I asked Wauf, but all ask you guys too. If you had the option to get an animal for milk, which one would you get?
Ive recently got a house in the countryside with some land and ill probably be moving there by the end of the next year.
Ive already planned for a garden for muh veggies and crops, but I also wanna slowly start getting some animals too.
Im definitely starting with some chickens, because they are relatively easy to take care of and id love some fresh eggs every morning and some meat. Probably gonna get a pig too, eventually. Thankfully, I already have buildings for those on my property
But what animal should I chose for dairy?
A cow seems like would be quite challenging for the first time. Also, it seems like its too much milk, dunno what to do with it every day, unless i try selling it which I just cant be arsed to do.
Sheep seems like a better option. Love sheep milk and especially cheese, but they also seem like they need a lot of care every day and you need to babysit them a lot.
Goat seems like the best option. They are basically moron-proof and basically take care of themselves, just have a patch of land where you can release them to graze whole day and theyll be fine, which I do.
On the other hand, goat milk is more of an acquired taste, I dunno if ill be able to just drink my coffee with goat milk every day, but I guess ill get used to eventually.
Any farmer anons here with experience?
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Can you milk a pig?
Lemme ask ur mom
You can milk any mammal, and even some non-mammals.
Some people do drink pig milk but apparently it's a hassle to milk them because they have 12 teats
H-hot
Goats are the moist fun, its like having a big dog that can also feed you
Sheep are quite literally braindead, might as well grow a tree
>moist fun
Calm down, Achmed
Goats. Had them and they were great. They don't graze; they forage. The grass won't get eaten. Bushes and trees will.
Much easier to milk than sheep. Easier to pre-clrean for milking also.
They can't eat just anything.
Feed them alfalfa hay. Roughage increases fat in the milk. It's about 3.75%.
Dairy (cows)re 4.
Nigerian dwarf goats are 8%,- best goat milk. But they only give a cup per day.
With a Saanen, you get 1 gallon per day. Those are the big white goats.
tl;dr
I tried goat milk and it was gross to me.
Try all types of milk and then get the animal whose milk you like the most.
Donkey milk is also a thing
>Donkey milk is also a thing
And it's fricking DELICIOUS. Many people my age were raised on the stuff in my country but as we've become increasingly more Americanised, donkey's milk has become somewhat rare in favour of infant formula. I find it ironic. Donkey's milk now has a perception of being unsafe for baby when it is nutritionally (and if memory serves, taste as well) most similar to breast milk (when my wife was milking, yes, I tried some and it was very familiar-tasting). I've never heard of kids dying from it, at any rate. Yet infant formula had had more than a few deaths associated with it. Go fricking figure.
picrel
>literally "Ass Milk"
Pretty humorous in english.
I thought mexicans do other stuff with donkeys...
Fresh goat milk is very good. But goats pass somatic cells into their milk, unlike cows, so goat milk at the grocery has been there a whole and is disgusting.
Our goats did not get sick. We fed them very well, and never had a sick goat.
Sheep are fricking lame
>sheep are fricking
FTFY
Ask Wauf too.
>Cow
most difficult to get, most difficult to care for, largest production quantity, "medium quality milk"
>Sheep
medium difficulty to get, medium difficulty to care for, smallest production quantity, "highest quality milk"
>goat
easiest difficulty to get, easiest difficulty to csre for, medium production quantity, "lowest quality milk"
>
milk quality will obviously depend on preference also. I think cows are too difficult to get and keep nowadays; I suggest goats and maybe later sheep, though you can keep both.
>Ask Wauf too.
Isnt the while point of these homies to go out and maybe hunt now and then, the frick would they know about actually raising animals
A lot more than you'd think. Seen a few people there that looked like straight up roughnecks. Never hurts.
Wauf has a lot of homesteaders and preppers, sort of the ultimate Wauf LARP. Might want to check in on Wauf too. Haven't been there in years but (was) similar crowd. doityourself & bootstrappers are pretty much the same, and home agriculture is serious business for self-sufficiency. Even check in on /k/ when they're running prepper threads & similar. A lot of tards on all these boards Know Some Serious Shit™ for various reasons. Some have grown up pretty rural and are familiar with farm work, even college kids learn a ton if they go into any branch of agriculture in their university.
How are you defining "quality" for milk?
I'd rank goat milk as higher quality over cow milk. Has better nutrition to it like more calories, more protein, more potassium, more calcium, more magnesium, etc., and is easier to digest.
I put them in quotes because as I said it depends on preference. The average joe scoffs at goatsmilk but most people who know of it consider sheepsmilk to be high quality stuff. That said, it again depends on preference. And as far as nutrition goes, you're right. I should have listed their relative nutritional values instead I suppose.
Goats are little escape artists but they're compact, dont require lots of space or food compared to a cow, have lots of personality and are just adorable.
Goats cheese is also GOATED.
Cows require an extreme amount of grazing, like acres just for one. I've raised each of these animals before. Milk sheep usually give more milk but can be wildcards in terms of how much. They also need shearing, and people try to crossbreed them with wool sheep which makes their wool very matted and still needs to be sheared, and they make less milk. Once they're nice they're like big puppy dogs though.
Goats are cool and are happy to eat woody weeds and bushes all day. They also really love to stick their heads through the fence and need rescuing which is a factor you should consider. I've had goats that produced way way more than their kids needed and needed to be milked daily, and you can keep milking them after the kid weans to make her lactations last longer. Having a male goat around is a pain in the ass. They're not a huge threat to you unless the goats really big or you're a huge pussy, but they beat the shit out of the other goats all day every day, and ram every time you go in the pen. Goats are easier to catch too, I've cornered sheep in stalls and they jumped on a flat wall and gone over my head.
>Goats are easier to catch too, I've cornered sheep in stalls and they jumped on a flat wall and gone over my head.
That's suprising I'd have thought it wuld be the other way around.
Thqts a cute horse
Speaking as someone who has kept these animals, if you can make the capital investment to house a pair of cows, they will be the least work for product. If you don’t have 5 kids or family/friends/neighbors willing to take your dairy products for barter, they will produce too much.
Sheep will have the lowest capital investment, but will have more labor, and you’ll probably need to have several to meet your needs. They will also have higher medical costs than the cows, especially per gallon of milk. If you get wool bearing sheep instead of hair sheep, you’ll also have to do something with the wool.
Goats have an intermediate capital investment requirement unless you have minis, but in most American climates, they will have the highest ongoing medical expenses of the three. They’ll probably outproduce the sheep.
All the concern about the difficulty of handling a bull vs a ram vs a billy is dumb, artificial insemination is the easiest and most economical choice for anyone with less than 10 breeding females of any of these.
If you sell the calves/lambs/kids, know that goat is almost always going to be slaughtered “halal”, which is just another word for inhumanely, because the instructions for halal slaughter at 1400 years old and have not been/cannot be updated to account for progress. You might feel this isn’t your concern, or you might feel strongly about this, so I think it’s important for you to know.
Personally I will never keep goats again, they are a pain in the ass, obnoxious to have in your pasture, always getting sick or into mischief, etc etc. Many people new to livestock choose goats for their funny personalities and low capital investment required, but they are more difficult to keep than other normal livestock, and I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze.
>If you sell the calves/lambs/kids, know that goat is almost always going to be slaughtered “halal”,
Is the OP american or yuro? If the former he won't have to worry about that.
Not true anymore, even in the deep south. It's extremely unfortunate.
Over 90% of goat meat production in the US is halal.
How much cheese can you make with two cows, assuming that you subtract a reasonable amount of drinking milk from the daily milk pool?
A pair of Jerseys will give you 6-12 gallons of milk per day depending on whether you are doing 1/day milking (yes, they can adapt to this) or 2 day milking, and also depending on the weather, and their forage. If you and your family can drink a gallon of milk per day, that still leaves you with 5-11 gallons of milk. You can get a pound or so of soft cheese per gallon of milk, but you'll probably be making butter and yogurt and cream products too. Hard cheese needs more milk per pound than soft cheese because the water content is lower, but the specifics are going to vary from cheese to cheese.
A shoat pig or two to help turn the excess whey and buttermilk, etc into bacon is a good idea, especially if you don't have people who will buy your excess or if you don't want to deal with selling. Figure on spending a couple grand on chillers and tanks and cleaning supplies for the chillers and tanks.
IDK, the butter and milk and stuff goes pretty fast if I bring my extra for the week to church.
Goats hands down. not just for the quality of milk/cheese/meat, but you'll save a lot on feed and vet bills. super versatile animals, won't become a full time job like a cow and is objectively better than sheep. post goat pics
That goat has too many teats.
No one
Well remember they have to be pregnant to make milk, so you're gonna need a male OR pay for spunk.
Ill just use my wife's bull
Same, I love to clean up his milk
I explained that in the Wauf thread.
Howdy. I still say get a goat for many reasons not the meat of which is the very one above: inseminating a goat is easy since you don't usually actually have to do it yourself and can just use a buck/billy.
Bulls are, unsurprisingly, extremely heavy and aggressive and can wind up injuring or even killing a cow during copulation so you're really gonna have to buy a long glove and get armpit deep in that cow foofoo with a plastic tube full of bull sperm. Not. Pleasant.
As for the cow providing too much milk, if in the future you do wind up going for a nicens little moocow (named baby tuccoo), fresh cheeses are easy to make and many, like paneer, freeze well.
No matter which animal you get, you're going to have to wind up either selling or slaughtering the young in order to get milk so be wary of that.
>goat for many reasons not the meat
What do you mean, goat meat is fricking great, id rate it above lamb even
>not the meat
Not the LEAST of which. Brainfart.
Yeah, I completely agree. Ive heard some people find it weird, but its absolutely amazing and completely moggs lamb. Maybe theyve tried some old goat mest which may be quite a bit gamey, bit a young goat meat(is it called a kid?) is GOATed(heh)
I've never tried sheep milk.
I think goat milk tastes better than cow milk.
Goat milk is way tastier if it’s immediately rapidly cooled and stored literally just above freezing. Something about heat and not being fresh makes the “goaty” taste unbearable sometimes. This also means it’s tastier to drink it raw rather then pasteurized, which is unwise to do if there are cats roaming around even if the goat seems free from obvious disease.
>then
Opinion discarded.
>If you had the option to get an animal for milk, which one would you get?
Human.
israeli human.
Oxymoron
Trying too hard