My experience with A1 milk
Jan 27, 2015 15:04:44 GMT -5
Pinevalleydexter, crose, and 1 more like this
Post by zephyrhillsusan on Jan 27, 2015 15:04:44 GMT -5
My first cow that we bred here (out of an A2 dam, we found out when we tested her later), is A1/A2. Then we bought an A2 cow who is actually the granddaughter of our original A2 cow--the one we sold because of her attitude about her horns. So I would cull (sell, not butcher) an animal that is A2 if other things are not right, such as temperament. I keep my A1/A2 cow because although her udder is not as good as the A2 cow's udder, she has a very sweet temperament, a wide barrel/capacity, is a very good mother, weans a sturdy calf, and is easy to milk.
When it came time to buy our first bull, I did want an A2 bull (in case A2 milk would end up helping our GKs' milk-related issues). However, that was farther down on my list of other things I was looking for such as conformation, great udder on his dam, temperament, beefiness, and polled. I would have preferred homo polled, but I'm willing to give up things I can cull my herd for, and dehorning is something we can do--as opposed to turning a mean animal nice or changing its milk protein. I would not have bought a lesser quality bull just because he was A2, by any means, nor did I even care about color. The fact that he's red and our girls both carry red was just icing on the cake. For now, it also helps tell the cows from the boys at a distance because all our girls are black and all our boys are red!
It's a shame to cull a good A1 or hetero cow or to pass up on buying one (unless your family can only drink A2 milk, like one family I know), because it's really easy to breed a replacement heifer using an A2 bull or semen. Some farmers have been able to convert entire herds, not by culling, but just by normal replacement of A1 orhomo (ETA: correction, hetero) cows and using A2 bulls. These are dairy herds, of course, and they probably retire cows younger than most of us Dexter breeders would, so it might take longer to convert an sizable herd of Dexters.
When it came time to buy our first bull, I did want an A2 bull (in case A2 milk would end up helping our GKs' milk-related issues). However, that was farther down on my list of other things I was looking for such as conformation, great udder on his dam, temperament, beefiness, and polled. I would have preferred homo polled, but I'm willing to give up things I can cull my herd for, and dehorning is something we can do--as opposed to turning a mean animal nice or changing its milk protein. I would not have bought a lesser quality bull just because he was A2, by any means, nor did I even care about color. The fact that he's red and our girls both carry red was just icing on the cake. For now, it also helps tell the cows from the boys at a distance because all our girls are black and all our boys are red!
It's a shame to cull a good A1 or hetero cow or to pass up on buying one (unless your family can only drink A2 milk, like one family I know), because it's really easy to breed a replacement heifer using an A2 bull or semen. Some farmers have been able to convert entire herds, not by culling, but just by normal replacement of A1 or