Management Plan for Dairy Cow

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FeF Dairy

Milk - 3 gallons per day

Butter

Yogurt

Cheese

Processing Materials: jugs, jars, bowls

Good Cow

Good Cow arrived on the second of July, 2012. She was delivered in the afternoon by Teddy, our neighbor dairyman, with the happy news that she was 45 days pregnant and due early April of 2013.

Handling tips:

  • Please don't raise your voice around her. Be quiet, and speak calmly and slowly with low tones. Don't ever yell, she won't understand what you're trying to say because she'll be too scared.
  • Approach her without staring her in the eye, look at her indirectly and walk up slowly and calmly with confidence. It also helps if you angle your body diagonally away from her, try not to square your shoulders towards her.
  • Don't be afraid of her, it will make her nervous. Cows to best with self-confident introverts, meaning someone who is cool, collected, calm, quiet, with smooth body language. Try not to fidget, make unnecessary movements, wiggle, jerk your body or run at her.
  • Try to see yourself from her perspective. Imagine a cow, in the middle of a bunch of grass, seeing a person walk up and approach them. What would that person be doing to make you calm and relaxed?
  • Please don't feed her. She's got so much nutritious food on the ground that she shouldn't even be bothered with people food.
  • When she's being milked, she'll give more milk if she's not bothered at all. This means that when I'm milking her in the morning and evening, it will be easier for both of us if we aren't approached by people so that she stays still and lets all of her milk down.
  • If you have any questions, you should definitely ask! Gabi would be happy to crosstrain whoever wants to learn to milk her and graze her.

Materials

  • Cow: small, cheap, Jersey, in milk, not too old but at least a year, from local dairy with organic practices.
    • Milk Jerseys in King City, 25 mi away - Teddy Pankau - +16604830567, +18165932316
  • Fence: 1/8 mile livewire
  • Rods: Rebar on-site cut to 60" - 37 rods
  • Solar Fence Charger
  • Shelter/Mobile hut: scrap metal 8'x8' on wheels Cow Hut Design
    • rain catchment running into modular attached water barrel

Cost/Benefit

  • Cow: $1130
  • Fencing: ~$150
  • Possibly grain to start her incentivized to hand milking and help her adjust to a grassfed lifestyle
    • Gage Fertilizer and Grain Mill: (660) 726-3919 - 805 W Mill St, Albany, MO 64402

Costs:

  • Capital investment: $1262
  • Labor: ~1 hour per day

Benefits:

  • Manure/Fertilization
  • Grazing weeds
  • Soil Aeration
  • Human enrichment
  • Milk and derived products:
    • Milk: at least 1 gallon per day (roughly 4 dollars, and I'm not considering the premiums paid for fresh, raw, organic milk)
    • FeF drinks at least a half a gallon of milk per day, that is 3.5 gallons per week, 14 gallons per month. That's $56 per month spent on milk, and when you add the value of butter and other products the cost is even greater. Due to the demand of dairy on-site, this cow will pay back her cost in less than a year.
    • Processing into yogurt, butter, and cheese adds value and diversifies the shelf life of the product.
  • The only benefit that is easily quantified into capital is the dairy production, but the benefits to the land are highly valuable to anyone who wants to grow food in this soil. The manure will add nutrients, which will yield better plant growth, yielding better water retainment, mycelial growth, erosion prevention, and directly converts less useful weeds into more useful foodstuffs.

Grazing Plan

  • From spring-fall rotational grazing, on ~2 acres until the forage is mowed, then moved. Timing for rotation depends on forage available.
  • Grazing on land that isn't eroded, has <5% west-facing slope, and sufficient forage
  • WINTER: feed baled hay, using baler and adequate storage (future pole barn for storage of dry hay and tractors?)
  • Water:
  • station her near a pond, to be built
  • Keep her water trough full by pumping to it directly or carrying a tank to her with LifeTrac

Milking

  • Daily, or twice daily during her highest milk output
  • For one cow, milking by hand is easier
    • dedicated milk bucket/container
    • a jar for yogurt/kefir
  • For more than one cow, milking with a simple machine will work

Scale

To start with, one cow will do. When we have more people, up to 30, we'll need another one or two cows. They could be the offspring of our original cow.

  • For Scale, as we increase the herd size, we'll need:
    • Proportionate amounts of fenceline, up to 1 mi of livewire plus posts
    • simple milking machine design and fabrication
    • Addons to the cow shelter, modular and replicable using scrap

Health

  • Prevention: healthy environment, good forage, stress-free management
  • Herbal supplements
    • Garlic
    • Free choice diatomacious earth or kelp for gut issues in calves
  • Daily monitoring for signs of illness

Reproduction

  • Calves in spring
  • Milk her through fall
  • Breed her in October (by bull service or using semen from a small bull, AI performed by a neighbor)
  • Dry Period: November-Calving
  • Calves: keep them with her, perhaps wean if you'd like to acclimate the calves to people more
    • Females: raise up, breed them (use diverse genetics)
    • Males: raise up, castrate, slaughter eventually
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