The food security challenge

[mjc]

Now this turn in the discussion is a place to mention heritage cattle breeds.

Some of the old breeds, like the Devon were dual purpose breed (or in the case of the Devon, tri-pupose). They produce more milk than a straight beef breed, so they could provide more than enough for family use and still allow the raising of the calves.

A couple of other good points about these breeds...

They are often 'hardier'...may have shaggy coats, thicker fat layer, etc so they need less shelter. They will also do well on 'lower' quality feed (read they really do well being grass fed). They will forage better (read, actually dig through snow to get to stuff underneath) and eat a more varied diet than many modern breeds. They don't need as much grain (really only a 'treat' most times or for final 'finishing' before slaughter). They are slower growing, so instead of being ready to butcher at 9 to 12 months, they'll take about 18, this also usually means a smaller, easier to birth calf. They tend to be smaller at mature sizes, too...but this for a family, is actually a very good thing. And as a general trend many of these breeds give A2 (supposedly the 'good' kind) milk.

[mjc]

Mar 4, 2011 16:19:32 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

A single cow really produces more milk than a family of 15 can drink in a day? How much milk does a cow give in a day? You missed out on not having homemade pasta. Now that the guineas are starting to lay, it's all I can think about. Can't do it yet cause we are collecting a batch for hatching before we eat any...

Something like a Holstein can give 5 or 6 gallons per MILKING. (more if pumped full of hormones and such)

The current record holding Holstein was pumping out around 23 gallons per DAY!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

We kept Black Angus cows.
www.willowcreekranch.us/Angus.html

They produced around 2.5 gallons per milking and were
milked twice a day. (Less milk in the winter.) For the first few months
the calf got a 1/2 gallon of milk per milking leaving like 4
gallons a day for us. We never
had any restrictions on how much milk we drank or how
much our friends drank. All of our friends and relatives had
as much milk as they wanted.

I think that due to cow psychology it's an all or nothing
thing with calves. Either she has one that takes all of
her milk, or she doesn't have one. They get upset with
change, and an upset cow produces much less milk.
We kept the calf close by... In a pen separated
by a few feet from the main pasture. Just far enough
away the little bugger couldn't reach her, but close enough
for companionship. Sometimes the yearlings would think
that they aughta be suckling mama still. There's a device
that can be attached to them to stick mama where
she doesn't like to be stuck.

We fed the milk cow a scoop of rolled oats while while she
was being milked.

[mjc]

The Black Angus of today is a much different critter than even 15/20 yrs ago. I'm not sure you'd get 5 gallons a day from a BA cow, anymore...maybe, but if you stay away from some of the 'best' beef lines.

And yes, it's an all or nothing. The one thing about the calf, it will nurse throughout the day, so the milk production will be spread out, too. So you wouldn't be able to establish a regular schedule for milking.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The one problem we had with using Black Angus from the range is that they could be flighty... It took a while to acclimate a new milker to being close to people. Our cow was always named "Soogie" except for one wild thing. I don't remember what her name was any more, but it was something like "That crazy bitch"

Oh, and don't throw onions over the fence into the cow pasture.

[garnetmoth]

Honedew: I am a dietitian. People can live vegan (no animal products at all) and be healthy with some planning. Meat and milk are nice concentrated forms of protein. You can meet your protein needs with legumes and grains (dont have to be at the same meal).... its all a balancing act.

Feed lot animals take a bunch of chemically fertilized and irrigated grains, and antibiotics, and make a higher unhealthy fat animal. a homestead pastured animal takes up less resources and is usually a lot healthier without meds and more greens make their fat profile better (just like us!)

Id eventually like to have enough room to have good foraging poultry, and we enjoy our rabbits for the manure and meat, and we could transition them to all natural food in a pinch (our buck was raised on pellets, and pellets are easier, but hay, seeds, leaves, veggies, and twigs could do it all.)

I eventually want a dexter cow or 2. theyre cute.

[mjc]

Mar 4, 2011 17:24:46 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Oh, and don't throw onions over the fence into the cow pasture.

I'll see your onions and raise you...a patch of ramps...

[mjc]

Oh, yeah...something else I forgot to mention earlier.

Those 'super producing' cows have a much shorter milking life...like 2 to 4 years and then they are 'milked out'. On the other hand 15 or more years for some of the heritage breeds is not unheard of and 20 is not totally out of the question.

[honeydew]

Ours are Black Angus. They were grass fed when we got them, and continue to be with a bit of grain as a treat. Though since Stella is about to calve she is not getting grain at the moment. This will be her first, and my first crack at MILKING A COW! Ha Ha Ha did I think 5 years ago that I would actually be looking forward to learning how to milk a cow? No.

That's a lot of milk to deal with. I was thinking, perhaps naively, that I could milk and make butter, cheeses, fresh milk, frozen milk, whatever until we were content with that, and then let her dry up until the next calf. Is this even realistic?

Should we have her tested for TB or anything else before consuming any raw dairy? I understand its legal in Canada to consume personally, but not to share or sell? So I can't give some to a friend who would consensually drink raw milk?

I'd say about half the meat we consume comes from our little homestead. I would be happy with that but my husband is convinced that he needs to eat so much meat. It's been my recent goal to covertly switch us to a less meat more veggie diet.

One good thing about meat is that you can store it on the hoof into the cold months of the year if you need to. Thinking of it as another method of food preservation.

Animal husbandry really interests me.

I would love to get some heritage breeds of cattle, but I have not found any close enough for us to realistically get. I would love a couple of highlands. I did go about 150 kms to get heritage breed pigs before. Won't go with anything else now.

And I did read that about the heritage breeds and the A2 milk, where did I read that now?

And yes, you really are missing out if you haven't had homemade pasta. It's SOOOO easy to make, especially if you get a hand crank pasta cutter like the imperia or marcato. I adore my machine, and recently got the ravioli attachment which is just way cool.

I also got a flour mill for Christmas, and will be buying organic red fife wheat from a local farmer. With all the food issues going on right now, we plan to buy 3 or 4 - 50 pound bags which we are picking up next week when we make our trip into the city. (There's my seed for my wheat growing project. Also getting v. small amounts of a few other varieties.) As it is, I've gone through 50 pounds of storebought flour since I learned to make bread a couple of months ago. It's way cheaper, I even render my own lard from the pigs. No chemical preservatives in my stuff! ;D

18 hens produce too many eggs for our family of 4, at least it is when the hubby is working away, so I have been trying all sorts of new recipes with eggs in them. I'm up to my eyeballs in eggs, right now I have about 4 dz. in the fridge.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

When you stop milking her she will stop producing milk. She'll easily produce milk for 10 months if you keep her milked on a regular schedule. I don't remember ever getting a break from milking, but I remember going down to the dairy sometimes for milk, so there had to be some time in there where I wasn't milking her.

We made lots of butter, and lots of ice-cream. (Hint: Ice-cream also uses lots of eggs). Gave lots away. Fed it to the dogs. Made lots of milk-based casseroles and soups. We tried making cheese sometimes, but it takes a lot of carefulness to do it right which isn't easy to come by when there are 13 kids running around. I think you'd do fine making cheese. Curds are easy enough to make and don't require curing.

We never had a cow tested for anything, but that was a long time ago. I'm certain that we were not in compliance with the prohibition laws. Nobody ever bothered us for sharing. But we sure didn't take it to the farmer's market with us.

[grunt]

You only need about 4 oz of meat a day in your diet. Most people seem to eat more than that two or more times a day.

[mjc]

We had a Jersey, for several years, that I milked, morning and evening...I know the schedule well. We often fed the excess (and ramp tainted milk) to our pigs. They really enjoyed it.

TB and brucellosis tests are pretty much standard pre-sale items these days, so are some vaccinations. The anti-raw milk laws never were really about TB, though...but other problems/diseases that could be prevented by better dairy sanitation. TB was the 'big stick' used to beat them through passage. There are more confirmed cases of TB being transmitted from humans to cows than the other way around.

There's been a lot in various newsletters and online about A2 milk in the past couple of years.

Also, remember, that with store bought eggs it is a month to six weeks from chicken to expiration date...so that 4 doz in your refrigerator will last a while. And there are all sorts of things you can do with them...including freezing them (no, they aren't all that good for 'sunny side up' after freezing, but the work in baked goods and scramble just fine).

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Mar 4, 2011 20:46:45 GMT -5 mjc said:

We often fed the excess (and ramp tainted milk) to our pigs. They really enjoyed it.

I was previously trying so hard to remember what animals were eating the milk that we poured out. Of course it was the pigs! Oh my gosh: I'm having such fond memories today.

No ramps around here.

[steev]

In a pinch, there's pickled eggs.

[mnjrutherford]

wow... OK, I've heard of onion milk but that would be great for cheese. I've studied some about the heritage cows versus the meat or milk modern things. I was thinking of getting Dutch Belted when the time comes? We won't do piggies any time soon. Bunnies won't be happening this spring either, but that's another story.

Garnet, how do you get around the B12 issues with a vegan diet? I've had profound issues with that.