Milk feeds everything: the benefits of the family cow
Cows have earned a reputation as the gold standard in milk production, and for good reason. On a family farm or farm, cows play a key role, serving more than just cattle – they are the heart of a sustainable lifestyle.
If you are considering investing in a cow for your farm or farm, read on to discover the many benefits of keeping a family cow.
The following excerpt is from One cow revolution By Beth and Shawn Dougherty. It has been adapted for apply on the Internet.
The cow principle: the benefits of a family cow
Humans have worked with ruminants for millennia to build an ample and resilient food landscape. Regardless of whether we are talking about the savannahs of Africa or South America, the steppes of Asia or the Great Plains of North America, grasslands have played an irreplaceable role. Cows are not our only partners; wild herds of deer, antelope, reindeer, buffalo, and so on were and still are the basis of many diets. Among domestic animals, sheep and goats far outnumber cattle. Each of these species can be an intermediary providing us with access to the energy contained in cellulose.
At different times and places, human preferences for domestic species have been in response to several factors. Our first step after arriving at this farm was to purchase dairy goats. There were several reasons for this choice, some better, as it turns out, others less so. The first reason was the best: we brought the goats because the land was used to grow goat food. This is and always will be the first factor taken into account when choosing the right ruminant for your farm. Since your land already grows plants—native, perennial, volunteer, self-renewing, and ubiquitous—the next step is to introduce an animal that eats those plants.
The second reason we chose goats instead of, say, cows, was because we believed that for people starting out in the dairy industry, goats would simply be
easier. We couldn’t be more wrong here. In the goat and cow competition for ease of breeding, the cows sweep the field.
One difference becomes apparent about five minutes after the animal is introduced to the farm: cows will stay in the fence, while goats will not.
Sure, we all know someone somewhere who claims that her goats are no escape problem, and they deserve our congratulations, but most of the goats are Houdini goats for whom an 8-foot-high brick wall is almost no obstacle. On the other hand, cows can be tied with a single strand of electrified string – and they don’t care much about whether it is electrified.
Cows, at least currently kept by humans, are also much easier to keep well than goats.
There are many reasons for this, mostly related to management style, but the bottom line is that you can manage a cow or herd of cows for years without the apply of drugs or dewormers, while the immense majority of goat farmers regularly apply an entire pharmacopoeia of chemicals to keep their animals well. Moreover, unlike goats, which have multiple offspring and the confusion that can cause their legs and heads, a well-managed cow almost never needs assistance during labor. With all this in mind, we can’t support but feel that the only thing that’s truly easier with goats is raising them
above the ground.
There are other reasons why we are cows.
There is only one taste – we simply like cow’s milk more than goat’s, at least for drinking (chevre is a different matter). Another phenomenon is the ample, self-rising butterfat in cow’s milk: cream without machine separation. However, there are two more reasons that – even if we put aside our dietary preferences – lead us to keep cows whenever native plant communities provide this opportunity.
The first is in the nature of fodder.
If you grow heather and shrubs, you are growing goat food and should raise goats. If you grow grass and herbs, it is food for the cows (or sheep). However, over time you will notice a significant difference in the way these forages respond to impact (grazing).
Grass likes to be grazed, and with good grazing practices it becomes thicker and lush. Generally, bushes and thorns will become damaged or destroyed by regular grazing. The more they are grazed, the fewer there will be; it’s like planned obsolescence. There is more than one reason for this difference in plant response, and this discussion should be in another book (which we are currently working on), but the fact is that good grazing of grass pastures will produce more forage over time, while browsing of brush will mostly not.
The second reason we gravitate towards cows is a plain preference for volume.
We want lots of milk and we want it all year round. Milk – energy derived entirely from local sunlight – is so valuable on the farm that it is tough to imagine there being too much of it. A single cow can easily provide an average of several gallons of milk per day for an entire year or even several years, which would require more than a few goats, which not only produce less milk but have a shorter lactation period.
We don’t want to say it can’t be done and If your land produces more food for goats than for cows, we encourage you to do sobut these are just some of our own reasons why we prefer cows and why the rest of this book will focus on milk production from cattle.
Milk feeds everything
Now let’s talk about milk and its properties that make it irreplaceable.
Abundance
Remember that milk comes from cellulose – the planet’s primary and ample source of dietary energy – and ruminants will.
give us milk every day.
Nutrition
Milk is a complete food – every mammal on the planet begins its life on a diet containing nothing else. This one perfect food has everything a tiny mammal needs. Milk not only provides all the macronutrients such as proteins, fats and sugars; grazing animals also give us nutraceutical phytochemicals (read: plant substances that are good for health) from their feed. It’s as if you yourself were eating a diet of hundreds of species of plants – with great diversity and all the benefits that come with it.
Versatility
Milk feeds everything. Really. Calves, of course. People, and not only as drinking milk, but also as all probiotic milk ferments, such as yogurt, kefir, cottage cheese, butter and thousands of types of cheese. And then there is the farm. Let’s think about it.
Humans have been milking ruminants for thousands of years, and their lives have been profoundly enriched by access to grass energy in the form of milk – huge quantities of milk. More than people can apply while it’s fresh. So what happens to the gallons of secondary products (skim milk, buttermilk, whey) when the milk is processed for storage? What do we do with all these wonderful, perishable nutrients?
We convert them into other forms by feeding them to pigs, which turn them into a long-term, tasty and palatable store of protein; and chickens, who apply it to produce eggs; and animals that eliminate predators and pests – dogs and cats – so they know where home is but are still hungry enough to hunt.
It turns out that milk is a nutrient-dense supplement that provides farm-fed animals with the proteins and fats they need to stay well and grow, and every day, or even twice a day, our cup and theirs literally overflow.
Settling – this word means “staying at home” or “dwelling” – is staying in place. We reach a good place and want to settle down, and grazing animals is our way.
Hail to the kitchen garden, kudos to the orchard and kudos to the vineyard – these adaptations to the local terroir are worthy of blessing. But the strength, durability and character of the land lies in what it already does, naturally and without assistance – and that is growing grass. Grass forms the soil; grass holds the soil; grass produces soil fertility; grass protects the soil. And ruminants turn them into milk every day and forever.