Humble Garden

ReSkilling for future food independence

Archive for July, 2011

More milk!

Posted by Nika On July - 2 - 2011

cow-project-450

As you may remember – we milk dairy goats. At the moment we have 9 lamancha dairy goats, 8 in milk. Goat milk is naturally homogenized so it requires an expensive cream separator to get cream. With no cream you can not make butter!

Additionally, the amount of grain and hay and labor that goes into milking these 8 goats (which includes all the work to get them pregnant, help them deliver, etc etc) fails in comparison to the amount of milk we would get from one cow with much much less labor and cost.

Its for this reason that we have been mulling getting a cow for more than 2 years now. Today we finally decided to just do it and buy a cow, who you see below.

Humble Garden: Our New Jersey Cow

She is 15 months old, a full blooded jersey and not very large – which is very good for a family cow. She will be bred next week (by AI) and will do a few beauty pageants with her current owners.

Humble Garden: Our New Jersey Cow

In September we will have her come live with us!

Humble Garden: Our New Jersey Cow

She should deliver her baby sometime in April or May 2012 and then we will be in milk!

Humble Garden: Our New Jersey Cow

About Me

We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.

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