Putrify on your shirt? So you do not put on a clean shirt daily?
I’ve never raised cows myself, but I’ve known enough folks who have that I can affirm that fresh milk is, in fact, delicious. Especially when the cows give high-fat milk: One friend of the family has managed to get his cows up to 7%.
Yup, the calves are hand-raised, as others have noted. They get colostrum during the first day, and from then on, either milk or supplemented powdered food, yup.
Calves are quickly separated from their moms and are kept in separate, individual hutches until they’re older. I’m talking non-veal dairy cattle here.
There is also a device called a colostrometer… The colostrum of each cow is measured with it, and giving a grade accordingly. And the colostrum is labeled according to that grade. Ideally, calves from high-producing cows (which the owner hopes will become high producing cows) will get the highest quality colostrum (may or may NOT be from its mom).
A calf in industrial dairy production wouldn’t fly, they have to be separate from the cows. The cows are high producing, make more milk than the calf will need, and are constantly milked (twice or thrice a day, depending). The calf will get in the way.
I have learned much from this thread; I’d say my knowledge about cows has at least tripled.
If I were to just poke a cows udder - you know, walk up, give a gentle little push with my finger - what would it feel like? Part of me wants to believe it would be like poking a water balloon (thin, rather elastic membrane surrounding a significant volume of fluid), but the rest of me thinks that surely cows are constructed more solidly.
Also, what happens if a cow is normally producing milk, at a normal rate, but then isn’t milked?
Oh, god. I don’t like milk to begin with - lactose intolerance* will do that - and when I did drink milk as a kid it was skim milk, and I’m one of those “raised on skim and think anything else tastes like medical waste from a liposuction clinic” types. 7% milk sounds disgusting to me.
*So in my hypothetical zombie situation, I’d have some sympathy. It’s tough, you know, needing to carry those little pills around with you when you go out to eat. But my sympathy only goes so far, and my brains are not up for grabs.
It’s just a bag of breast meat (as in mammals, not chicken); when full of milk it can be quite tight, later on when the cow is producing less milk daily it’s quite flabby. Milk production can’t really be judged on udder size. I had grannies with their tits almost dragging on the ground who’d struggle to make 12 litres a day, with perky young things with basketball sized udders making 20 litres/day.
Things get tight for a few days, then the milk is re-absorbed. The cow can get a bit grumpy and can be subject to a greater chance of mastitis as she can be leaking milk which can allow bacteria access through the teat canal. Generally if you wish to dry a cow off, you restrict her daily feed to maintenance only and milk her for a few days, then stop, keeping her feed restricted for a few more days.
Fat % depends mainly on breed, Jersey cows would be around 5 to 7%, Friesian cows around 3 to 5% are ballpark figures with there being variations due to type of feeding, stage of lactation, and variations within the breed. Here, we get paid on the number of kilograms of fat and protein sent, less a charge per litre of milk.
It’s easy enough to reduce the fat of milk taken home; just let it stand and the fat will float to the top and then pour it off (usually onto my breakfast:p)
Well, it’s milk replacer. Partly milk, reconstituted with mostly water, also some vitamins & minerals added. Exact product varies as the calf grows.
No, they don’t – they go to farms that specialize in raising calves.
The calves will stay with their mother for a few days (3-7, typically). After that, they are separated; the cow goes back to the production line and the calf goes to the calf shed to be hand-raised. On smaller operations, they will have their own calf sheds on the farm, to raise them for a few months. Then the better females are heifers that will eventually become milk cows, and the males are sold to a feeder operation, to eventually become hamburger. The bigger specialized dairy operations will have an arrangement with someone else who runs a specialized calf-raising operation; they take the calves at about a week old, and hand-raise them for a few months before selling them.
When the udder gets too full, and is painful for the cow, she lets down, and the milk runs out onto the ground. (Just as can happen with human mothers who produce more milk than their child drinks. And it’s especially prone to happen when they are wearing a good shirt, according to my sister.)
And modern cows do produce way more milk than a calf drinks; they have been bred that way for generations.
Cow’s udder is a delicacy in France. When sliced on a plate, it looks a bit like a cross between liver and really stiff pate. Naturallly, I can’t vouch for the taste.
Like being kicked.
How about a nice baguette?
Agreed. It bears the same sort of relationship to the milk found in a supermarket that ripe, red, garden-fresh tomatoes have to the hard, pale variety the supermarket stocks in winter.
When I was growing up we had a neighbor who ran a Jersey herd. Like some of the other larger dairy operations in the area (NW PA), he bottled and sold directly to the the public rather than selling to the dairy plant. Selling straight Jersey milk gave him quite a reputation locally (most farmers around there had the familiar Holstein herds, a few had Guernseys). He sold “coffee cream” that was ridiculous - you could practically whip the stuff by stirring it with a spoon. He had to give up the dairy business eventually because he was selling to the public at his farm, as well as dropping off to the local grocers. The state told him he was being both a retailer and a wholesaler, and he had to stop one of them. He couldn’t make a profit without both. At that point, he sold off the Jersey herd and started raising beef - Charolais. He just had to be different (the few beef operations in the area were mostly Hereford).
Re: lactose-intolerant zombies…
I’ve read that tolerance of cow milk in humans is caused by a number of relatively-recent mutations. The Indo-Europeans carried one such mutation and went on to spread across western Eurasia. This was described as ‘the attack of the milk-drinking mutants’. 
It’s also sold in the UK, we call it ‘Elder’ and it tastes fucking 'orrid
Shouldn’t that be “Edimbourgeoise”?
What were the cows protesting? Did they have guns*?
[sub]* Slow loading SWF[/sub]
Just curious - are any of the folks who have posted so far Female? That is, females who have ever had a baby? Or had a girlfriend with a breastfed baby?
Because, HUMAN mothers can aim and squirt their milk. Years ago, when most of my girlfriends & I were still single, my friend had an “oops” pregnancy. Of course we were still young and rowdy, and a couple of times when we were joking around while she was nursing her son, she squirted me from across the room.
By the time I became a mom myself, I was over 40, thus I guess I’d outgrown that mischievous urge to squirt anyone. Well, truthfully, I’d outgrown having time to sit around shooting the breeze w/ my buddies, so never had the opportunity. But I certainly could have - the pressure in the breasts when you are lactating can be pretty intense. I used to joke it was worse than having to pee, because you need someone else (a baby) to help you do it. Or a pump, which worked fine but definitely made me feel like a cow.
And like the cows discussed in some of the posts above, I produced way more milk than my baby needed. You hear all these stories about women having trouble with nursing, but when things are working, they are really working.
Thank you McGeek. I was going to point out the similarities between breasts and udders, but as a male I’ve learnt the hard way not to make out loud comparisons between human females and bovines. :smack:
For details on udders, here’s a link
There is a large need for human milk. My wife donated when she was nursing our boys.
This apparently may come as a surprise to you, but it’s quite possible to be female and not pop out a crotch dropping or two. It’s even possible to not hang around friends who reveal and discuss their tits to you. :rolleyes: