Owning a Family Milk Cow Things to Know Before Getting a Dairy Cow

We are new family milk cow owners and there are already a couple things that I wish we would have known before we got our dairy cow and her calf and I'm hoping to share this with you today so that you might feel a little bit more prepared before you bring a dairy cow onto your homestead. Now I'm gonna say my kids are running around my baby is right in front of me so if you hear a couple coos or a couple of happy screams that's what's going on. These are in no particular order they're just as I thought of them but the first one is that we live on a pretty small homestead we're on about two acres and so for us we always thought that the way that we would get our milk cow bred back would be by AI and we have found that it's not always as easy as you might think to find an AI tech or to find a vet that will do AI. In fact we have not been able to find anyone in our entire area so you really have to be thinking about that when it comes time for breeding your milk cow back. How are you going to get that done? Are you going to take her somewhere so that she can be covered by a bull? Are you going to have a bull come to your property? Are you going to have a younger bull and then maybe process that for meat later on or are you going to be able to do AI? Are you going to need to learn to do AI yourself? All of these things are things that you need to think about and I wish I kind of knew. I always just assumed you could find a vet or an AI tech and it would be absolutely no big deal but that has not been the case for us because in our area there's not a lot of other people that have dairy cows. Another thing that I wish I would have known beforehand is that the amount of milk your cow produces can greatly vary from day to day. Maybe this is super obvious and it's just me but it can really vary depending on a lot of different things. So we could have a really rainy day and the next day maybe not get a lot as far as production because she was trying to get out of rain the whole day and not necessarily snacking on hay. You're also going to have different levels of milk production depending on where she's at in her heat cycle. So if she's about to start heat or right in the middle of that cycle you might have a decrease in your milk production. If the hay that you decide to give her she decides that day that she doesn't like it and she doesn't want to eat it well the next day you might have a decrease in production. All of these things are things that can be worked around and they're no big deal but it's something that I just wasn't accounting for and it's something to know if you're going to get a dairy cow you're definitely not going to have as steady of a milk flow all the time as if you knew that you could just go to the store and pick up six gallons. It's going to fluctuate on what you get every day so it sounds obvious but I wasn't thinking about it beforehand. And on the topic of milk production let's talk a little bit about calf sharing. This was something that I wish someone had encouraged me on. You really get online and you see that people either love calf sharing or they hate it which sounds super intimidating because you're like I really need to have this figured out I need to decide and for a lot of people the reasons that they don't want to calf share they're pretty big deals and it really sounds like it's going to be more tricky than it is and I just want to say I wish I would have known and I hope I can encourage you that if you do decide to calf share it's way easier than you might think. It's way less complicated than you might think. It's really great. We have enjoyed our experience a lot with calf sharing. Now we wish that he were weaned at this point but we are keeping him on her until she's bred that way if she has to go with the bull and go spend some time there he can go with her and he can take care of milking her. But it has not been a problem. At this point he is separated from her at night and they are together for about four to five hours a day. He gets plenty of milk, they get to spend time together and we get our milking on that once a day cycle in the morning. But it is really not as difficult as everybody says that it is and in fact we have found that his first time dairy owners it was ideal because we could worry a little bit less about being perfect in our milking because he was going to be taking the rest of that milk. So it's not as big of a deal as you might think and we have really really enjoyed calf sharing. So this next one I think might be one of the most important ones on this list and it's going to sound really obvious at first but hang with me because I do have something to say here. This is a cow, this is not a dog. And I know obviously it's not a dog right but I think a lot of times on social media we see people with their cows with their dairy animals and they are just so docile they're with their family members the kids everything looks very picturesque it looks like you've just got this happy-go-lucky cow out in the field and everything is great. And while it is great to have a dairy cow that is not always the case. We have a cow with an attitude and she does not like children. So this is not an animal that's like a family pet necessarily and all cows have different personalities. So what you might see online with someone's dairy animal who really is fine with kids being around or is fine with anybody approaching her that's not the case with ours. We love our sweet sylvie girl but she does have a little bit of an attitude. She's got her two favorite people and that's about it. She is not a fan of anybody else. So if you're thinking of getting a dairy animal the thing to know is that you might get a dairy cow that is just great with your children has been around children a lot maybe that's something that you want to look for but our cow had not. So because of that our kids cannot be in the field with a cow they cannot be near if we're transferring her from one field to the other. She does not like children so much so that she will charge the children if she were to see them. She has head-butted the fence quite aggressively when one of our children was standing too close. So while we adore her and she's a valuable member of our homestead she is not safe for our kids to be around and this is definitely a large animal that you do have to exercise caution when handling. Along those same lines let's talk about horns. So some milk cows have horns and some don't. This again was something that I just did not know until I was looking for a family milk cow for us to buy and that is one of the things that you need to think about when you're looking into getting a family milk cow. Do you want a cow with horns or not? We chose to go with one that was pulled does not have horns because of what I just told you in the previous point. They are not pets they are unpredictable and they can often just have an attitude at random times. So when you are in the middle of your cow's heat cycle you're going to have a completely different acting cow than maybe the rest of her cycle. She might be kind of nice normal and then you hit heat and she's crazy. She is kicky in the stanchion. She has a little bit of an attitude. If you've got a cow that has a new calf that can also be sometimes dangerous because they're very protective of their calf. So we did not want to deal with horns. We knew that his first time at dairy cow owners we weren't super experienced and we really wanted to make sure that we weren't worrying about that as well. So when you're looking for a cow to buy that is definitely something to consider. The next thing that I didn't know and that I wish someone could have encouraged me on or told me and so I'm here to tell you is that there are a lot of different ways to go about milking a cow. Now I think we've all heard of hand milking or machine milking of course those are the two options but I always saw people in videos where you know one person was milking. So the man was milking or the woman was milking and they would get up early before their family and they would go milk the cow and they come back for breakfast. That's kind of what you saw and that's what I thought we were going to do. I thought that we would milk together for a time and then I would take over and that has not been the case. We are still here all these months later milking together and the reason for that is it's just faster, it's easier, my arms don't get as tired and we can get it done quicker and we just enjoy doing it that way. I can of course milk by myself and my husband can as well and we have done that when we need to but I just want to encourage you that you can do this as a two-person thing. You don't have to do it exactly like how you see everyone else online doing it. It is totally okay to continue to milk with two people or to milk by yourself if you want. There's lots of different ways to do this and none of them are wrong as long as your cow is healthy and you're getting the milk that you need. So what we do is we hang out in the morning, we eat breakfast as a family and then we come out around 8 30 or 9. My husband and I milk while my kids play outside and we get it done that way. It is not bright and early first thing in the morning and I am not doing it on my own. Now we do hand milk. I will say that if I had the money for a machine milker and wanted to go that route, I don't think it's a bad route. I don't think that you need two cows to have a machine. I could see a lot of times when that would be beneficial and if we did have a machine then I would just do that on my own. So that would save my husband a little bit of time and I'm definitely not saying that we would never do that. We very well might but for now we are enjoying hand milking with the two of us. Let's talk about the actual act of milking and some things that we have found to be helpful. So build a milk stanchion. I, at first, I saw a lot of videos where so-and-so would just tie their cow up in the middle of the field and I'm like wow that looks so majestic. Cows are just so habit trained and you can totally do that and that's great and no. As soon as we saw our cow and as soon as I got underneath that cow for the first time I realized that I was going to want a milking stanchion. It's just something that makes you feel a little bit more secure. You are under a very large animal, very close to them. It is a great way if you need to take a blood draw for a pregnancy test or have a vet examine the cow. It's a great way to restrain the cow and so that everybody is safe, the cow is comfortable, everybody knows where they need to be, what their positions are. Having a milk stanchion is a must in my opinion. It doesn't have to be crazy. You can come up with your own thing but I think it's really important. We also are big fans of tying one of her legs. Now my husband does milk on the other side and so he feels super comfortable not tying the leg on his side but for me I prefer to have her back leg on my side tied. This just prevents her from being able to have full range of motion of that leg and kick out at me or kick the bucket or anything like that. It just keeps everybody a little safer and as far as the buckets we have gone with the two bucket system. So we milk into one smaller bucket and about halfway through the milking we will dump that into a larger bucket just to make sure that if she does put her foot in the bucket or something crazy like that, which I think has only happened one time, we still have some milk that we had already poured into the other bucket. So that's something that we find to be really helpful. Now I know that this is not an exhaustive of exactly everything that you should look for when you're looking for a family milk cow or everything that you need to know but I feel like there are a lot of great videos like that already. I can definitely make one if you'd like. We do have a mini jersey and we are on small acreage so it is a little bit different there but I just wanted to list some random things that I kind of wish that I knew to hopefully fill the gaps if you are looking for a family milk cow and wondering what you should know. If you enjoyed this video I really think that you would like this video over here. You should watch that next and until next time I hope that you're having a great day and I will see you in the next video.