm not suggesting that you get that carried away but a couple of weaners are worth a thought and will provide you with some very nice meat and you might even consider rearing a third to sell because there is always a demand for home grown pork.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[francismilker]

Another vote for the feeder pigs! In using the milk for pigs, you don't have as much milking cleanup or milk refregeration, (therefore leaving more spare time for other homesteading issues).

I usually put a small amount of corn in today's milking and let it set about 12 or so ours to sour before feeding. Works great. Pigs love it! The 55 gallon drum with a spicket on the bottom side with a removeable large top lid makes a great "pig milk" dispensor.

[Milkwitch]

I agree with feeder pigs. But you could just reduce the amount of milk she puts out. Just take what you need or can use. Her milk will drop as you take less. Won't harm her in the least. Makes life much easer when 12 things need doing a hour ago.

[DJ in WA]

If you are one of us who doesn't want to be a pig farmer, you might start breeding your Jersey to beef breed and use the female offspring as your future milk cow. Reduce the volume output but still give plenty. Such a cow would have fewer health issues and would produce more beef in it's calf.

[genebo]

This is the situation where I've been saying that a Dexter cow fits perfectly. Some people just don't want the extra milk, but end up paying for it in time, effort and a big feed bill. Dexter calves make great beef. They give less milk than a Jersey, but eat less, too.

You have a really good producing Jersey. You could probably sell her for enough to buy a Dexter and pocket the change. Milk her once a day, take a gallon and leave the rest for the calf, then figure out what to do with the feed money that's left over.

Pretty cool, huh?

Genebo
Paradise Farm
Church Road, VA

[Ronney]

I guess it all depends how much time you want to put into things. Some years ago I owned one little Jersey cow. In one season she produced enough milk to rear two calves one of which was sold, the other eventually went into the freezer, four lambs, two pigs and milk for the house. In monetary terms, she produced enough to cover her purchase cost and still have some to spare. As Haggis said, milk can be liquid gold.

Now that's what I call pretty cool.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[DJ in WA]

Yes, you have to put in the time, and the feed. I’m a bit confused by the promotion of “liquid gold” and “free milk” (another thread). There are many struggling dairy farmers wishing they had access to such bounty. At least where I come from, milk is not made from nothing. I believe there is some law of physics at work here. When I had a Jersey producing 5+ gallons daily, seemed her appetite was endless.

It’s somewhat misleading to claim a cow raises all these animals. They require inputs other than milk to be bred or bought, then get to market or slaughter weight. I’m thinking if it was so economically rewarding to raise various farm animals on milk, there would be more farmers doing it.

If you enjoy milking large volumes, and if you like using it for raising better quality home grown food, and you can put in the time, go for it. But I wouldn’t sell it as free.

[Ronney]

DJ, I guess it depends on your stance. To begin with my cows are grass fed 12 months of the year with hay as a supplement over the winter months so I'm not having to look at buying in grain or providing buildings for wintering. Since I already own the land and would be paying rates (taxes), fertilising etc irrespective of whether I ran beef or milking, I don't factor that into the cost.

It isn't misleading at all to claim that a cow can produce enough to rear all these animals over a lactation - they can and they do - and perhaps all the more reason to do so if you are having to buy in grain to keep her going. Why chuck the milk when it could be put to good use and help pay her keep.

Why do more farmers not do it? I would have thought the answer to that would have been easy - it takes time and work, and you have to WANT to do it. I like milking my cows, rearing my pigs and feeding the odd orphan lamb. The whole excercise can be extremely satisfying in more ways than one. We get to eat good pork, mutton and beef, drink good milk and the excess that is sold goes some way to paying for hay, rates, fertiliser, fencing etc.

As I said in an earlier post here, I wasn't suggesting that anybody get into to the extent that I do but even one cow can produce enough milk to keep a family well fed for a year with not too much time going into it.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[Haggis]

As RockyGlen and others have long since discovered, it takes a certain amount of time to tend a cow in milk whether gives 2 quarts to the milking or 3 gallons to the milking; the actual milking time (filling the bucket) varies in mere minutes. If one is to keep their cow in milk, she must be milked once or twice a day and very much on a time schedual; this means the cottager must be home and set aside time everyday or twice a day: to milk, to tend the cow, to tend after milk, to clean buckets and strainers, to clean up the stall, and the list goes on. Some are willing to do all of this work for a couple of quarts per milking, while others figure "In for a penny, in for a pound", they try to get all the milk (the wages for one's labor) they can at each milking; after receiving these wages, what to do with them? Some say "If I earn less, I have to worry less of what to do with it", while others say, "Let me earn more and I shall find a place about the holding to invest my wages and see them increase."

I figure that since I must be home to milk, and I must be or my cow would very soon not be in milk, I want the best wages for my labour. Of course I am in want of milk for the table, and butter for my bread, but with chickens, ducks, geese, growing pigs, and the odd calf about the barn, and them all demanding to be fed, there is no better feed suppliment than the surplus liquid gold my cow gives.

Given that we only have grass from about May 15 to September 15, Wolf Cairn Moor is one of the most inhospitable places to keep a cow, yet our only expense for the cow, aside from the odd AI breeding or extremely rare vet visit is the cost of our hay, and that at $2 a small square bale, of that the Jereys will eat but 3/4 bale per day, or $1.50 a day in winter, and the Jerseys cost nothing to feed in summer. We do feed grain to our cows, but they pay for their own by way of our trading the Jerseys' liquid gold to neighbors who don't milk, but fetch grain hither to trade for milk.

One wonders if this not from where comes the term "Cash Cow"?

[jerzeygurl]

i agree with hagis,

as for the "free milk" the cows calf should bring enough to pay for her feed. or close to it.

we "spent" 3744 dollars in feed for the whole farm (that is asigning market value to the hay we did ourselves as we bought none) that feed was fed to chickens 3horses, 4 donkeys, 1 mule, pigs geese ducks pigeons and 10 cows and a bull.

divide our total feed bill by the 10 cows and it comes to $ 374 a year each.

so the cows calves should pay for the feed for the whole farms (barring death loss ect) animals, plud we get milk.

[Paula]

Originally Posted by Milkwitch

But you could just reduce the amount of milk she puts out. Just take what you need or can use. Her milk will drop as you take less. Won't harm her in the least. Makes life much easer when 12 things need doing a hour ago.

As far as we are concerned, this is the answer. Make sure you cut the feed back accordingly to help slow her down. Also, it helps to cut back to milking once a day when she slows down enough.
You could also just not milk the heifer. She will quickly adjust to the amount of milk just her calf needs, especially since she doesn't already have the huge udder capacity that cows who've been milked for all their worth do. You could milk her enough to get her used to you doing it (don't take much) then just let her calf keep her milked. We have a Jersey who raises her calf every year, never gets milked. It works out fine.

[linn]

Originally Posted by Paula

As far as we are concerned, this is the answer. Make sure you cut the feed back accordingly to help slow her down. Also, it helps to cut back to milking once a day when she slows down enough.
You could also just not milk the heifer. She will quickly adjust to the amount of milk just her calf needs, especially since she doesn't already have the huge udder capacity that cows who've been milked for all their worth do. You could milk her enough to get her used to you doing it (don't take much) then just let her calf keep her milked. We have a Jersey who raises her calf every year, never gets milked. It works out fine.

Paula,
Not milking the heifer may work in some cases; but we have had Jersey heifers who have lost a quarter to mastitis because we just left the calf on them and didn't milk them. That quarter became engorged because the calf only nursed on the favorite teats. By the time the calf was old enough to take all the milk, it was too late the quarter had become hard and had mastitis.

[Paula]

Originally Posted by linn

Paula,
Not milking the heifer may work in some cases; but we have had Jersey heifers who have lost a quarter to mastitis because we just left the calf on them and didn't milk them. That quarter became engorged because the calf only nursed on the favorite teats. By the time the calf was old enough to take all the milk, it was too late the quarter had become hard and had mastitis.

Yeah, you do have to monitor them till the calf gets a little bigger. I'm in the habit of checking all their udders daily just in case.