Posted by Hal/ Eastern WA on March 10, 2013 at 15:06:25 from (97.115.191.41):
In Reply to: OT - Milking by Hand posted by Brian G. NY on March 09, 2013 at 20:01:44:
I grew up milking cows by hand. We always had at least 2 milking cows, but usually 3 or 4 and for a couple of years 5. Back in the 60"s it was legal to sell raw milk if the customers came to the farm to get it. We had lots of customers, both from the neighborhood and from Spokane. Some of them told us that they preferred our milk to the milk sold by other farms in the area. They said our milk was cleaner and smelled better than some they got from other farms. My Dad and I were always very careful to clean up our cows before we milked. The milk was the same milk that our family drank.
We bought a nice Holstein heifer soon after we moved to the ranch in the late 50"s. She was all Holstein, but did not have registration papers. She grew up into a wonderful milk cow--super easy to milk, tame and gentle. And she had nice calves, a couple of times by AI, but usually bred by whatever bull we happened to have. One of her calves was a beautiful blue roan, who also became a good milk cow, but most were black whitefaces, which were harder to milk. Our first milk cow was a milking shorthorn, who milked OK, but she occasionally kicked viciously, once hurting my Dad fairly bad. When my older brother left for college and I took over the chores, that somewhat dangerous cow went to the stockyards. Most of our other milk cows were daughters of the Holstein or the milking shorthorn.
Milking the Holstein was easy. She had large teats that seemed made to be hand milked. It was very little effort to milk her, and very quickly she would fill a full pail and most of another. Most of her daughters were also quite easy to milk, except of a couple of the Hereford crosses. The Shorthorns were a different matter. Most of them had much smaller teats, which required lots longer milking times, since you got much less milk per squirt than the Holsteins. One of the cows we milked for a couple of years had a habit of jumping around while she was being milked and often kicking over the milk pail. Finally we just hobbled her before every milking, the only cow we ever had to do that with. Every cow had their own personality, and most of them I had raised from the time they were baby calves. I enjoyed most of them, at least most of the time.
After we did the milking, we would carry the pails of milk to the house. In the back porch we had a fairly large separator. We would use the large bowl on the top of the separator to strain the whole milk and used the valve to run whole milk into glass or plastic gallon jars, that went immediately to the old refrigerator on the porch for cooling and storage until a customer showed up. Any milk that was not going to be sold as whole milk ran through the separator. The separated cream was collected and was taken to the local creamery about once a week in a special cream can. The cream brought pretty good money at the creamery. We drank lots of skim milk in those days, and any we didn"t use in the house was fed to the hogs we always were raising. Some of our customers also bought cream and eggs from us. My parents saved most of the money they collected from our little "dairy" operation and banked it. When I went to college, they helped finance that endeavor with the dairy money. I worked very hard all the time I was growing up, but I didn"t realize that most kids didn"t. That was just the way I was brought up and I am sure it strongly affected how I am today.
But that was then, this is now! I think it is illegal to sell raw, uninspected milk or cream from a farm. A few years ago, I asked at the same creamery if they still bought cream from small farmers. I was told that they had not been able to do that for about 20 years, due to regulations and the fear that somehow they might get sued if someone thought they got sick from cream they could not say for sure came from a single source.
When my kids were young, I considered getting a milk cow. But I remembered how much work it was when I was growing up: milking morning and night, every day; and haying, feeding, dealing with a water source that would need to be kept from freezing; and the need for more than one bovine not the cow"s calf, to keep the cow happy; and constantly needing to deal with fences and the need for a cow barn. And the fact that I couldn"t legally sell any excess milk products to partly pay for the cow"s keep. I decided that having a milk cow again was something I would not do again. It was cheaper and a whole lot easier to just buy milk for my kids in the supermarket.
Over the years, I became unable to digest milk, and it REALLY upset my stomach if I tried. I suppose I am lactose intolerant. The kids have all grown up and my wife drinks no milk either. Occasionally we buy milk if grandkids are going to be staying with us.
In my opinion, it just is not worth it to milk a cow these days. A cow ties you down way too much to THEIR routine. Unless you really enjoy milking and consider that fun, I don"t think milking a single cow would ever be worth the costs and hassle. Store milk is just too easy and relatively inexpensive. But that is just my OPINION! Good luck.
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