Milking cows

[BarredCometLaced]

Is there a meat breed cattle that produces some milk but is not needed to be milked 3 times a day like a dairy breed?

 

[LotsaChicken]

You don't have to milk any breed three times a day. I milk my Jersey twice a day and I have a friend who milks their Jersey once a day. How many times you milk your cow depends on you. If you buy a cow that is being milked three times a day, you can adjust that schedule to meet your needs. It's a simply process to change a cow's milk supply and can be done over a period of a week, or two.

 

[Stacykins]

I hear some animals you can manage with once a day milkings, you just get a lot less milk. Though some fill up so fast that twice a day is needed or else they can get very uncomfortable.

 

[mama24]

I'm sure cows are just like people, te more you milk, the more they make, but depending on the breed, some can make more total than others. No matter what breed you get, you really can't let them go more than a day without milking or they'll get mastitis. I've had it myself and it is extremely painful and was fatal before antibiotics.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

Even a beef breed needs to be milked?

 

[sourland]

Quote:
Generally with the beef breeds the calf is left with the cow to be raised by the cow.
There some dual purpose beef breeds (shorthorns ?) that might suit your needs.

 

[BarredCometLaced]

Maybe milking devons?

 

[Lothiriel]

Dexters are a dual purpose breed, and they're small.

 

[zzGypsy]

if you're looking to milk only once a day, consider keeping the calf on for half the day, and penned separately for half the day. all cows go through changes in their production as the calf grows, and many dual-purpose cows, although they don't produce like the production dairy breeds, still need to be milked twice daily to not have mastitis or damage to their udder. at least for some part of their lactation. sharing the milk with a calf solves the problem and lets you milk once a day. we do this with our high-production dairy goats as well - we separate the kids at night and milk in the morning, then the kids run with the does during the day, so there's no evening milking required. and you're raising a beef calf at the same time, so there's a bonus.

with goats, we let the kids have the first 30 days of milk, and share after that... it gives the kids the best start and we're not in the milk production business so it works fine. depending on your purpose, you might start sharing earlier, especially if you have a high-production cow. some of our dairy does bag up early and we actually start milking a month before they kid to prevent damage to the udder and mastitis. don't know if this happens in dairy cows or not.

 

[LotsaChicken]

Quote:
That is exactly how it works. It is supply and demand, just like a human mother breastfeeding a child. The cow will produce to meet the demands you put on her. Something else to think about, since you are familiar with breastfeeding (I've nursed four babies myself!), is that a cow's milk is sterile, just like a woman's milk is, when it leaves that cow's body. It is what happens to it afterwards that causes bacteria. Pasteurization didn't become neccesary until the milking began being more industrialized. When it was families just keeping a few cows for their family's use the environment stayed so much cleaner and so did the milk. I remember all those things I learned with breastfeeding my children and apply that to my cow's milk. I clean my cow's udder with nothing, but water, milk into a sterilized (using the sani setting on the dishwasher) stainless container, filter through sterile cloth into sterile glass jars, straight into the coolest spot in the fridge and that's it. I had a friend send off a sample of her milk stored this way and a sample of milk she had home pasteurized for bacterial testing. The first was bacteria free, but not the second. All the transferring from this container to that container to that one caused bacteria to get in there. Not to mention the heat doesn't just kill bad things in milk (or veggies for that matter) it kills the good too. She has been milking the way I do every since the results came back.