TexasJerseyMilker
Well-known member
It is normal to get hammered and criticised when you first join a forum. 
I am not running a dairy here. I wish I was. I would love to work at a dairy but I would not want to own one. With the overhead and the razor thin profit margin even in normal times I don't know how they do it. Surely there is little room on a working dairy to be sentimental about your livestock. My husband is from a multigenerational beef cattle ranch of a couple of sections. A section is a square mile. In fact I met him riding (trespassing) in his hay field 40 years ago. His dad had created a registered herd of Charlaise by breeding them up. I used to ride through the palce at night- I remember white cattle standing in the moonlight with fireflies. When his father died the family had to sell the herd to pay the death tax. My husband then bred up a herd of pureblood Beefmasters. It takes three generations.
The 55 square mile forest fire of 2011 burned up the ranch. He had to sell his herd because there was no hay or pasture in the whole country. We lived in what I called the calf hospital because the ranchhouse and barns everything burned and we were there too. We wern't married then, we were best friends. My place had also burned up and I had evacuated my little herd of purebred Saanens (dairy goats) there because I thought they would be safe. The barn they were in also burned up. The USDA gave money to people for livestock that were killed. I took the money and bought a Jersey heifer because I never really like goat milk anyway. Jerseys are not like other cows. For 1000 years they have been house cows. They are affectionate and high maintanence. I fell in love with the breed.
So, he and his brother decided to sell the ranch because, he said, he was too old to dig post holes and his brother was pushing 80. We moved across the country to a small ranch in Oregon. The fences were a joke of leaning barb wire held together with baling twine. Black cattle would get out on the road t night, so he and I fenced the whole place for horses. We lease the pastures to beef cattle owning neighbors. I brought my Jersey and two horses in a trailer. I have had this Jersey for 11 years. Yes it's true she is a pet. I learned to make 7 kinds of cheese because of her. She has produced 7 half Angus calves and I was not sentimental, I sold them for meat. Two of them were heifers I thought I would sell for family milk cows. It took all summer to halterbreak these heifers and then I was gone a while, came back and it was like no one had ever laid a hand on them. I think they must have inherited the Scottish dispositon. But I was not sentimental about them either and sold them for meat.
Daphne, thats her name, is what you would call a cull cow. I was gone for the summer when we lived in Texas and during that time another fire burned onto the ranch. The cowboys rounded up all the cattle and horses to an auction yard across the river, including Daphne and her calf. They sold her big calf. So Daphne, unmilked with open teats lay in a filthy dirt cattle pen for days stressed out with big beef cows beating her up. These cowboys don't know how to take care of dairy cows. So and when I came back Daphne was hot as a fire cracker and had mastitis in all four quarters. She was burning with fever and was septic. I took her to the vet, who got a pus sample and sent it to the lab and it came back negative. NEGATIVE. For this they charged me $200.
So I found a lab in Wisconsin online they air ship you some test tubes you send milk samples by air back, you don't even have to have them on ice. They do a rapid DNA analysis, culture and sensitivity and email you what organisms and what ABX kills it- it was Baytril. So I gave Daphne shots of Baytril for 10 days and her life was saved but she lost her 2 back quarters. One of the organisms was Staph which never really goes away. It flairs up every time they freshen and sure enough, with this pure Jersey heifer she only had one teat that worked, because the other had mastitis. I was not letting my precious baby drink pus so I bottlefeed her. She has two mothers but just vistits Daphne across the fence. Honeydew, thats her name, definitely knows who feeds her and yes, I admit, shes a pet.
She is Daphne's replacement. Daphne is retired now, I am not selling her for meat but she will not be bred again. And drying her up saves her body condition score. Because the pasture grass is just a standing hay crop of straw. My husband says well her cow pies are flat like pancakes so her rumen bacteria are doing OK. He knows a lot about cattle just not dairy cattle.
I came here to learn all I can about dairying and cows. My two are money pits but heres a thing- There is a woman in the next county who sells raw Jersey milk for "pet milk" and gets $9 a quart. It is illegal in this state to sell raw milk or advertise sale of raw milk. People have to pick it up at the farm and use it for pets. So I figured I could make $100 a day. Thats $3000 a month thats $36,000 a year from one cow.
I am not running a dairy here. I wish I was. I would love to work at a dairy but I would not want to own one. With the overhead and the razor thin profit margin even in normal times I don't know how they do it. Surely there is little room on a working dairy to be sentimental about your livestock. My husband is from a multigenerational beef cattle ranch of a couple of sections. A section is a square mile. In fact I met him riding (trespassing) in his hay field 40 years ago. His dad had created a registered herd of Charlaise by breeding them up. I used to ride through the palce at night- I remember white cattle standing in the moonlight with fireflies. When his father died the family had to sell the herd to pay the death tax. My husband then bred up a herd of pureblood Beefmasters. It takes three generations.The 55 square mile forest fire of 2011 burned up the ranch. He had to sell his herd because there was no hay or pasture in the whole country. We lived in what I called the calf hospital because the ranchhouse and barns everything burned and we were there too. We wern't married then, we were best friends. My place had also burned up and I had evacuated my little herd of purebred Saanens (dairy goats) there because I thought they would be safe. The barn they were in also burned up. The USDA gave money to people for livestock that were killed. I took the money and bought a Jersey heifer because I never really like goat milk anyway. Jerseys are not like other cows. For 1000 years they have been house cows. They are affectionate and high maintanence. I fell in love with the breed.
So, he and his brother decided to sell the ranch because, he said, he was too old to dig post holes and his brother was pushing 80. We moved across the country to a small ranch in Oregon. The fences were a joke of leaning barb wire held together with baling twine. Black cattle would get out on the road t night, so he and I fenced the whole place for horses. We lease the pastures to beef cattle owning neighbors. I brought my Jersey and two horses in a trailer. I have had this Jersey for 11 years. Yes it's true she is a pet. I learned to make 7 kinds of cheese because of her. She has produced 7 half Angus calves and I was not sentimental, I sold them for meat. Two of them were heifers I thought I would sell for family milk cows. It took all summer to halterbreak these heifers and then I was gone a while, came back and it was like no one had ever laid a hand on them. I think they must have inherited the Scottish dispositon. But I was not sentimental about them either and sold them for meat.
Daphne, thats her name, is what you would call a cull cow. I was gone for the summer when we lived in Texas and during that time another fire burned onto the ranch. The cowboys rounded up all the cattle and horses to an auction yard across the river, including Daphne and her calf. They sold her big calf. So Daphne, unmilked with open teats lay in a filthy dirt cattle pen for days stressed out with big beef cows beating her up. These cowboys don't know how to take care of dairy cows. So and when I came back Daphne was hot as a fire cracker and had mastitis in all four quarters. She was burning with fever and was septic. I took her to the vet, who got a pus sample and sent it to the lab and it came back negative. NEGATIVE. For this they charged me $200.
So I found a lab in Wisconsin online they air ship you some test tubes you send milk samples by air back, you don't even have to have them on ice. They do a rapid DNA analysis, culture and sensitivity and email you what organisms and what ABX kills it- it was Baytril. So I gave Daphne shots of Baytril for 10 days and her life was saved but she lost her 2 back quarters. One of the organisms was Staph which never really goes away. It flairs up every time they freshen and sure enough, with this pure Jersey heifer she only had one teat that worked, because the other had mastitis. I was not letting my precious baby drink pus so I bottlefeed her. She has two mothers but just vistits Daphne across the fence. Honeydew, thats her name, definitely knows who feeds her and yes, I admit, shes a pet.
She is Daphne's replacement. Daphne is retired now, I am not selling her for meat but she will not be bred again. And drying her up saves her body condition score. Because the pasture grass is just a standing hay crop of straw. My husband says well her cow pies are flat like pancakes so her rumen bacteria are doing OK. He knows a lot about cattle just not dairy cattle.
I came here to learn all I can about dairying and cows. My two are money pits but heres a thing- There is a woman in the next county who sells raw Jersey milk for "pet milk" and gets $9 a quart. It is illegal in this state to sell raw milk or advertise sale of raw milk. People have to pick it up at the farm and use it for pets. So I figured I could make $100 a day. Thats $3000 a month thats $36,000 a year from one cow.
