A milky sacrifice

After a week or so of mornings with no milk, we’ve decided to give up the milking until next year for a number of reasons. As mentioned before, first time mother cows are not mature enough to provide copious amounts of milk. They typically grow into it and can provide more milk for sharing with us after a second calf is born and all the “equipment” is broken-in. On top of that, these are Dexters and not Jersey cows, so milk production is already limited due to the breed.

What we’ve noticed is that our milking schedule seems to happen after the calves have already been to the well. As a result, the cows have already been emptied and there was nothing left for us. Occasionally, a calf would get outside the paddock during the night and we would easily get up to 6 cups of milk per cow, but that was a rare occasion and not something to count on. We have read that optimally for cow sharing the calves would be separated from the cows overnight, milk collected in the morning, and let the calves have as much as they want during the day. We don’t really have the fencing equipment to separate the calves from the cows yet, so the mama’s get a break.

So we have sacrificed our milk collection so there is more for the calves to grow big and strong. It was a hard decision because the milk is good and very creamy, but we didn’t want to risk the health of the calves during this high growth period for them.