Post by ricknews2 on May 27, 2015 11:06:41 GMT -5
Hi all,
It's been awhile since I've been on the board. Been REALLY trying to make a go of it on our own and always felt I had nothing but question after question and didn't want people getting tired of me :-)
I'm kinda getting to my whits end on this one though.
Last year around this time our cow's milk started going bad after only a day or two old. It would have a off, more than just a sour smell to it. Like a tangy after taste. It would have a bitter after taste and it kinda stung on your tongue. Like tiny needles poking your tongue. You would open up the jar and WHOA! It had a stank to it. It got to the point where this was happening to the milk the very next day from milking her.
So we thought it was that she was getting near drying her off stage and it had been over two years since she had freshened her first time and so we shut her down milking from then: August, to when she freshened in Mid November.
We finally started milking her for us around December and this milk seemed okay. We moved the baby off her in March. And really went back to sanitizing and saving her milk so my wife could skim off the cream and after about 4 days we'd have enough cream that she would make butter. But the butter kinda stinks and has this off taste again. And I've noticed if the milk is a few days old it once again starts to have that tangy bitter thing going on and the tongue gets the tingle after taste thing. My wife made vanilla ice cream for Memorial Day and it had a tanginess in it. You could taste the bitter cream in there.
I thought maybe it was the alfalfa hay she was on. It was from the same guy we've been getting it for YEARS, but this last seasons stuff was REALLY stemmy. Her off tasting milk started right around the same time we were feeding her this new stuff last year. And we finished it up about two weeks ago and so are on to a new stack that we got from someone else. (They had it left over in their barn and so we bought it a month or so ago. It's from the same cutting we had bought a stack from her last year on a first cutting and it was good stuff.)
We've had her milk tested and the lab couldn't find ANYTHING wrong.
We hand milk, wash her utter every time, sanitize the bucket. We filter the milk right into jars that have been sitting in the freezer and put the full jars right back into the freezer for 4 hours.
She's only 6 years old and has freshened twice. Her milk has been WONDERFUL up until last June. Now we give most of her milk to the pigs, but they'll be gone next Tuesday to butcher.
I've talked with vet. I've talked with dairymen and one dairywoman :-). NO BODY has an answer. I just can't figure out if it's something WE are doing wrong, what it is?
Could it be her? Is she no longer good for a family cow? :-(
I would LOVE hear feedback. We just don't know how to fix this and neither does anyone we've talked to.
Thanks,
Rick
It's been awhile since I've been on the board. Been REALLY trying to make a go of it on our own and always felt I had nothing but question after question and didn't want people getting tired of me :-)
I'm kinda getting to my whits end on this one though.
Last year around this time our cow's milk started going bad after only a day or two old. It would have a off, more than just a sour smell to it. Like a tangy after taste. It would have a bitter after taste and it kinda stung on your tongue. Like tiny needles poking your tongue. You would open up the jar and WHOA! It had a stank to it. It got to the point where this was happening to the milk the very next day from milking her.
So we thought it was that she was getting near drying her off stage and it had been over two years since she had freshened her first time and so we shut her down milking from then: August, to when she freshened in Mid November.
We finally started milking her for us around December and this milk seemed okay. We moved the baby off her in March. And really went back to sanitizing and saving her milk so my wife could skim off the cream and after about 4 days we'd have enough cream that she would make butter. But the butter kinda stinks and has this off taste again. And I've noticed if the milk is a few days old it once again starts to have that tangy bitter thing going on and the tongue gets the tingle after taste thing. My wife made vanilla ice cream for Memorial Day and it had a tanginess in it. You could taste the bitter cream in there.
I thought maybe it was the alfalfa hay she was on. It was from the same guy we've been getting it for YEARS, but this last seasons stuff was REALLY stemmy. Her off tasting milk started right around the same time we were feeding her this new stuff last year. And we finished it up about two weeks ago and so are on to a new stack that we got from someone else. (They had it left over in their barn and so we bought it a month or so ago. It's from the same cutting we had bought a stack from her last year on a first cutting and it was good stuff.)
We've had her milk tested and the lab couldn't find ANYTHING wrong.
We hand milk, wash her utter every time, sanitize the bucket. We filter the milk right into jars that have been sitting in the freezer and put the full jars right back into the freezer for 4 hours.
She's only 6 years old and has freshened twice. Her milk has been WONDERFUL up until last June. Now we give most of her milk to the pigs, but they'll be gone next Tuesday to butcher.
I've talked with vet. I've talked with dairymen and one dairywoman :-). NO BODY has an answer. I just can't figure out if it's something WE are doing wrong, what it is?
Could it be her? Is she no longer good for a family cow? :-(
I would LOVE hear feedback. We just don't know how to fix this and neither does anyone we've talked to.
Thanks,
Rick