Indeed. Even a hog farm is positively aromatic compared to a chicken house on a 95 degree south Georgia day.
He’s tried this. He claims that there are none in the area that will sell him unpasteurized milk in the quantity that he wants. He’s made a deal with an area dairy that’s willing to sell him pasteurized milk at wholesale prices and he’s made several batches of cheese from their product. It’s cheaper than going to the grocery store and just buying off the shelf but it’s exact same homogenized product. They are willing to sell him bulk, blended, unpasteurized milk if he gets a commercial business license. I don’t know why it’s important for him to used unpasteurized milk. He claims it makes better cheese. Maybe, maybe not, I wouldn’t know.
Getting the license and buying raw milk from a supplier would almost certainly make more sense than running his own dairy operation. There’s no obligation to actually turn a profit, he just needs to meet certain sanitary and legal standards.
Yeah but goats are pure evil incarnate. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. I fear the day they learn how to register to vote.
If he’s making unpasteurized cheese, I suggest not eating any that has been aged less than a couple of months. I know some aficionados swear by young raw milk cheese, but there is risk, and the difference vs pasteurized or aged raw milk cheese (ie the experience you’re missing out on) isn’t that noticeable, at least to me.
There’s risk in everything but the Gruyère-ish cheese he has been making is aged for several months. Last December, he gifted me with a large wedge of four year old goodness made from unpasteurized milk. The thing had a rind on it that could probably stop a .22 bullet and an aroma that promised pungent delight. I can’t describe how yummy it was.
Dairy cows HAVE to be milked twice a day, have to. You do not get a day off, ever, unless you have someone reliable to do the job when you can’t. Beef cattle, just give them some land that hasn’t been over grazed and take your weekends off. Or go to Mexico on vacation. As long as beef cows have water and have not over-grazed the land you are fine. Move them around to fresh pasture as needed.
There is a recent thread here about bulls that died mysteriously on land in the southern desert of Oregon. It was about alien abductions or some shit. You can let beef cattle free-range and monitor them every week or so. Not with dairy cows. They need to be milked, in the morning and in the evening, without exception. Every day, every day, every day!.
Starting up a dairy operation to get milk for your own custom cheese, just make an agreement with some established dairy farmer to purchase milk from him. Or go with goats. They are not as demanding as cows.
Set your alarm for 4am, get up and milk the cows, send them out to pasture, milk them again at the end of the day when the come back to the barn demanding to be milked, because a full udder pains them. They need it emptied. They will scream and call, and to not milk them is animal abuse.
Repeat every fucking day of your life, without exception.
How do you like your hobby farm now?
Something else that I touched on in my post without realizing it, he will also have the opportunity to develop a minor sideline as a fertilizer supplier for someone, don’t know enough to say who or if it will cost him or bring in any kind of income, but there will be cow poop and it will have to he dealt with.
I don’t forsee this not sucking in your cousin, maybe not to the extent that Bob will be, but I just can’t see how your cuz wouldn’t also have to get her hands in it somehow also
This has been repeated many times in this thread starting with me in post #1. I get it, Bob gets it on at least an intellectual level. That doesn’t mean reality isn’t going to a shock though.
Given that this operation isn’t intended as a commercially profitable enterprise, there is of course, one obvious way around this - don’t take the calf. There’s no need to milk the cow if a little one is around to suckle. The pair still need a small amount of daily attention but the task becomes far less onerous. After calving, wait a couple of months until the veal to be reaches harvestable weight. As has been said upstream -
Yep, and if Bob can’t cope with this, he needs to get out of the business.
From what you’ve said about Bob, I think if he turns his hand to this, he’ll make it work. By starting small, he’ll learn the business from the ground up. Things like what the cow eats can really influence the milk (color, flavor, richness). He may want to fiddle with those things as he expands his cheese business.
Has he considered whether he’d like to keep a bull on the premises to handle duties with the cows?
He should also get a dog to help with moving the cows around. They get used to a routine, but a dog helps move them along on your schedule, not theirs.
This project is the type of thing that people have been doing for millennia. If Bob doesn’t mind the hours, I think he’ll be fine.
I think the manure smell issue depends on the herd size and the climate.
My relatives were in a dry climate. While the winters are wetter, there’s freezing weather and snow that keeps things settled.
But in any case things didn’t really smell all that bad. Esp. compared to pigs or sheep which are truly awful even at family farm levels. (Industrial farming of any animal is a whole 'nother thing.)
And normal washing of clothes does clean them just fine.
My relatives had manure spreaders to distribute the material onto fields. I doubt Bob will want to spend money on one of those. There really isn’t a market for manure at this scale. But then there’s not a lot to deal with.
Apparently he’s already tried that, and can’t get the milk that he needs in the form that he needs it.
Dairy goats need to be milked just as much as cows do; and, while they need less space and are a much smaller animal to physically handle, are likely to be harder to keep penned as they climb and, on average, are probably smarter and are more likely to figure out and manage to reach and open door latches.
Some people like goats much better than cows, or cows much better than goats (just as some people prefer dogs or cats.) If that’s an issue, then I’d go with the preferred species. If it isn’t, I’d go with the desired type of cheese, or with which is easier to find good veterinary care and supplies for in the area.
You have to milk at least twice a day, at times roughly equally spaced apart, and on a regular schedule. You don’t have to milk at 4:30 AM and 4:30 PM, however. My friend milks at 9 AM and 9 PM; it suits her better.
That works with beef cattle. It doesn’t work with modern dairy cattle, because they’ve been bred to produce much more milk than the calf can drink. Even if the calf is nursing, the cow will still need to be milked.
Presuming the cattle are healthy, the stocking rate is reasonable, and the manure is properly handled, I don’t find the smell offensive. I live next to a dairy farm, and notice when they’re spreading manure; but it smells better to me than car exhaust, lawnmower exhaust, and a lot of people’s idea of perfume. YMMV.
Whether there’s a market for manure at that scale depends on the neighborhood. If there are home gardeners who don’t have their own livestock, there may well be a market for pickup truck load quantities, especially if he’s willing to deliver, and even more so if he’s willing to compost it first. But he may prefer to spread the manure back on his hay fields, which this farm presumably has. Used manure spreaders are in many areas available fairly cheaply. He’ll need a tractor to pull it, of course, but he probably needs one anyway if he’s going to keep the farm up at all (and can most likely also get the tractor used.)
If it’s aged at room temperature or higher (I.e. not refrigerated) for at least a couple of months, in my understanding there is no longer additional risk vs pasteurized cheese. It’s the “young” raw milk cheese that carries risk. Something about the aging neutralizes the food poisoning risk.
Ad to manure: cow shit is the most bearable of the livestock shits (a sentence I never thought I would use). But when mixed with cow piss, and stored in a tank, it becomes unholy. I know this, from having spent a week spraying this mix over fallow fields in my youth. You’d think you get used to it, but you don’t. There are markets for bagged cow poo. Ax long as you don’t let it ferment, it’s really not that bad.
Yeah, I have a friend who lived next door to a dairy farm. I always see the cows when I visit her. You can smell them, of course, and their manure. But it’s not that bad. And you can’t smell it at my friend’s house, which is quite close. (maybe she’s upwind.) Cow and horse manure aren’t what I want to smell while I am eating, but neither is horrible.
Yeah, I’m sure if you let the poop and pee collect in a big pile in the barn, it will get rank. But if Bob moves it promptly, either spreading it on the fields, or composting it downwind of where he hangs out, it shouldn’t be a major issue.
Regarding calves and veal, cows are cute enough, dumb enough and paradoxically smart enough to become pets, just sayin…
It’s way way way easier to burn horn buds off when they’re calves than to cut horns off of cows. So much easier that I submit that anyone who voluntarily does the latter is so dumb that that they should leave the business entirely because clearly they can’t be trusted to make good animal health decisions.
Also a general point. Cows don’t need to be milked twice a day. If they have a low input diet, especially one that doesn’t include grain, once daily milking will be fine because they plain won’t make enough milk to damage their udder tissue. A guy I know sells straight raw milk from a couple cows and milks them once daily with no ill effects. Even left to their own devices some cows will choose not to get milked. When I had a robot herd, the computer would track the interval between milkings for each cow, and there were several that just would not voluntarily milk on a twelve hour schedule. They’re creatures of habit, though, so if you establish a particular schedule you really have to follow it, or else you’ll be causing them needless stress. No milking twice a day and the deciding you don’t want to do the evening one because you went out for dinner and got home late.
I spent some time on a dairy farm in my youth, and now sell some stuff that commercial dairies use to monitor quality. This wasn’t in the US though, so take it for what it’s worth
- The cows were on a 12 hour schedule - think 6 am and 6 pm.
- In winter this often means both milkings are done in the dark
- With his own herd he will need to be very aware of vet drug residue and also any noxious weeds on the property (noxious to us, not the cows)
- Anything commercial - here we have a LOT of hoops to jump through, and I’m not imagining the US is going to be any easier. Even giving cheese away there would be significant legal risk here.
- Even 6 cows is a LOT of milk - so he’s either scaling or tossing the milk. Again giving away unpateurised milk is going to be significantly risky. Should anything happen, even if it is the fault of the customer, your will (likely) be asked to prove it wasn’t him - which can only be done with data.
- I would echo the earlier thought about the variation in milk - with such a small herd the variation in things like protein and fat is going to be much higher. I’m assuming that is going to have a large impact on things like taste, ageing etc etc - how is he going to control this part?
You’re just saying he should consider making all his calves pets? You understand, as has been mentioned above, that all these cows have calves every year - that’s how/why they produce milk.
He hasn’t said anything to me about keeping a bull. He has told me that he has assisted a neighbor in artificially inseminating several cows. Apparently most cows are content to be face first in the grain during the procedure and are quite compliant. Two of them…weren’t. He showed me the x-rays and the scars. When you get kicked by an 800 lb creature that want to know what the XXXX you think you’re doing, it hurts.
That’s probably a good idea. They have three dogs as is but I doubt any of them will be of any use with the cattle.
Quite possibly correct. All I know about cattle is how to sear and grill them.
I wouldn’t know. He’s the Cheesemaster.
That last bit, about the variation in milk, might be very important to him, though. And it’s not as obvious as “you have to milk them regularly”.
No, it was an obviously failed attempt at some light humor based on what I’ve seen happen with the small handfull of folks I know personally who have raised a cow or three for various purposes.