Milk Cows

Being a dairy farmer, this is correct.

I have seen cows milking for over 1000 days, though they are sent to the cull after as they where infertile (reason they where not dried off)

Milking cows is not easy, you can have many problems, mastitis, milk fever.... if you want a cow to produce milk, make sure to have medication for her.

For milk fever, which happens sometimes after calving, you need access to calcium, and this is injected into the milk vein of the cow. For mastitis, you will need penicillin tubes, which are injected into the tit. Mastitis can kill a cow if not treated!

Also hoof care is a must.

A cows diet consists of silage, meal and some supplements, though in SHFT, silage would do well.

 

I think that unless you have a fairly large area of pasture land that goats are a better choice in a lot of ways. They are smaller and kids are "meal" sized. They also, if you have the right ones will offer you wool as well as milk and meat. Goats are browsers like deer and can eat things that a cow wouldn't be able to eat.

Because we have a lot of hispanics here, we have goats all over the place. They are actually pretty easy to handle. I think goats, pot belly pigs, chickens and ducks would go a long way towards feeding a familly without a big investment in land.

Without refrigeration down here butchering a big animal has to be done in a hurry or the meat will go bad. We generally don't have many days when the temperature doesn't make it to the high 40s F. Even smoked meat has a limited life when the temperatures and humidity is high so smaller animals are a plus. In the north you can hang meat out and worry more about it freezing than spoiling but we just don't have that in dependable weather. Today it might be 35 and tomorrow it might be 85!

There are cattle all around me. Hundreds and hundreds of them. We also have real butchers here that will slaughter and process them for you. I will be interested to see what happens with them in the event of a long term breakdown. My guess is that most will be killed by idiots and most of the meat will be wasted. The same will be true of the pigs. We have several HUGE hog farms around here. What do you do with several hundred hogs when there is no way to get them to market??

We used to have a Dairy farm down the road from the family farm. When I was a kid you could get a dairy bull from them for like 15 or 20 bucks. I bottle feed a few to fatten them up for BBQs. If you want the milk you definitely have no use for the little bull calves.