Well, their udders, really. I’ve recently seen some pictures related to some manner of agricultural protest in Belgium, including one where a police officer is forced to use his riot shield to deflect a spray of milk straight from a cow’s udder. This was illuminating, because I didn’t realize you could aim a cow’s udder like that, but apparently you can (which I’m glad I know, for the next time I’m stuck between a cow and a horde of lactose-intolerant zombies).
Anyway - so you can, if you wish, use a cow’s udder as a disgusting, dairy squirt-gun. What sort of capacity are we talking about? I assume, just based on the dimensions of a typical cow, that we’re not talking dollar-store squirt guns, and probably considerably more than the original Super Soaker (which I believe had a 25 ounce reservoir). If I were to walk up to an average dairy cow, would I get a gallon of milk? Less? More? How long does it take them to ‘refill’, so to speak? I assume the common myth of lack of milking resulting in bursting cows is indeed a myth without basis in reality, but one does wonder what happens if a lactating cow lacks a calf or human to remove the milk.
And I’m pretty sure the answer will horrify me, but how do they keep cows lactating? Are there barns full of cows that just produce milk constantly, due to the influence of various injected hormones? Is there some complicated schedule where some cows produce milk in the summer and others in winter, or alternate months, or draw lots?
My uncle has a farm…avg cow gives about 6 gallons of milk per day, being milked twice per day.
The udders are the sack holding the milk, the teat is what can be aimed, it’s a finger like thing extending down. Cows have 4 of them, I think. Not disgusting at all, it’s milk, it’s the most delicious thing I think. Especially raw, unpasteurized milk.
How much in a squirt? I don’t know a couple tablespoons maybe.
How do they keep them giving milk? It’s similar to humans, I think (this I’m not an expert at). They give birth then wean the calves right away and keep milking the cow which will give milk for a couple years (not sure)…then get it pregnant again. Avg cow lives only about 4-5 years on my uncle’s farm, then they sell it for slaughter.
The hormone keeps them giving milk without needing to be pregnant again.
Born and raised on a small dairy farm. Have not milked a cow in about 40 years.
Depending on the bread of cow. some of ours could give 3 gallons a milking.
After giving birth a cow will continue to produce milk if they are milked daily. I would guess the amount of milk per squirt would be around 2 to 3 table spoons.
As time past birth goes on they will begin to produce less milk each day by a little bit. Each year we would dry up a cow about 1 month before they would give birth again.
Depending on the cow some of them we would keep 10 or more years.
Four suction tubes are the standard in most milking machines. Cows with less udders can still provide enough milk to be found economically useful to keep, they just don’t use that suction tube. Which, btw, is a pre-determined amount of pressure that they apply, it is NOT like the vaccum suction power. Cows with more udders… well, they just won’t use them, they’ll still milk four of them.
Cows in dairy farms (industrial type) are bred, then when they give birth the calf is soon separated from mom (and hand-raised), and the mom is put in the production line. While the cow is lactating, she is bred again so that she produces an average of one calf per year in production. She has her dry period during the last part of pregnancy. Cows are not kept milking year round, they have a period of rest and regression.
For the record, if you are milking by hand and squirt at the barn cats regularly, they’ll learn to catch the squirted milk in their mouths. Watching them try to do so can be quite entertaining.
Or you can have a milk fight between your yourself, your brothers, and your cousins. Just be sure not to hit any of the paying customers (except for the little kids who are waiting expectantly with their mouths open).
What? We were little and my Aunt and Uncle ran a working farm/B&B in Vermont.
So, when the calf is hand-raised, don’t they also feed it … cow’s milk? :dubious:
I doubt very seriously that the giant industrial milking operations hand-raise all those thousands of calves every year. For one, they’d consume all the product.
So what’s the real Dope? Do they go into pet food? Give it to me straight.
I have not been on a farm in over 30 years, so the methods may have changed some.
Typically, new born calves are fed colostrom from their mother or other cows for a few days/weeks. Then, they will be switched to powdered milk because it’s cheaper, this will last maybe a few months. Eventually, there’re weened from this formula and at that time, they’ll simply drink water and eat feed and/or grass/hay.
Female calves known as heifers will be kept and raised as eventual replacement for the herd.
Males/bulls are eventually sold. Some go to feed lots to become steers and others go to the slaugther house for veal. The farmer may choose to keep a few bulls for reproduction, but, with modern artificial insemination, that is becoming less commom
So Farmer Fred milks his cow, Bessie, one fine and lovely morning.
He ships the milk off to one buyer, who sells it to another, until Bessie’s milk winds up at a factory that makes powdered milk. The powdered Bessie-milk is packaged, shipped to a distribution center, then shipped to a store, whereupon Fred comes in and buys some powdered milk to feed Bessie’s calf, because that’s cheaper?
In NZ, it’s a legal requirement to keep the 1st 4 days of milkings out of the human food chain. Although now colostrum is used in some dietary supplements. Generally the new born calf would get 6 to 18 hours with it’s mum, but I’d make sure it got at least one good feed from its mother.
High producing cows have way too much milk for 1 calf to drink. So the calf would get its 8 to 10 litres of milk a day by sucking on a rubber teat and I would store the rest and serve it up warm later. I would at one point have 3000 litres stored. The calves were kept indoors in mobs of 12 and feed milk and Moozlee (a brand of meal). Once the calves were older and the weather more settled they were put outdoors. My trailer feeder had 40 teats and I would end up with about 60 heifers so there were two mobs of 30-ish. Once the calves were outside it was fairly easy work. Dad would keep the bulls so he’d turn up at dawn and feed his 2-3 mobs and one of mine. I’d take the feeder after milking to feed my 2nd mob, then after breakfast collect it and clean it. Once the calves had adjusted to outdoors, the amount of milk was gradually decreased to encourage grass eating and once they were about 10 weeks old, the milk was stopped with an increase in meal for a while.
I had 240 cows which were spring calved, with about 60% calved in 3 weeks; the remainder over the next 5 weeks. We kept most of the calves; AI bred heifers as replacements, the bulls for beef. After 4 weeks of AI, Hereford bulls finished off and these calves were kept as well. Some were sold on to be reared. Some calves weren’t suitable to keep because of their breeding i.e. for bulls, too much Jersey. These were kept just a few days then turned into veal.
I never considered milk powder cheaper. How can someone buy a raw product, process it and sell it back to you for less? (our market is not distorted with subsidies or controlled pricing) Then you have to transport it home, use up hot water and time mixing it. But I do know accountant run farms that used milk powder. They wanted “good” production figures so that the manager could get his bonus and the only production figure that counted was litres of milk delivered for processing. This made the owners investment look better as one of the methods of valuing a farm here is milk production per hectare. Most owner/operators didn’t use powdered milk, except for some selling their farm to increase it’s apparent production. I did try mixing powdered milk with fresh milk so the outdoor calves got 2 litres of liquid, but 4 litres worth of whole milk but didn’t notice any extra benefits for the extra cost and time.
Now, to the OP, to squirt milk at zombies. Grab teat with thumb and index finger at base of udder. Clamp thumb and index to seal off teat with udder. This is important as milk flowing back from teat to udder can cause mastitis. Now close your other fingers in sequence; this will expel the milk out. The cow will need to let her milk down first and relax the muscle surrounding the teat hole. Most cows will adjust to milking and letdown will occur just by the familiar routine. In the late spring some would be hosing milk out as they got into milking position.
