Question about dairy...

[SollysMom]

This probably will sound like a very naive question...

If I buy milk from a small local organic dairy farm, are they still separating baby calves from their mothers so they can pump the milk to sell? If so, what do the baby calves eat? Or, do they let the calves nurse and then pump the cows after?

[greenmulberry]

You would have to ask the particular farm, but dairy calves are sold pretty soon after birth, even on small farms. Rural families buy them to raise them for meat. These are called "bottle calves", because you have to bottle feed them until they can drink out of a bucket and eat feed.

I have never heard of a farm that sold the milk and also let the calves continue to nurse, I just don't think they would make any money, but I do know that this is done sometimes with family milk cows, so I suppose it could work on a really small dairy.

[treeoflife3]

The small organic dairy farm I know personally takes the calves away after a day or two and keeps them completely alone in some little dark cage. They bottle feed them their mother's milk til they are bought by someone else.

[AFWife]

The one we buy our dairy from lets the calves nurse for several weeks and then separates them...pretty much when they're "old enough to wean safely."


I'd ask.

[ASusan]

I thought I just read (in an NPR article on raw milk?) that once cows give birth, they have milk for the rest of their life...so they need to calf only once and then they become a dairy cow. (and there is only one calf who is taken from mama...rather than one a year or so?)

does anyone know if this is true? (I'm embarrassed to say I grew up within a mile of at least 2 dairy farms and do not know the answer to this question.)

[texmati]

Originally Posted by ASusan

I thought I just read (in an NPR article on raw milk?) that once cows give birth, they have milk for the rest of their life...so they need to calf only once and then they become a dairy cow. (and there is only one calf who is taken from mama...rather than one a year or so?)

does anyone know if this is true? (I'm embarrassed to say I grew up within a mile of at least 2 dairy farms and do not know the answer to this question.)

maybe it's just that if the cow continued to be milked she'd continue to make milk?

[AFWife]

Originally Posted by texmati

maybe it's just that if the cow continued to be milked she'd continue to make milk?

I think it's this. Kind of like a wetnurse...she always has milk to BF because she's always BFing

[mamadelbosque]

Its not true. The dairy we get our raw milk from is 100% grassfed and seasonal - they breed cows in the summer, have babies the next spring and milk through till the fall when they let them dry up for a few months - gives the cows' a break gives them a break and keeps them from having to feed grain. Dairies that milk year-round stimply stagger there breeding so some cows give birth in the spring and some in the fall.

[Alyantavid]

Originally Posted by ASusan

I thought I just read (in an NPR article on raw milk?) that once cows give birth, they have milk for the rest of their life...so they need to calf only once and then they become a dairy cow. (and there is only one calf who is taken from mama...rather than one a year or so?)

does anyone know if this is true? (I'm embarrassed to say I grew up within a mile of at least 2 dairy farms and do not know the answer to this question.)

Not true.

Originally Posted by mamadelbosque

Its not true. The dairy we get our raw milk from is 100% grassfed and seasonal - they breed cows in the summer, have babies the next spring and milk through till the fall when they let them dry up for a few months - gives the cows' a break gives them a break and keeps them from having to feed grain. Dairies that milk year-round stimply stagger there breeding so some cows give birth in the spring and some in the fall.

That exactly. The dairy we get milk from does take the calves and raises them with milk from their cows. These are registered cows, so they keep the heifers to add to the herd and eventually sell the bulls.

[mambera]

Apparently the cows have a natural curve of milk production, highest in the first couple of months after birth and then decreasing slowly over (I think) a year or two, even if you continue regular milking.

It's possible to keep milking through the next pregnancy and delivery (though some animals will dry up) but if you do, then the overall volume of the milk is lower and the udder tissue physiologically resembles an udder that has been producing for a long time (and thus produces less milk and lower-fat milk). If they get a break and 'reset' then the udder will go back through lactogenesis I and II and produce abundant amounts of high-quality milk.

I know this bc I read a bunch of the research literature on dairy cows after I had my own problems with milk production. It's really pretty interesting, they have a lot more information about lactation in dairy animals than in humans. It convinced me never to nurse through a pregnancy even if I did have the milk.

[SollysMom]

Thanks for all the replies. I called the dairy I've been buying from and they said the calves are allowed to nurse for a few hours after birth, then taken away and bottle-fed their mother's milk.

[AJP]

Originally Posted by mambera

Apparently the cows have a natural curve of milk production, highest in the first couple of months after birth and then decreasing slowly over (I think) a year or two, even if you continue regular milking.

This is correct. Cows differ in how long they will continue to produce milk without having another calf, but the timeframe of one to two years is accurate for most.

Small farms differ quite a bit in how they handle calves. I think it's safe to say that virtually all commercial dairies, regardless of size, separate at birth or shortly after, some feed the calves fresh milk from their own farm and some feed milk replacer. Usually male calves are sold very shortly after birth, or sometimes raised on the farm for beef. Females are often kept as replacements. Most family cows or extremely small farms I know of, ones with only a few cows who just sell the excess milk to locals, either allow the calves to stay with their mothers (full time for maybe the first few weeks, then part time) or keep the calves nearby and feed them their own mother's milk in a bottle.