There's something about farm animal math that kind of defies predictability, at least for our farm. I suppose if you're a logical, rational, totally normal, not insane person, you would think, before acquiring an animal, I'm going to do a normal amount of research (meaning, not obsessively and not losing any sleep), and I'm going to have everything prepared and set in place for purchase, transport, and then housing of said acquired animal.
That's never really been the case with any of the animals that we have on our farm as I have relayed before. There's that definition of insanity, that it's doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results--and yet, for whatever reason, thank God, it seems to work out for us (not without some bumps and bruises along the way, but so far, nothing that we haven't been able to handle).
Today, I'm talking about how we got another animal on our farm, as a follow up to our podcast episode. If you've followed our Instagram (@silvergoosefamilyfarm) or listened to the podcast, you'll know that our milk cow of over two years, Cookie, died. Our podcast details the saga of events, but essentially, what happened was that for about two weeks, she was a down cow. We had no explanation for why she couldn't stand. Our vet had come and examined her, and she was the picture of health, aside from the fact that her back half was paralyzed. Blood tests came back normal. There were no mineral deficiencies or signs of illness or disease. Just a cow, who couldn't stand up. This brings up a lot of issues, because for an animal of that size, she can develop sores from putting so much weight on her body without movement. She's also not an animal that we could turn ourselves in order to prevent that kind of problem. Thankfully, she constantly tried to get up and so was rotating herself around her pen throughout the day, just with no success. The hope was, that perhaps whatever ailment was afflicting her, would resolve itself after she had her calf, scheduled for the end of December/beginning of January---however there was no guarantee that that would happen, and we hadn't yet faced what would be the possible outcome for her and for us if she calved and still couldn't stand.
The situation was resolved for us, for better or for worse, one morning when my husband came out to do the animal chores and found that at some point in the night or early morning, Cookie had died. It was an emotional blow to the family, especially the girls, because they spent so much time with her. I think my husband and I face these sort of farm tragedies with the grim outlook that this was a possibility, and while it was sad---very sad--our farm responsibilities continue, and he and I aren't afforded the time to dwell on it in the same emotional magnitude that our girls could.
The question then comes, will we ever get another milk cow? We have three cows on our farm currently, but all of them are designated as meat cows. (Daisy, the Dexter mom, is potentially a dual-purpose cow. She could be trained to come stand and be milked, but dual-purpose animals don't provide as much milk as a specifically dairy animal would, and she hadn't been trained to be near us. She is still pretty skittish about direct physical contact.) We told our children that, yes, it is very likely that we would get another dairy animal in the future, but this time, we wouldn't rush through the selection process. We would take our time, make our lists, and decide on the right animal that would be the right fit for our farm and family.
Cookie came to our farm because she was available. Our friend had too many Guernseys and wanted her beloved heifers to go to a place where they would be taken care of. We hadn't done much research in terms of breeds of cows and temperaments and even care and maintenance to be honest, but as per our first blog post about Cookie, it was all a whirlwind of decisions and animal acquisition. Basically, it came down to, a friend needed an animal rehomed. We were considering getting a dairy animal for that additional step into self-sufficiency for the homestead, and I convinced both my husband and me with my Google research skills, that we could do the milking schedule with calf-sharing, and so that's how we got a cow.
Some positives about Cookie, that we would like to see in the next dairy cow, was her personality. She was a little bit of a princess, to be honest, but she was sweet and loving. She never displayed aggression that was concerning (maybe in the first few months of having her, she was rambunctious as a "teenage" cow in heat, and would drag my husband around the property as he was trying to lead train her and she just wanted to frolic). In fact, after she was inseminated and had her first calf, she became very docile. The most intimidating thing about Cookie was her size. We wanted a cow that was as sweet and mild as Cookie post-calving. Cookie was unafraid of people because of the great amount of affection and care that she received as a calf from her previous owner. She really loved my husband. She would be rather indifferent and sometimes disgruntled with me, but when she heard my husband approaching, those ears would perk up and she would low after him in a rather charming way, and he would pat her on the back and talk to her in that way he does with all the animals. And I would make some comment about which lady on the farm was his favorite.
Her milk was incredible. I don't have that much experience with a lot of breeds of milk cows, but what I have sampled, I will be honest and say that the Guernsey milk was by far my favorite. It was creamy and luscious, and didn't taste like grass or cow, which some raw milks from other cows can. Also, she was A2/A2, and while my children and I don't have any significant lactose intolerances, it was important to us, if we were going to invest in a dairy animal, that that be a priority. Her udder was high and strong and well veined and the quarters were distinct and evenly positioned. (Not something I knew at the time we first got her, but something I noticed as we milked and got to see more cows). She had decent front teats, but her back teats were short and stubby, and my husband had to do this two-finger style milking, and even me with the smaller hands couldn't use my whole hand to milk. Her sister had even smaller teats---so small in fact that they didn't even fit well into a milking machine. The larger and wider the teats, the faster the flow of milk. Some people are blessed with cow teats that are essentially like fire hoses and can milk out several gallons within 15 minutes. Amazing. The fastest we ever did a milking was around 30 minutes.
Cookie calved well her first time. She needed no assistance, and she was an amazing and attentive mother. She let Butters nurse far longer than he needed to, and didn't really make that many attempts to wean him. She did come from a line of Guernsey cows that did have some health issues, and obviously her having a few instances of unexplainable illness was not something that we wanted to encounter again.
One of the downsides of the Guernsey breed is the size. Cookie is a standard size cow, meaning she stands above 48" at the shoulder. She was well over 1000 lbs at full-size. So while she is mild-mannered and gentle, just simply by being so large, her presence was impactful. The wear on the ground/grass/pasture and even the stanchion was significantly more than with the other cows. Also, a cow eats about 1 - 4% of its body weight, depending on the quality of feed, and the life circumstances of the cow (are they lactating, are they pregnant, is it very cold/hot, etc.), so the bigger the animal, obviously the higher necessity for food.
This is less of a concern when your bovine has access to lush pasture and the hay market isn't insane, but we live in California and the past few years had been a drought plus wildfires that basically wiped out a large portion of hay farms in the area. In fact, what hay was available was being quickly bought up by large cattle companies or horse farms, and small-scale farmers were left with the dregs at exorbitant prices. I spent a summer calling around to local hay producers, trying to see if we could get a deal by ordering in bulk with neighbors, and one person shared with me some horror stories about people buying hay that wasn't properly dried/aged---hay can be too "hot" or rich for your animal if it isn't packed and prepared properly, and people in their rush to cover the scarcity for their animals, would buy this hay before it was ready and have their animals die. With the help of many neighbors, we were able to get a portion of a couple bulk hay orders, thankfully, but it wasn't "budget-friendly" by any means. When we first got Cookie, you could get a bale of good quality hay for $9-12 depending on what type it was. Compare that to the load of hay my husband just bought this weekend, of low-to-medium quality hay that's around $27-$30 a bale. Insane.
For a 3-string bale of hay (a rectangular bale held together by three strings), that is roughly 100 lbs give or take, it is compressed into 16-17 sections or so, called "flakes." When you open your bale, you can pull off flakes to give to your animals. Cookie, by her weight and size, and because she was mostly pregnant or in milk the majority of the time we had her, got 4 flakes twice a day. That's half a bale of hay just for her. And I'm sure if we gave her free rein, she would have eaten more. So at today's prices, just in her hay feed (not to mention any supplements and grain treats), feed cost was around $100 a week for the one cow. It can hurt your wallet pretty badly. A smaller cow eats less. In comparison, Daisy ate 1 to 2 flakes twice a day. And you might think that a larger cow, even though she ate more, would ultimately produce the most milk because of her size and therefore, production wise would be worth the cost; but the smaller Jersey, around the size of Daisy, make about the same amount of milk that the Guernsey does, and so we very much wanted a more economically sized cow. It wouldn't be an issue if we had grass all year round, but for six months out of the year with our high desert summers, we are a dirt farm, and nothing grows outside of installed irrigation (and pasture irrigation is a mere blip on the timeline of to-do projects for the farm), and we are entirely dependent on the hay market.
I could give or take on the issue of horns. Initially when we got Cookie, I was pretty terrified of them. Even just accidentally getting knocked by her horns can do some damage, but after being around her and the Dexters who are also horned, it wasn't much of a fear. Also, they can be kind of convenient handles. Our bull straws are from a polled Jersey, and so Butters is polled, but it wasn't on our wishlist, necessarily.
The wishlist read as follows:
1) Good health - no history of calves dying, whether it was a stillbirth or died afterwards (I know sometimes that this isn't something that is preventable and just circumstance, but I take the Greg Judy approach to animals in this instance, who goes so far as to say that if a calf gets hit by lightning and dies, he culls the cow because she shouldn't have let her calf be out in a lightning storm in the first place, and that might be a hyperbolic statement, but the theory is that you look for the most perfect animal you can get.)
-that also means, preferably, no history of mastitis, no exposure to bovine diseases, no blind or dry quarters, etc.
-also, no assistance needed at birthing because that can injure the cow, and also be a sign that future calvings can also be problematic.
-Body conformation is important. Are they bony? Are they obese? Do the legs look straight and strong or are they sickle-shaped and bowed? Are the hips and shoulders aligned and can you see that the spine is straight. Are there any weird bald patches or wounds? Does the cow have bright eyes, no weird discharge, alert ears, healthy coat--I think in a bovine standard checklist, the phrase was, is the cow decently "feminine" looking, which amused me a great deal.
2) Udder. This is part of good health, but such a specific feature that needed more attention. Is the udder well-proportioned? Does it sit high and wide, and not dangling dangerously below the knees. Some milk cows have enormous udders that literally drag on the ground. It is because of the way they have been bred to be such massive producers; I dislike that very much, in the same way I dislike overly bred dog breeds and the hybrid chickens that are super layers for a few years but then they prolapse and their bodies fail because of what people have done in the name of maximizing productivity. Just let the animal be. An udder that is too large can experience ligament distension and be the cause of injury as it gets stepped on or caught on fencing and there are some gruesome pictures online if you're curious. We were looking for a cow with good teats, longer and centrally located on each udder quarter, but pointing downward for easy milking. You cannot believe how many pictures of cows and their udders my husband and I have looked at over the years to exclaim, "Wow, look at those teats. I would love to milk me that cow." In fact, "look at those teats" is pretty much a trademarked catch phrase in our house.
3) A2/A2. This being a part of the cow specs immediately raises the cost, but I think it's worth investing in good genetics. You can find lots of articles and research about A2/A2 milk, so I won't go into it. We didn't want A1/A2. We didn't want A1/A1. We wanted A2/A2. If you're investing in an animal for its milk, get the best milk. Certain breeds of cows have a higher likelihood of being genetically A2/A2 (but you don't know for sure unless you know the lineage of the dam and sire or you get your cow's milk tested for the protein). The most common breeds (usually heritage breeds) in the US with the higher likelihood of A2 proteins are Guernseys (80 - 90% of tested cows), Jerseys (60 - 65% of tested cows), and Brown Swiss (75 - 80% of tested cows). You can find A2A2 cows in other breeds of course, but you just have to test because the percentages are lower.
-the other protein you can look for in milk are kappa casein proteins, and while I don't know everything about all the different kinds, I know that if you have BB kappa casein proteins (vs. A or E) the milk will clot and firm faster, which is ideal for cheese.
4) Moderately-sized. We didn't want another standard size cow. I also didn't really want a mini-breed even though I know those are trendy and just so gosh darn cute, but when it comes to milking, you'd have to stoop down low and depending on how short your cow was, you'd have to use a smaller bucket and make some drastic adjustments to our current milk set up to accommodate such a miniature animal. I also know that some mini breeds carry the dwarfism genes, and that can become problematic in calves, leading to stillbirth or premature death. Our ideal cow would be a mid-size cow. Something that was big enough to produce a larger quantity of milk to support our family but not with the health risks of really small breeds, and not so enormous to eat us out of house and home.
5) Good temperament. You can't always tell this right away, because a new cow can be wary of your presence, with good reason. I would be careful of signs of aggression right away. Cows can be skittish, especially if they've been sort of left on pasture and not used to a lot of hands-on person experience, but if they just cannot stand your touch, especially around the udders, those are red flags. Definitely no charging. No swinging of the head in your direction. No unprovoked kicking.
6) Pasture-Raised. We don't have a barn or official milking stall. We also don't really subscribe to a grain based diet for ruminant animals. Ideally, the cow would be raised on pasture, good at foraging and maintaining their body condition, and not dependent on grain to sustain her body fat percentages. Not all cows can do this. Some of them are bred to be grain dependent and drastically changing a cow's diet can be dangerous.
7) Bred, or in milk. We didn't want an open (meaning not pregnant) heifer or cow. Not necessarily because I wanted to start the milking routine immediately but because a heifer hasn't proven herself with calving, and a dairy cow, if they don't get bred back relatively soon within a lactation cycle, has reduced fertility. That's the reason why dairies breed back their cows so soon after calving in order to preserve the high rate of fertility and the most milk production. For a smaller scale farm, you can draw out the lactation cycle for longer before breeding back, especially if you have a bull because they just stick around and cover the cow as often as needed. But when you're paying for an artificial insemination, you don't have multiple windows of opportunity, and of course there's cost that goes into the procedures. Overall, we just didn't want to risk a cow that was less fertile or needed to be inseminated and then have to wait nearly a year to get milk.
Everything else outside of that list was semantics. We didn't have a preference on breeds specifically, and we don't care about having pure bred animals. We don't show our animals, so preserving those family lines aren't important to us. Likewise, we didn't really care if they were papered or pedigreed as long as they met our wishlist. Our priority was health and making sure subsequent generations produced were also healthy. That's why we got Jersey bull straws instead of Guernsey straws because the bull had such fine qualities that we wanted to introduce onto our farm. I guess we were looking mainly at smaller breeds and making sure that they were specifically dairy breeds, but nothing beyond those requirements.
The next question after you have your cow wishlist, would be... where do you find a cow?
Not everyone has a neighbor with a surplus of dairy animals that you can have. I asked around on our local zip code Facebook forum for recommendations, and some people suggested the County Stockyard auctions. That's a good place to see animals live. At least here in our county, they are held weekly, but the downside being you can't always get a full background of what this animal is and sometimes the inventory isn't posted so you're going hoping to find something. I have heard of people who have a lot of success going this route, and this might be the way we go if we have to purchase another animal for meat, because that's more common in our area, but we didn't have the weekend time to spare to travel to auctions trying to find the right cow.
Online search engines can be helpful. That's how I found our bull straws, and I checked Holt Creek Jerseys to see if they were selling heifers as well. Turns out they do, but it's a long wait list, and they have to be transported across the country which is VERY expensive. There weren't a lot of advertised dairy cow farms within state, or very close. I think the closest we found was for A2A2 pasture raised cows in Idaho, and there was also a California farm that sold dairy cows to backyard farmers, but each cow was $5,000.... not including transport.
I joined some online forums to look at what resources were available there. Milk Cow Market on Facebook is pretty helpful. People post lots of beautiful cows, calves, heifers and bulls that you can peruse, but most of the time they were out of state, and far out of state for our ability to transport. I think the closest person that responded to an inquiry of mine was in Montana.
Since we were approaching this cow search in a leisurely manner, my husband and I just kind of stuck with Facebook and Craigslist. We figured it would be a long while before anything ideal popped up, but surprisingly, we found three different dairy cow options all posted within a few weeks of each other, and of course that fired up my obsessive/anxious responses to just learn everything about these cows.
The first ad was for a local Jersey cow. She was about 5 years old and had had a healthy bull calf that she was nursing. She was priced at $1200 for both her and her calf, which is an amazing price. The pictures posted of her showed she was a good mid-size cow and the calf looked strong, but she seemed pretty bony. Most dairy cows are bony compared to their beef counterparts because they invest a lot of energy in lactating, but starting off with a cow that is thinner is a lot of work to get them to a good body conformation. It appeared like there were some sort of sores around her tail---which is common with flies and not necessarily dangerous. Her udder looked good, large but not dangerously low, but her teats, even from a blurry photo from behind looked short and stubby. Also, it looked like she was in a cattle yard with other cows, and while this isn't necessarily a problem, there wasn't that much information regarding her health, and there was no way of knowing if she was potentially exposed to some pathogens or infections within the yard. You can request testing for certain diseases before you purchase an animal. That's not unusual, and also it's good practice to quarantine new animals before mixing them with your herd, but this made her not the primary candidate of interest, and the fact that the ad had been up for longer than a month wasn't sending good signals either.
The second ad was for a Guernsey in Santa Rosa. She was being sold by a dairy owner that was retiring and no longer milking. She had an excellent pedigree, and the dairy was an A2A2 only facility. Her teats looked magnificent. "Look at those teats" was said. She was comfortable with hand-milking, and of docile temperament, apparently. She was obviously a high producer because of her breed. Our red flag was that her calf hadn't survived, and no reason was given as to why. She was a Guernsey, so the size and food consumption was an issue. Also, she was open, and not bred. And the person selling her, while they agreed that we sounded like the best match for their cow (compared to the other interested parties) because we were a hand-milking homestead with experience with Guernseys, said that it would cost a pretty penny to get them to drive out so far for a delivery on top of the purchase price (that being $2500).
The last ad was for an A2A2, mostly 50% Guernsey/Jersey with a sprinkling of milking Devon cow who had calved a healthy heifer. She was raised completely on pasture, and her heifer calf consumed all of the milk she produced. She was bred by a milking Devon bull and had been in a pasture with the bull since September. She looked healthy and beautiful and had some good-lookin' teats. I balked at the cost, which $3000. I spent a few days looking at other registered A2A2 cows and realized that's just the going rate for a cow that you know that has good genes. We did some back and forth with the seller, not really thinking that this was the cow for us because the cost was so high. Wouldn't be better to risk the local cow even if her health was questionable? At least then you get a calf.
We could play the long game and breed Daisy. She was a good calver, and apparently according to homesteading forums, Dexter milk is pretty good. Super creamy and delicious, just small in quantity. We could hope for a heifer, or even buy sexed bull straws (and then you have the opportunity to be incredibly selective with the genes that you are introducing from the bull side because these pedigrees make note of every single quality that you can get) and then raise the heifer to be our ideal milk cow (if the baby even is a heifer, or you get a positive insemination at all, as AI already has lower success rates and sexed AI even less)---but that's a three year process at minimum.
I think my husband and I both agreed that we weren't going to go with the Guernsey. As much as I love the Guernsey milk, the size of the cow, the feed cost, the questionable calf death was a no. But that third cow. She was half Jersey (turns out, mini Jersey) and half Guernsey--those are good milking breeds. She wouldn't be enormous, but she wouldn't be a little micro-mini toy. She's got Devon in her which means she's a really strong cow (related to plowing oxen) and she'd been able to keep her calf alive. My husband and I were concerned about transport, and size and milk production. From the pictures, she looked much smaller than our cows, and we were told that she had never been hand-milked, except very early on in her lactation to prevent engorgement. We were told that her mother who was a Guernsey produced 1.5 gallons with once a day milking, and so it was suspected that she would produce a similar amount. There are ways to up milk production to a certain extent, we were just worried because her udder didn't look large, and perhaps she was just a small producer. And then the issue of transport. We got a quote from a local man who would help us transport the cow but it was going to be about $700 (not a bad price for the service because she was about 5 hours away from us, just an additional cost to the already high price). My husband talked with the seller, and we got a more detailed look at this person's cattle raising philosophy and goals and her entire breeding history going back a few generations. It was looking more and more like this would be an ideal cow for us---call me crazy. The price stings like nothin' but the cow.... that was a lovely cow. (I think I'm insane.)
Here's some background about the cow, named Lovelle, and the farm where she came from. The gentleman that raised her was trying to get the best quality cows for both meat and milk. He wasn't necessarily going for dual purpose cows, just a cow that was good for meat and a cow that was good for milk. He had started off with Guernsey but ultimately had to introduce new genetics after a few generations, and brought in the mini Jersey from a neighbor, whose bovine quality was also excellent, in the interim until the milking Devons which he really wanted, were available. Lovelle, or more specifically, the calf that she will birth is sort of the culmination of those genetics. He is super interested to hear how it will turn out. He wasn't keeping Lovelle because she was the only polled cow in his herd, and he uses the horns to tie them up to milk on pasture. Can't tie up horns if there aren't any there. He also told us, that she was small enough in frame to fit into our pony trailer, which is 6' x 3,' but she was strong enough and healthy enough to have calved a heifer (which he says requires a higher fertility than a bull calf) and the father had been a full-sized Guernsey. (When we went to see her on pasture, the calf was practically the same size as her mother.) He hadn't wanted to sell her until he knew she would survive that. I think a good selling point to us was the fact that he wasn't in a rush to sell her, in fact, he didn't want to part with her until after she had calved, but was willing to do so if someone wanted her badly enough. That meant we weren't going to be able to negotiate down, but also spoke highly of her genetics and that he would still want her to be a part of his herd.
I went back and forth within a span of a few days. That doesn't seem like a lot of time to most people, but that means you also haven't seen me at my frenetic mental pacing/must make a decision/will this be one of my life's biggest regrets/it feels like the future of our farm hinges on this decision moods. My husband's solution was that we just go see her. We'd know for sure if she was a cow we liked in person vs. in pictures. Our podcast episode details that trip, but we went and saw her. She was beautiful. Bigger than what appeared in the pictures, which is good, but still petite enough to be put into the trailer with some room so she wasn't squeezed. She wasn't a fan of being haltered to get into the trailer, but also she stood still and without much issue while my husband and I felt her from nose to tail, lingering on the udders and teats, that, while small in comparison to the Guernsey, felt proportionate to her body. She didn't have an official pedigree, but she came from a farm that had similar philosophies about breeding and animal health that we did, and so.... we brought her home.
I'm still reeling a little bit from the cost, but she's integrated pretty well with the other cows. She bellows a bit for her calf that was not for sale, but she has made friends with Dexter the Dexter and they frolic in the pasture together. Milkings we are still getting used to. Remember she had never been hand-milked regularly, and so the first morning we put her in the stanchion, one, she slipped right out because she's shorter than Cookie, and didn't really look like she wanted to let down for us. Probably because she was hoping that her calf would show up at some point. She was gentle enough with my kids crowding around her, she let me halter her and my husband, hauled her back into the pen. She stood and let us hand milk her outside of the stanchion though. The second day was a bit more rough. I think she was really coming to terms with the fact that she was in a new place and without her old family, and she was so tense that the milk flow was nonexistant. My husband exacerbated some tendonitis in his hand trying to empty her udder, and she just got really upset with me and kicked me hard a couple times in the leg to push me away.
The question was---did we make the right choice? After getting kicked, I thought, "This cow hates me. " She tolerates my husband, but refuses to be milked. But with any transition, and because cows are creatures of habit, the more we were out there, establishing a routine for milking, the more she was accepting of our presence in her space. This morning's milking for my husband (I'm going to take a step back from milking until she's comfortable with him and we've made adjustments to the stanchion because I don't want to get kicked again) got the best flow from the teats that we've had yet. Her production is pretty low, about a quart for once a day milking, but it makes sense for the supply of a calf that doesn't require milk to survive, and for still being a bit tense during milking. The milk we do get is delicious. It's creamy like the Guernsey milk and not grassy. It's not even blue after separating for a day or two like it can when the cream rises. I'm impressed, and have high hopes for when she calves again. I think with each passing day, as she gets used to us and we get more familiar with her, I'm less worried about this exorbitant purchase (my husband says that it's my Christmas present for like five years, which I agree) and more looking forward to what our herd and our farm will look like with Lovelle in the mix.
God willing, things will only get better from here. We're already pretty attached to her.
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