Man doesn't consume beef cattle milk, true or false?

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burroughs85

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I believe Texas longhorn were raised by late 19th century American homesteaders for both milk and meat.
At least Disney's Old Yeller and Savage Sam gave me that notion.

 
Any type of cattle can produce milk for human consumption. We have often milked a dairy/beef cross for household milk. Water and river buffalo produce milk in India for their consumption and use in cooking. Yaks produce milk , as do camels and other mammals. The trick is for the animal to be quiet and tame enough to be able to milk it.
You will get alot more milk from a true dairy animal than you will from a true beef animal... but you can drink milk from an angus or a brahma just as well as from a holstein or jersey.
 
That's not a 19th century cow in the movie clip. It is a 1963 cow.
Is that 1963 cow a Texas longhorn? Is her breed versatile enough as both milk and meat animals? I've heard of dairy cattle slaughtered for meat and male dairy calves used to frequently get turned to veal. That cow was raising hell with that dog in the film. Cats in the milk bucket? How unsanitary! I bet they did not have pasteurizers and homogenizers back in the old west.
 
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I remember my dad giving the cats an occasional squirt of milk when he was milking my grandmother's last old dairy cow (a Jersey/Guernsey cross), when I was just a little tyke. IDK if she had a pasteurizer or not, but I remember her straining it through an old cheesecloth to get the manure dust (at least the big chunks) out. I remember drinking whole milk out of those big wide-mouthed gallon jars she had. I know she used to peddle milk to some of the boarding houses adjoining the college campus in town... but that was over 60 years ago, and a whole different world.
 
There is an Indian guy at a gas station I frequent who tells me about growing up with three cows and a water buffalo which were all milked. They sold the cow milk and kept the water buffalo for themselves. I would assume the cattle he had would be Bos Indicus based on the region.
 
I remember my dad giving the cats an occasional squirt of milk when he was milking my grandmother's last old dairy cow (a Jersey/Guernsey cross), when I was just a little tyke. IDK if she had a pasteurizer or not, but I remember her straining it through an old cheesecloth to get the manure dust (at least the big chunks) out. I remember drinking whole milk out of those big wide-mouthed gallon jars she had. I know she used to peddle milk to some of the boarding houses adjoining the college campus in town... but that was over 60 years ago, and a whole different world.

From the time I was 8 or so until high school age I milked at least one, and sometimes two, cows every evening. By hand. We'd let them keep their calf. The calf would get the milk overnight, and the cow would be turned out during the day while the calf was penned up. In the evening I'd turn the cow back into the pen with some feed, and let the calf in with her to start nursing so she'd let the milk down. Then I'd wrestle the calf back out, milk the cow, and then turn them back together.

We had an extra refrigerator in the kitchen just for dish pans of milk. My mother would skim the cream off of them a couple times a day for making butter. The skim milk went to the hogs.
 
Most of the dairy farms I test will run a herd average of 65-85lbs.... so 8-10 gallons per day per cow .... AVERAGE. Most of the jersey cows will average in the 55-65 lb range per day..... I have 2 farms that are averaging 90 lbs per day overall herd average... but that is exceptional.
 
My grandaddy told me when he was a boy, there was no refideration or freezers because there was no electricity way out in the country. His family and the neighbors had a "Beef Club". Someone would have a bull, usually a Herford, that everyone used to breed their milk cow to. About once a month, someone would butcher their calf, and each family in the club would get a part...whatever they could eat in a few days or so. Might get a shoulder one month, tenderloin the next, brisket the next, etc, and over the year everyone would end up getting a whole calf. That's why most of the time, they ate pork,, because they could cure it or smoke it, and hang it in a shed with no refridgeration.
 
I remember my dad giving the cats an occasional squirt of milk when he was milking my grandmother's last old dairy cow (a Jersey/Guernsey cross), when I was just a little tyke. IDK if she had a pasteurizer or not, but I remember her straining it through an old cheesecloth to get the manure dust (at least the big chunks) out. I remember drinking whole milk out of those big wide-mouthed gallon jars she had. I know she used to peddle milk to some of the boarding houses adjoining the college campus in town... but that was over 60 years ago, and a whole different world.
There was cowchit in the milk? How gross! Modern commercial dairies clean the udders and sanitize them thoroughly before the cows are milked.
 
Most of the dairy farms I test will run a herd average of 65-85lbs.... so 8-10 gallons per day per cow .... AVERAGE. Most of the jersey cows will average in the 55-65 lb range per day..... I have 2 farms that are averaging 90 lbs per day overall herd average... but that is exceptional.
Yep. And that was my point. No family with even 8-10 kids, could use 10 gallons a day. So yeah, beef and beef-cross cows would probably give all the milk a family would need. Then too, I have raised Holstein and other dairy breed bottle calves, back when there were dairies around here, and put some of the heifers in the beef cow herd. They would have bigger udders than the Angus or Herefords we had, and I am sure made more milk, but none of them, had the huge udders dragging the ground that needed to be milked twice a day either. I know from working at Gold Kist co-op back in the 70's, that dairies fed feed designed to maximize the milk production. I remember toting many a bag of Cow Power and Milk Maker (I remember those 2 names) on my delivery routes. I remember the first Simmentals that showed up around here in the early 70's....the red & white ones.... had some pretty good-sized udders on them. Some folks would even put a bottle calf on them and raise two. I am pretty sure those cows would have been sufficient for a family milk cow back in the old days, too.
 
There was cowchit in the milk? How gross! Modern commercial dairies clean the udders and sanitize them thoroughly before the cows are milked.
Have you spent much time on an actual commercial modern dairy? Yes, the udders are cleaned and teats are predipped... but sanitized thoroughly before milking? The less water used on udders and teats the less likely bacteria is spread to the teat orifice. The reason there is little to no manure or other foreign objects in the milk is because of the teat cups that are attached directly to the teats... in the "old days" milk was hand milked into buckets and so things did "fall into the milk".... Yep... you brought it in the house, strained it through a filter into bottles/jugs to put in the fridge to chill. There would be some hair, maybe a few pieces of straw or hay, a few little pieces of "cowchit" or some dirt, on occasion.... I always did all I could to keep the milk clean... but you wanted to milk as fast as you could. The one thing you did not want was the udder to have any wet or dripping spots.... and as I said; water is NOT a friend to a cow's udder unless you take the time to completely dry it off.
That is also one of the reasons that dairies will clip or singe the hair off the udders so they collect less "dirt"... and can be more easily prepped to milk. And no... it does not hurt the cows.....
 
Most of the dairy farms I test will run a herd average of 65-85lbs.... so 8-10 gallons per day per cow .... AVERAGE. Most of the jersey cows will average in the 55-65 lb range per day..... I have 2 farms that are averaging 90 lbs per day overall herd average... but that is exceptional.
my grand dad always had Jerseys long ago when more attention was paid to percentage of fat. He like the jerseys better than a holstein and said holstiens gave water not milk. We always had a stainless steel pitcher of raw milk in the refrigerator and the top would all be cream. I used to get in trouble if I'd get up early and skim it off the top before my grandmother came down to the kitchen
 

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