I love Cows. They are literally calm milk machines that transform garbage plants into white nectar.
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 Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
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I love Cows. They are literally calm milk machines that transform garbage plants into white nectar.
I love Cows. They are literally calm milk machines that transform garbage plants into white nectar.
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Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
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are you going to kill her for meat, anon?
how do you feel about killing an animal that you connect with like this?
also do cows ever bite? are they almost always very gentle animals with humans?
Milk, bruv.
yes but are milk cows not killed after they stop producing milk? I guess that anon could just let the cow frolick on his ranch until it dies but that seems...wasteful(?) for someone who eats meat
Mmmmm Idk yet. This will be her first pregnancy so we will have her for a long while if she doesn't randomly die.
I like to think that you give them the best life possible and in return they provide you with tasty meats when it's their time to go. Fair trade in my books.
She has nibbled my hand, but I've been careful not to let her chomp. She could def break fingers. You need to be more careful of her stepping on your feet. I got lucky the other day when we were halter training her, and she only sort of stepped on my foot. Overall she has been quite quite gentle.
They're also cute
Halter trained her a bit today. She wasn't freaking out about it, but she was also reluctant to be lead around.
She loves getting scratched under her chin and gently over her eyes. She will raise her head up high when you're scratching her chin.
Yes.
Sleep juice producers. love 'em
hehe cowe moo moo
If y'all had a smallholding, and wanted to own 2-4 cows for a steady supply of dairy and also owning cows, which cows would you own? I'm tempted to go for Jerseys because they're so cute but from what I've heard Jerseys are demons. I don't want to have to fight my coos.... Swiss Browns and Milking Shorthorns are a close second. Might just get a Zebu milk breed for the frick of it, like a Sahiwal.
>steady supply of dairy
>2-4 cows
If you're doing this small-scale, this is how it will break down.
A "steady" supply of dairy will only be available for 6-9 months of the year if using non-industrial breeds or non-industrial farm methods. Milk, much like eggs, are not naturally available 24/7 at your own convenience.
That being said, cattle comes in groups of three. The cow, the yearling from last year's season, and the calf from the current year's season. You would want more cows and a castrated male or two to keep the herd happy and healthy. Good rule of thumb for a small but self-sustaining herd—1 bull, 2 companion steers, 3 cows, 3 yearlings, 3 calves. Yearlings are slaughtered or sold to keep balance in your herd.
Artificial insemination is a thing, but the more non-industrial the breed is, the more you're required to detect when your cow is in heat, and signs aren't as obvious, meaning you run the risk of missing a cow's breeding window and getting no milk, no meat, all waste next season. A bull is a lot more work, but he'll negate this gamble. You can also pay to rent a bull, but keep in mind the rarer the cow breed, the more of a pain it'll be to locate one if breeding to standard.
So, onto cattle breeds. The honest answer is that the best are ones available to you and that you can afford to support and maintain, but I'm partial to Dexters, Red Polls, Guernseys, and Dutch Belted breeds. If serious, hit up your local farm meets.
Oh kek, I've never really used TikTok. morons gonna moron.
>Post pics of cows you work with.
Oh I wish. I'm a farm sperg, not a farmer sperg. I've grown up around agriculture, animals are a big special interest and I've been earnestly researching for years, and hit up my local farm meets, shows, markets, but realistically, cattle farming is about a decade out for me. One day.
Rancher sperg here, have a pic of some of ours
what an amazing landscape
Is it true cows have magnets in their brains? Because, just look.
I just got the one jersey cow that I posted above. I have like 9 goats as well. You think it would be a good idea to keep the cow with goats for company?
goats can make cows more gentle or at least my neighbor who has both says so
>cattle farming is about a decade out for me.
A decade, and a couple of million dollar amirite?
I would 100% go for the indian breed unless in a cold climate
She is an absolute sweetie. Loves hanging out and getting lots of pets.
I’m happy for you.
The cow is getting dropped off really soon!! 😀 pics soon!!
indian cows are better than american cows
t. rajeesh
>10.24
!!!!!!!,,perplexing!!!!!!!
If cows layed eggs they would be perfect.
If you want big eggs, you could try to get an ostrich.
That's a big bird
That lays big eggs for you, anon.
4u
NICE. I was hoping for that.
bump
Probably a dumb question but do ostrich eggs taste different from chicken eggs?
no idea, but since ostrichs can also lay unfertilized eggs, go nuts
do ostriches lay a lot of eggs
Theu don't lay eggs frequently like some other birds. Female ostriches typically lay around 40 to 60 eggs per year, with each egg weighing around 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds). Ostriches are indeed protective of their eggs and exhibit various behaviors to ensure their safety.
Ehm…Mooo?
imagine the gains
I'm getting a jersey cow a d calf soon. Very excited to milk cow and become friends with her.
Happy for you anon. Do you have pics to share? Is the calf male or female?
The calf is yet to be born. Expected in a couple months. My friend who I'm getting the cow with wants to call her Beauty because of her eyes. I'm kinda meh on the name, but it's her cow more than mine.
It's almost overwhelming to think of what we will do with 5 gallons of milk a day. Set for butter, cream, and cheese for sure.
Pretty gril
You have to talk to the calf as well as the mother so it knows why to be a calf.
If I don't will I only get half calf?
>5 gallons of milk a day.
>like a 60-80 oz steak
>176 protons
fugg, I need a farm yesterday
I don't really understand how the milk industry works. Don't cows only produce milk while their calf is feeding? And generally only enough to feed the calf?
What happens in industrial agriculture, are the cows killed when they stop producing milk?
Cows will produce milk as long as they are getting milk, and for roughly 270ish days per year. It's a supply and demand thing.
The calves are usually seperated, castrated if male, and raised as steers for meat, and the cows are also seperated and raised to be new dairy cows.
they are nonstop impregnated to produce milk. as soon as a calf is born, they take it away from the mother and proceed to do it again. hope that helped
Cows produce milk because we bred them so.
they dont produce milk unless pregnant or having been given hormones that simulate pregnancy
They don't produce milk unless they have given birth and have been milked everyday afterwards.
I've got just the thing for you
yes you get both milk and veal out of it
pretty sweet arrangement
is veal better than normal beef
It’s more tender, but less flavorful. Does that mean better? Personal preference. I prefer meat from larger steers at least a year old.
sounds to me like there are only upsides to waiting until the calf is an adult, both morally and in terms of amount of meat you get from the animal, right?
There is a sweet spot in terms of feed input vs meat output. Your cattle will continue to grow past the sweet spot, but you will spend more on feed than you recoup in meat. And the butchers have a preference for animals of a certain size too, the bigger animals I butcher for my own use yield T-bone steaks that are larger than most people want (they don’t fit on a regular dinner plate, and the usual 5/8ths to 3/4 inch thickness people like on a porterhouse results in like a 60-80 oz steak), so commercial butchers don’t want animals like that because the way people buy meat means that you end up not getting the best price for your prime cuts.
But yeah, veal is a specialty product and much less popular than it once was because it’s kind of wasteful. Before synthetic rennet was availble, you had to produce a certain amount of veal as a byproduct of getting what you need for cheese, but there’s not much point these days.
I eat them
I won't judge but hypothetically if you lived back in the bronze age and had to choose between keeping a few cows for their milk or slaughtering them for meat, what would you do?
>bronze age
Up until recently, you kept your cows until they were to old and then you'd slaughter them. Same as with chickens.
This still happens with dairy cows. A not-insignificant percentage of beef you consume (unless you specifically look for bred beef- like angus) will be dairy cow meat. Once dairys stop being productive, are too old, etc, they're sent for slotter.
>slotter
does the quality of meat degrade with age?
No, as far as I can tell. That rule apparently doesn't apply to goats, however. Goats have to be slaughtered before they're a year old iirc or their meat becomes nasty and smelly. So if you have dairy goats that have slowed production and are retired, congrats! You now have a pet old lady goat.
>Goats have to be slaughtered before they're a year old iirc or their meat becomes nasty and smelly
that's really interesting
I wonder why that happens.
Goat meat is generally not common across the planet, right? Lamb, Beef, Chicken, Pork are commonly eaten but not so much goat. I wonder if this is why
I think it's the most widely eaten meat in the world, just not popular with westerners. It's a shame too because goat is delicious
Old goat is pretty smelly and it’s got something to do with the fat, but it’s not inedible, especially in curry or as Schawarma or Mutura. It’s definitely not for everyone. Old hogs are similar, they often develop very strong flavors and are love it or hate it in many preparations.
It gets a little tougher with age. Better to prepare older animals as barbeque and soups or other slow cooked recipes, or to grind it for sausages or hamburgers/meatloaf, etc.
Half the calves you get are male, and all but one male every 10 years or so are excess to needs. Beef production is a natural fact of dairy production.
Farm sperg here, will answer some questions.
>if you lived back in the bronze age and had to choose between keeping a few cows for their milk or slaughtering them for meat, what would you do?
>bronze age
Anon this is all wrong. Cattle in the bronze age (3300 BC–1200 BC) looked a hell of a lot different than cattle today. cattle pre-industrialization, and cattle pre-Indo European colonization, making this question the equivalent of "what would your diet be in a time before our world looked anything like it is today?"
The answer is still both, but with a caveat. Before any kind of machinery, cattle were arguably most useful for their drafting purposes. Since goats, pigs, and sheep were domesticated millennia before in the same areas as cattle, they likely bred cattle for large size and strength. Humans are opportunistic and leans toward sustainability, though, so unless social taboos were in place, drinking their milk and eating them when they were young, old, had poor confirmation, whatever, is highly likely.
Tl;dr sorry anon, but your question isn't the gotcha you think it is.
Correct. It depends on the size and scope of the operation, and it isn't due to any ethical motivation, but Big Farm wants to waste as little of their product as possible in order to maximize profits. Cheap, shitty ground beef is a great way to offload any meat that still passes USDA inspection upon processing, and pet food was created to get rid of and market meat that failed USDA inspection or is just unsellable.
>I don't really understand how the milk industry works.
Your questions are easy to answer, but there is a lot misinformation out there so I don't blame you. Will tackle in my next post.
Cont.
>Don't cows only produce milk while their calf is feeding? And generally only enough to feed the calf?
No and not quite. Here's the beef.
Milk production varies by breed. Non-industrialized cattle were often bred for dual or triple purpose, meaning they could adequately supply meat, milk, and sometimes drafting power. Still, dual purpose breeds would often still be better at one purpose and in certain areas.
With farm industrialization, only a few breeds were selected for mass farming operations and became highly specialized in milk or meat, and any breeds that weren't selected faded.
In the modern milk industry, the industrial Holstein is the gold standard for milk production. They can be milked for way longer than most other cattle breeds, and they produce way more milk than any calf could ever drink, even before you take away the calf or supply hormones to increase milk production artificially. But, even with non-industrialized dairy or dual purpose breeds due to past selective breeding, cows still produce more milk than a calf could drink, and can be milked for awhile after a calf is weaned.
>What happens in industrial agriculture, are the cows killed when they stop producing milk?
Industrial agriculture isn't monolithic, but yes, dairy cows are killed when they can no longer produce milk or can no longer produce enough milk to justify the feed cost ratio to milk output profits.
100%. The older an animal is, the more the muscles are used, meaning the meat is tougher. The tradeoff is that the meat is also more developed. It varies by breed and feed methods, but cattle hits a sweet spot of texture/flavor when slaughtered in the 16-28 month range.
>Goat meat is generally not common across the planet, right?
Wrong. Goat meat is huge in the Middle East, northern Africa and parts of Asia, particularly India. If a culture doesn't eat cow or pig, they're almost certainly eating goat.
What do you think of spergy ARA's spreading misinformation about animal agriculture, farm anon?
By ARA, do you mean the Agricultural Retailers Association? I don't care much for politics and misinformation is kind of the norm in agriculture, so I suppose I'm not thinking about them much at all.
By ARA I mean 'Animal Rights Activists'. Those people who post tik toks of a heifer in heat mooing and caption it 'THIS COW IS CRYING FOR HER BABY FARMERS ARE EVILLL' those c**ts. But fair. Post pics of cows you work with.
I'm interested in pre industrial moo cow husbandry (I'm writing a historical fiction novel and one of the principal characters is a dairy farmer).
What do you recommend I use for research?
Are female cows useful for draft purposes after their milk runs out? When would they be able to produce milk? It's only a brief window after their baby cow is born? When they laugh,does milk come out their nose?
Well when you put it like that...
SLAUGHTER THE FATTENED CALF AND OPEN THE WINE CASKS
TONIGHT WE FEAST
Keep the cows, breed them to a beef bull, and eat the offspring when they get to a certain age. Do this until the cows get to the point where the milk production slows down, breed them to a milk bull, and keep the females.
Me, too. They are great animals in many ways.