We decide to buy a dairy cow
In July of 2022 Jeremiah and I decided to invest in a dairy cow.
At the time I was milking five goats a day and my family didn’t even like goat milk.
Goat milk while good for many reasons like:
the flavor doesn’t change with the goats diet, he
it’s well tolerated by people with dairy allergies,
it makes a fabulous cheese,
also has some downsides like:
low milk solids so the yogurt tends to be -runny,
it’s difficult to make butter
you have to milk a bunch of goats to get enough milk for a family of 5.
It seemed logical to trade in feeding, caring for and milking five goats for keeping a single cow that could pump out anywhere from 1-3 gallons in a milking with higher milk solids and less of a “goaty” taste.
I started investigating dairy cows to get a sense of cost, breed and animal husbandry requirements and got my heart set on a Jersey cow.
In the cow world, people have VERY strong opinions about which cow is the best and I’ve noticed that folks either love or hate jerseys, but for me it was love at first site.
They have this almost clown like face like a boxer or a bulldog has and I love how they manage to look majestic, dopie and sweet all at the same time.
Most standard whole milk contains around 3.5% fat content while Jersey cow milk has around a 5% fat content. Not only that, but Jersey Cow milk also has at least 18% more protein and 20% more calcium than just regular milk.(https://www.texasrealfood.com/promptuary/dairy/jersey-cow-milk/)
So we set out to get one, but of course being new to this world we had no idea how to and how to pick a good one.
Our search was futile.
All we could find were sketchy commercial dairy retirees or non Jerseys, non of which felt like our cow.
I would search daily and even pray that God would bring us a cow, they are all His after all, but it was to no avail and we grew frustrated.
It definitely seemed like it would be a long time before we would find one.
Then one day Jeremiah did a pest control related favor for a local rancher connected with our state dairy extension agent and within hours, she had found us a cow, a JERSEY in milk that was A2A2 https://www.kissthecowfarm.com/a2a2-milk.html and from a very reliable breeder and cow man, first name “Major”.
How perfect is that?
And so we chatted on the phone with him and arranged to purchase her and her calf in August shortly after she had given birth and her name was “Email”.
I kid you not.
We had loads of things to do to prepare for Email’s arrival like make a milking stanchion for her, change the floor plan of our barn, set up a paddock and installing gates to keep her and her calf safe and also close-by for easy morning milking.
We needed to gather milking supplies, grain and hay-dairy cows eat differently than our beef cows.
Having never milked a cow, I had no idea what I was in for and like many others, I underestimated the impending challenge, EXCEPT that I knew I wanted to “calf share”-you milk the mom but you also let the calf nurse.
When you calf share, you rarely have to worry about mastitis because the calf is always nursing and keeping milk flowing through the pipes.
Calf sharing means if you want to skip and occasional milking (Email came to us having been milked twice daily) it’s fine because the calf will still nurse.
It comes with complications-calves take more as they grow and eventually you have to take them away from Mom at night so there’s milk for you in the morning, but I was willing to learn all that just to have the pressure off me to be the SOLE milker of a commercial dairy cow that gives EIGHT GALLONS A DAY!
I was planning on hand milking since that’s what I was doing with the goats and that’s what I would see people online doing on their homesteads and I just knew that I needed a calf to help.
Books, websites, YouTube videos had all emphasized the horror of mastitis so intensely that it was my number concern about learning to milk a dairy cow so a calf was the one thing making me feel less nervous.
In my mind, Worse case scenario, if I was terrible at everything, as long as mom and calf had each other, it would be fine.
The week came when Email was supposed to arrive and we were BEYOND ready for her to get here with her baby, baby jerseys are the CUTEST!!!!
Just a few days before her intended arrival, Major rang up Jeremiah to confirm details and get our address for drop-off and deliver some bad news.
Email’s calf had died.
She was coming alone.
I was horrified.
I always enjoy reading about how the Lord takes care of you and your family Sarah!
The immense amount of stuff you have learned since starting the farm is incredible and as the challenges arise you always look to YHWH.
We can learn so much by hearing your story. He cares for us, even down to the type of cow we want :)
I like the cliff hanger too!