You all were right about grass only

[Leah Mack]

Several years ago I was just getting started and spent a lot of time on this board. Back then folks told me that keeping a dairy cow on just grass (forage) wasn't going to work. I didn't believe it because there are all kinds of farmers around here selling all grass fed milk. So I bought a calf from one of them and raised her up good and tame to be my perfect milk cow. The problem is, I've discovered that farmers can feed baleage and haylage and silage and plow up fields to plant winter wheat and so forth. I just have mediocre pasture despite all the minerals I've applied and high density grazing I've done, which doesn't really work the same with two or three cows. I can get poor hay very easily but only one or two farmers near me sell the high quality hay I need to get my milking cow through the winter without grain. They are both certified organic and so the organic dairies snap it all up. This year we had a drought and there is no more good hay.

I'm not willing to give my family grain fed milk, especially when I can just buy good grass fed milk for about the same cost as feeding my cow!

Meanwhile, I am also milking my beef cow (half Rotokawa Red Devon, half mostly hereford). She gives 5-6 pounds of milk to my Jersey's 12-14 but only eats one third or less of the supplemental feed (if I keep them apart). they are both nursing calves as well but the beef cow is nice and fat and it's all I can do to keep the Jersey from wasting away.

I'm thinking that if I had one or two more like my beef cow I would get at least as much milk, WAY more beef out of the calves, and they could support themselves much better on average pasture and hay. Now, these are beef cows specially bred to thrive on grass, not just any would do it, I don't think.

Also, beef cows should all give A2 milk, if I understand correctly. Also, the three beef type cows I've milked in my life have all had nice, long, soft teats since they were never bred to be machine milked and need shorter ones.

anyone else out there milking "beef" cows?

[Tricia]

HUGE HUG!!!! I love keeping up with your farm and insight so keep updates coming.
Looking for a better keeper here also. (just don't tell Molly- she'll be sooo mad and retaliate)

[Jenn]

I have a Braunvieh and a Brown Swiss/Jersey cross. I used to have a jersey, but sold her to pay the bills. Buttercup was an old style jersey...short (not mini), dumpy and an ok producer. She did fine on grass/hay...kept her condition, but was going to produce about the same amount of milk whether you fed her or not. My other 2 are "barometer" cows. Their milk supply fluctuates depending on the quality of the grass. The Brown Swiss/Jersey cross actually got FAT this year on fescue and a flake of brome hay at milking OAD. She was not producing pot loads of milk though, just enough. Her milk would increase if we milked TAD, but we needed the OAD milking more than extra milk.

I think matching the animal to the resources you have available is totally appropriate. I don't think you have to milk a beefer to get an easy keeper, I think it's just easier to find them in the breeds that haven't been selected for grain to milk conversion.

-Jenn

[catherine]

I've seen the same thing between our one Jersey and our 20 odd pure American Milking Devons. The Jersey is a hard keeper, esp. as compared to the grass only Devons! We have grafted a Rotokawa beef Devon/Jersey heifer calf onto our Jersey, and I'll be watching her with serious interest. I keep hoping we'll get an AMD/Jersey heifer, one of these days, but we're two for two bulls from her. So far, the AMD/Jersey bull calf looks about the same as the beef Devon/Jersey heifer calf. We've named them Bonnie (beef Devon cross) and Clyde (AMD cross). ;D

The grass fed dairy near us, where we got the beef Devon/Jersey heifer, has really skinny Jerseys and really fat Jersey/Normandes (another dual purpose breed like the Devon) on the same feed (grass in pasture, alfalfa and beet pulp in the stanchion), and with about the same milk output. He's the one who put the beef Devon bull over his cows, and he can't wait to see the results, too. Also, we've got a neighbor who runs big Herefords, and they have such huge bags and such wonderfully large and cushy teats that it makes me really itch to put one of them in a stanchion! I've also heard on this forum somewhere that Angus are genetically quite similar to Jerseys (you apparently don't get as much heterosis as you'd think crossing Jerseys with Angus), so their milk, though lower in volume, is apparently equally as rich. Just fyi!

[Janene]

Yes, understanding what goes into 'all grass fed' we learn its not all 'just grass' (like we think it is!!) And I don't even have a tractor, so that'd be fun trying to pattern my little one acre into what the 'bigger boys' do.

Not all (milk) cows are bred for grass-only, but they are to be found. I think the crosses do better because of the varied genetics......and that's my two cents for today.
Janene

[Leah Mack]

That's the funny thing. I bought this cow specifically because she was bred to produce on forage only (such as not giving huge quantities of milk). The farmer I got her from milks seasonally, though, so not in the winter. I knew I couldn't just go out and get any old high producing dairy cow and expect her not to starve. When I was putting fabulous green, sweet smelling round bales out of grass / alfalfa she did great. Now with the drought I can't get that hay and that is when the problem started. Of course, it was costing me an arm and a leg to feed her that way. Since I'm planning to start a grassfed beef business when the kids are a bit older, it makes sense to me to milk beef cows, since I want to have a bunch of them anyway. Always a learning process, isn't it?

[Jenn]

Beef cows have a hard time in drought too.
-Jenn

[Nonesuch Melissa]

Dairy cows are bred for a specific purpose... to convert feed into milk... sometimes you get lucky and get one where no feed equals no milk... other times they just give and give until there is nothing left of them...

Really it is up to us to make sure that doesn't happen... maybe you should consider a complete horse feed (includes roughage) if you can't get good hay. They are reasonably priced for one cow.

[Leah Mack]

I think I'm going to put her on a mixed dairy feed tomorrow while I try to find a buyer. I still have some hay. It is just running out fast and I'm afraid because it isn't even winter yet!

[DanMa]

I say my mini-Jerseys produce milk on "grass alone" but it is really a mixture of grass & legumes. If I fed grass only, production would decrease by about 50% [as it sometimes does on certain hays in winter.] I imagine if I fed them grain which I refuse to do except as a treat for conditioning, their production would increase.

[Liz]

Even with intensive grazing, most people I know of that are "grass only" are shipping in alfalfa bales or producing their own like the farmers around you. There are so many variables--weather, minerals/soil, bugs, etc that can wipe out a season's worth of plans.
I think going to a beefy milker or a cross is ideal in your situation!
Good luck!

[simplynaturalfarm]

Don't feel horrible - all of us at some point like to think we can figure it out even if a million others say they have tried it and it can't be done. And a few out there are doing it with phenomenal cows. Maybe some of us misled you into thinking it was as simple as throwing a grassfed cow onto any grass and she would produce - if I was one of them, I am very sorry I have stressed over and over that for real production, I had to supplement with something, whether it was premium alfalfa hay or alfalfa pellets/beet pulp etc. I had only one cow (dairy that is) that was able to produce high quantities on forages alone but she wasn't hardy in our harsh winter climate so I got rid of her too eventually. I am so sorry that you did not realize at the time that it isn't just genetics or grassfed raising that makes the cow able to handle forages - there are a few odd cows in the world that are that way, but most of them are not. When I started into my grassfed journey, I wrote to a lot of those grassfed dairies and none of them told me of the high quality forages/haylages they were feeding. One fellow was downright rude and told me just to feed what was natural to the cow - grass. THat isn't true - grass does not simply sustain these higher producing dairy cows bed for high production on high inputs. And if you eliminate the high input grain feeding you have to replace it with something. And simply feeding lots of grass, hay and legumes doesn't make it easy - there are hard years that the hay is horrible, mineral deficiencies, and lots of milk fever and acidosis on grass feeding because you are feeding extremely digestible grasses in the spring that may have too little fiber etc etc. . . . It isn't always as easy as some make it sound.
Last year was a horrible year for me also. Every animal on my property got thin and I had free choice hay that they did not seem to like and no option to buy anything else. I have never had cows get thin on free choice hay, but the locals all said it was a poor quality hay year and they were supplementing big time with grains etc. I am not one of those people who will let the animal perish because I am a grassfed die hard, so I actually started supplementing with protein licks, beet pulp and alfalfa pellets and lost horrid amounts of money. I finally sucked it up and butchered 2 animals that I decided were simply not hardy enough for my drought/ poor grass situation. One cow I purchased from a 100% grass operation in the fall (that hurt because we put a lot of money into her - more than all the other animals combined), but she was the least hardy cow I owned. We forget that there is grass and then there is native grass, sudan grass, legume mix, CRP crapola mix etc so "grassfed raised" doesn't mean we can throw them out onto pasture and they will produce. I had a brain fart when I purchased her and did the old "she'll do fine in my place because I do grass/alfalfa too" but she was a beef cow that had been raised on dairy quality alfalfa and had HUGE maintenance needs (I had hoped to milk her). She was eating twice as much as my other 3 cows put together, required massive amounts of water all winter, and was eating my pasture faster than it could grow and had never eaten a single mouthful of grain in her 3 years of life. AND this was a beef cow!
It was a good reminder that even in grass fed cows, there is room to cull for less hardy ones. Many years ago I got rid of my Jerseys and started milking Dexters because they ate half the amount of feed, stayed warm, raised a calf and still gave me 2 gallons of milk and a beefy calf at the end of it with no ketosis, milk fever, underconditioning etc. But among my Dexters I had hardier cows and cows that milked off their backs and would lose condition or drop down to no production when the grazing declined. Some that would milk phenomenally well on alfalfa and some that milked well period.
So you have learned some valuable lessons (hopefully not lost as much money as I have the last 10 years LOL), and now you will find something that works in your system. My BIL has learned that when he buys dairy cows from grassfed dairies, he is still going to cull 2-3 cows for every 1 cow that can survive on his optimal grazing (he has about 2 feet of topsoil and gorgeous alfalfa fields).
I now have a Jersey x Belted Galloway who gains weight on air and is very very hardy, plus my 4 dexters. I'm always open to different non conventional dairy breeds and if I had more land I would be addicted to getting 3 of everything .
By the way, my little Jersey x belted Galloway was raised on my ex CRP field (rotationally grazed of course), and is very hardy, but her Mom was the cow I butchered because she was so unhardy. It will be interesting to see how she does over the next couple of years.
I am very much sold on beef crosses and beef breeds for those of us who want hardier animals with fewer inputs even if it means we have to milk twice as many.
I had a hereford who ate nothing but native grass pasture and gave 5 gallons a day. And she had more fat than was even decent on any cow. We have another friend who bought an old 4H cow that is a Simmental cross with a hereford who is a quiet darling and was giving them 4 gallons a day when they purchased her (she wasn't being milked when they bought her, just nursing a calf). They have been milking her for 2 years now and she is down to 1.5 gallons, but that is after major surgery this spring to remove 50 gallons of whole barley she got into, and then a rip roaring peritonitis she developed after the surgery. She was on the oldest crappy hay they could get and no supplements and just keeps a going.
Around here I know of an old fellow who milks a beef short horn and gets tons of milk. Another milks 2 angus, but they are somewhat high strung and harder to handle, although they give lots of milk.
Hopefully you will find something like your beef girl.
Heather
Heather

[kristi]

I don't yet milk my girl, as she's only 15 months old, but my Holstein/Angus cross has held her weight through the summer drought on grass (really poor grass at that) whereas the Jerseys and even some of the Brangus calves had to be given feed. I wasn't sure I would keep her, but I'm thinking I had better. It may be the Holstein/Jersey heifer that goes. She needed lots of hay and feed this summer and still lost weight.

[Heidi]

Hi Leah Mack!
You know what strikes me most about your post? That you tried, it didn't work, and you told us! Its great feedback, and takes real strength of character to acknowledge that somethings just don't work the way that we thought they would.
I for one am a great believer in sharing my experiences, both good and bad. I just know way too many blogs, forums etc, where everything is rosy, and you never hear back how things went if it didn't work out as ideally as the poster thought it would.
Okay, getting off my hobby horse (which is that online, we should be as real as we are in person, and honest about how things are going).

Incidentally, what is your objection to feeding your children grain fed milk? Is it just purely the financial side of it, or is there something about grain fed milk that is detrimental to the raw milk itself?

I have an Angus x Jersey that is the sweetest smoochest thing. I hope to have her in calf this December, and will try milking her when she freshens. Looking forward to seeing what type of milk she produces (volume, cream content etc), and she is definitely a "good doer"!

Bye
Husky

[allmuxedup]

We just got a Jersey. We're trying to wean her off the grain & onto pasture/hay & alfalfa at milking. I know she'll probably never be able to go straight 'grass' fed. But, we hope to get close. We need milk while the Dexters get tested for A1/A2 beta-casein & trained to milk. The Dexters will never see grain & should do just fine. I am OK w/ milking two or three to get the milk we'd get from a high production cow.
Our pasture is pretty good. You can't bring a pasture up w/ only minerals. You have to have the microbial community to process those minerals for the plants. For that, you'll need organic material. You can call gardeners to come dump their trimmings, instead of taking them to the dump. My first garden was fill from a river bed. I mixed 1/2x1/2 w/ garden waste & had a killer garden. In a pasture situation, you'd have to compost it & then spread it. If you don't have a manure spreader, you can put it in the back of the pickup & spread it. Either have a person back there w/ a shovel, pushing it out as you drive slowly. Or, stop every little bit & push a bunch out. If you have to do it by stopping & dumping, you'll want to do bigger piles. So, hook up a drag behind the truck. (Long chain attached to a board, on which you've bolted a section of chain link. On top of the chain link, pile 'stuff'. Cement blocks, tires, whatever to weigh it down. The drag will spread the compost for you. You can mix seeds in the compost if you want to seed the pasture as well.

If you want A2 milk, test for it. The test isn't that expensive (unless you have as many cattle as I do! I'm testing slowly!) Jerseys have (I believe) a high percentage of A2 milkers, as do Dexters. Holsteins/Gurnseys are mostly A1 (I believe). It does seem reasonable that beef breeds will have a higher % of A2 milkers. They never had the Holstein blood taken into th breed, "to improve it". My research on the issue tells me that "all" breeds (save H/G) used to produce mostly A2 beta-casein milk.

If anyone is interested in why one would want 'grass' fed milk, instead of grain fed, here's a reasonably good explaination. www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm Take a look thru the rest of the site, there are also environmental & humane benefits to 'grass' fed meat/diary.

[birdsongmilkmaid]

I feed a small amount of grain to the Jersey cows I care for. I've tried feeding grass only, but find I have to listen to what the cow is saying to me with her condition. Right now I'm feeding an 8-year-old Jersey-X cow about 4 pounds of 14% certified organic grain a day, and she is keeping her weight on nicely. I think I'll be able to eliminate grain completely after going back onto pasture in the spring. I never feed more than 8 pounds of 14% grain a day, and I'm thinking of experimenting with increasing the protein and decreasing the amount of grain I feed.

Several years ago I purchased a Jersey from a retired dairy farmer. She was being fed lots of grain, and I cut her down right away. I think I should have weaned her off the grain slowly, because she lost a lot of weight and it took her two lactations to start producing nicely again.

I'm hoping that as we improve our pasture and hay fields, that I can stop feeding grain during the summer. Maybe spraying milk on the fields will make a big difference.

Naomi

[bluetigers]

The important thing to look for is how deep and wide the heart girth is on the cow. That will tell you if they are an easy keeper.

www.bovineengineering.com/linear_female.html

Also, the cow could have really good genetics to be a easy keeper, but she did not get adequate nutrition (milk, forage, no grain) when she was growing.
Example, you may have the best blueprints for a house, but the house will only be as good as the materials you put in.


To make a forage only milk cow, it comes down to:

Adequate nutrition (nursing for at least 8 months on cow that has 4% butterfat, high quality forage, no grain) for the growing heifer, so she can be her full potential.

Raised with mother or nurse cow (for learned grazing behavior).

Land management (for improving the quality of the forage).

And, the right genetics.


Here is some helpful websites:

www.holisticmanagement.org/

web.mac.com/gotschall.samuel/holtcreekjerseys/home.html

www.swissconnectioncheese.com/index.htm

[parndt]

That's very interesting! Granted, I don't milk a dairy cow but Bonnie's heart girth is significantly larger than her length. I'm glad that's good!

[frogHOLR]

Dec 19, 2010 9:57:04 GMT -5 allmuxedup said:

If you want A2 milk, test for it. The test isn't that expensive (unless you have as many cattle as I do! I'm testing slowly!) Jerseys have (I believe) a high percentage of A2 milkers, as do Dexters. Holsteins/Gurnseys are mostly A1 (I believe). It does seem reasonable that beef breeds will have a higher % of A2 milkers. They never had the Holstein blood taken into th breed, "to improve it". My research on the issue tells me that "all" breeds (save H/G) used to produce mostly A2 beta-casein milk.

I wanted to correct what was stated in this part of the thread - Guernseys actually have the highest percentage of A2 milk of the major dairy breeds; higher than the Jerseys. Holsteins are lowest (most are A1 producers and some are A1/A2 producers). My research seemed to say that Ayrshires are predominantly A1 as well. Brown Swiss stats were not mentioned much. I'm not privvy to how the Dexter's fall into the A1/A2 statistics, but I agree with this poster that most beef breeds would likely be A2 milkers. This has been the conclusion of my research, for what it's worth!