Re: RE: cow breed + goat question please

[Guest guest]

A castrated goat is a wether. I'm, not sure about the rhubarb. It is not

listed as poisonus to goats in the " complete herbal handbook for farm and

stable " , but I've had no experience with it myself.

Jerseys are my favorite cow. We love the Jersey milk, butter, cream and

cheese. A healthy cow will give about 4 gallons a day, and can be bred

yearly or bi-yearly. One of our cows was giving 2.5 gallons a day in her 3rd

year of milking. Our cows think they are lap cows, prefer the yard to the

fields and love hanging out with the kids under the trees on a hot

afternoon.

The negative is that a Jersey bull calf is not much of a prize, but at a

year they make good hamburger and stew meat, and the fat is white unlike

gurnsey fat which is yellow.

Many folks like Holstein for their 8 gallons of production per day, but

IMO, the taste of Jersey milk is without compare.

They require 6 lbs of feed per milking, plus free feed grass or hay. On

pasture, 1 acre can support a cow/calf pair, with a daily grain supplement.

I know here will be diffeneces of opinion here, but this is the traditional

feeding method. Our largest cow is about 1000 lbs.

Tina in TX

>OK, all this talk has me thinking seriously about a house cow. How much

pasture do I need if I want grass=fed milk? Hanging around my dairy friends

makes me agree about a Jersey, but what are we looking at in terms of milk

output vs a holstein? (Jersey milk is richer, I know)<

J

Citronelle AL

[Guest guest]

At 6:46 PM -0500 8/16/04, lin Family wrote:

Jerseys are my favorite cow. We

love the Jersey milk, butter, cream and

cheese. A healthy cow will give about 4 gallons a day, and can be

bred

yearly or bi-yearly. One of our cows was giving 2.5 gallons a day in

her 3rd

year of milking. Our cows think they are lap cows, prefer the yard to

the

fields and love hanging out with the kids under the trees on a

hot

afternoon.

I love this! What a wonderful image... :-)

The negative is that a Jersey

bull calf is not much of a prize, but at a

year they make good hamburger and stew meat, and the fat is white

unlike

gurnsey fat which is yellow.

Ah-ha! Now, that's interesting... I was wondering about this, as

I seem to recall reading somewhere that Jersey fat was yellow, too.

And in fact I was going to ask about an idea I got from Gene

Logsdon's book, _Living At Nature's Pace: Farming and the American

Dream " (if you haven't read anything by him, do yourself a favor

and hustle to the library, bookstore, or amazon.com and get one of

his books!), where he talks about raising Jersey-Angus and

Guernsey-Angus " organic baby beef " :

" Organic baby beef, as Oren and I produce it, comes

from a calf slaughtered at about 700 pounds and seven months of age

(conventional beef goes to market at 1,000 to 1,200 pounds and nearly

two years old). These calves grow mostly on mother's milk and good

pasture, along with some grain in the last two months, but in my

experience, if the calf is getting a lot of rich milk from its

mother, it won't eat much grain. No antibiotics. No drugs. No protein

supplement. The calves do not get fat, so the meat is not marbled as

in prime beef and does not have the heavy, tallowy aftertaste of

prime beef. "

The taste, he says, " is absolutely luscious. " Noting

that large feedlots are trying to produce this kind of " baby

beef, " he says that it " can't be raised on a large scale

[because] it demands too much personal attention, a steady supply of

good pasture, and a mother cow that is a cross between dairy and beef

breeds. " The implications for small farmers, he suggests,

" are enormous. If beef feeders followed this method, pasture,

not corn, would become the chief food in beef production, negating

the need for thousands of acres of soil-eroding corn and providing

customers with what they want: low-cholesterol, low-fat red

meat. " (The real " cogniscenti " could get their needed

fat and cholesterol from raw dairy products! *grin*)

Anyway, one thing he does not mention is the fat-color issue. So

I was wondering if crossing Guernseys or Jerseys with Angus or

another beef breed whitened the fat... but now you say Jerseys aren't

yellow-fatted to start with. Good information, as I file all this

away toward the day when I have land and cattle of my own!

Many folks like Holstein for

their 8 gallons of production per day, but

IMO, the taste of Jersey milk is without

compare.

I forget, now, whether it was " Dr. Ron " Schmid or

Joann Grohman who wrote, in one of their books, that when the

watering of milk was prohibited by law, commercial dairies invented

the modern Holstein to do it for them! ;-) I shouldn't

say anything, as I'm drinking Holstein milk myself, but since it's

raw and I know the cow in question, I'm not complaining.

:-)

They require 6 lbs of feed per

milking, plus free feed grass or hay. On

pasture, 1 acre can support a cow/calf pair, with a daily grain

supplement.

I know here will be diffeneces of opinion here, but this is the

traditional

feeding method. Our largest cow is about

1000 lbs.

Again, great information to file away! I know this wasn't

addressed to me, but thank you anyway.

All best,

Tom

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Harbold P.O. Box 1537

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tom_in_md@...

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" We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging

to us.

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may

begin

to treat it with love and respect... Perhaps such a shift

in

values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural,

tame,

and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and

free. "

--

Aldo Leopold

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the input on the various breeds. I always appreciate the various

opinions and

ideas. I think that my dh was sentimental about the cows he helped raise in his

youth and

that's why he was wondering about raising those- and his old boss was trying to

convince

us to take a sweet calf named Shirley.

[Guest guest]

Tom,

You got me excited about that "organic baby beef" for a few minutes until I realized that you were quoting from the book. I'm still hungrily looking for some of that.

Tonio

Still on the lamb in Vermont, where miniscule amounts of raw milk can be sold at the farm per day.

[Guest guest]

""The negative is that a Jersey bull calf is not much of a prize, but at ayear they make good hamburger and stew meat, and the fat is white unlike

gurnsey fat which is yellow."""

Jersey fat is yellow, but would beg to disagree that they are "not much of a prize" They have excellent carcass conversion due to their small bone structure. I had a holstein x angus calf and a jersey calf that were the same age, raised the same, and the jersy "looked" 1/3 smaller when sent to the butcher at 15 months. I got more beef from the jersey. More waster from the other. And the feed conversion was better. www.MajestyFarm.comNorth Garden, Virginia

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