Post by eric on Sept 8, 2008 17:23:38 GMT -5
Can you all tell anything about this cow by her looks? If I were to sell her, how much should I ask for her? That's my main question. She's a little over halfway through her first lactation, due to freshen again late February. She's giving an average of about 18-19 lbs per 24 hours, or just over a gallon per milking on average, but she's also not getting great pasture and I'm not giving her hardly any grain (only about 3 lbs sprouted barley between two milkings). Still, it doesn't seem like she'll ever be a great producer. She gives a good amount of really thick cream, but the fat isn't nearly as yellow as that from my other cow. She leads well. She's not very calm, though, and I don't quite trust her. She's only ever kicked me when I was trying to pick her foot up, but I've used one of those horseshoe-shaped crank-tight anti-kicking things ever since anyways. Even before I got that thing she stood very still while I milked her. She seems a little slow to strip out, relative to what I assume is normal. Hand milking probably takes me about fifteen minutes to get her good and stripped out. She's half Jersey, half Guernsey. She was a family cow, but the family got divorced and she wound up in a commercial herd for a very short time before I bought her less than a month ago. My other cow is due to freshen late December, so I was thinking of maybe selling this one before then. Here's the same picture twice, because I had trouble with the exposure/brightness.
This other cow is the one I want to keep, because she's super gentle, easy to work with, and she makes really yellow butter. She's had some issues, though: trouble getting bred, sores on her udder, and mastitis or something like it. And, as you can see, she's older: she'll be freshening for the 6th time soon, and two of those earlier lactations were really long. I like that her production stayed up, though: at her last test day at the dairy I bought her from (at about 400 days into her lactation) she was still giving ~38 lbs/day, which seemed good considering. I'd like to raise a heifer from her, but she's carrying a hereford cross now, and it may be 2010 before I can breed her to the kind of bull I'd like to, and then I'll probably wind up with a bull calf. So I'm kind of thinking of selling the GuernseyX and buying a Jersey heifer calf, but I want a quality cow (lots of yellow butter, fair producer, easy to handle, easy to hand milk...), and that seems hard to find.
This other cow is the one I want to keep, because she's super gentle, easy to work with, and she makes really yellow butter. She's had some issues, though: trouble getting bred, sores on her udder, and mastitis or something like it. And, as you can see, she's older: she'll be freshening for the 6th time soon, and two of those earlier lactations were really long. I like that her production stayed up, though: at her last test day at the dairy I bought her from (at about 400 days into her lactation) she was still giving ~38 lbs/day, which seemed good considering. I'd like to raise a heifer from her, but she's carrying a hereford cross now, and it may be 2010 before I can breed her to the kind of bull I'd like to, and then I'll probably wind up with a bull calf. So I'm kind of thinking of selling the GuernseyX and buying a Jersey heifer calf, but I want a quality cow (lots of yellow butter, fair producer, easy to handle, easy to hand milk...), and that seems hard to find.