A Family Cow

(Page 5 of 5)

1970-03-01
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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Watering should be made automatic. If by hand it will take 5 to 10 minutes.

RELATED CONTENT

Raising a calf calls for teaching the calf to drink and then pan feeding three times a day for 4 to 6 weeks.

Specific Costs and Return

Too often the benefits of productive country living have been interpreted solely in economic terms. How much more valuable is fresh milk with a 5% fat content as compared with the two or three day old store milk of only about 3% butter fat? To some people milk is milk - but to others fresh, rich milk and heavy cream from a Jersey cow is worth twice what ordinary milk costs.

Anyway, here are two sets of returns on keeping a cow. Neither take into account that fresh milk is usually preferable.

The first figures are from a state bulletin and are averages:

"Actual costs, on the average, for first year if pasture, housing, and bedding are available without monetary expenses are shown in the paragraph that follows:

"Jeanne is an ordinary crossbred Jersey-Guernsey purchased for $85. Her record of 1943 may be of interest even if the costs and prices may not apply elsewhere or at other times. She freshened in May and was milked for 318 days. She produced 8337 pounds of milk, ranging from a peak of 42 lbs. to a minimum of 12 lbs. This amounted to 3877 quarts of milk, an average of 12.2 qts. per day. Butterfat ranged up to 5.35% so she probably produced around 420 pounds of fat. This is equivalent to 462 pounds of 90% butter or an average of 1.45 lbs. of butter a day if all the milk had been thus used.

"Dairy products were consumed and sold as follows:

There are several bookkeeping approaches to these figures but they all show one thing clearly - that the family cow is a pretty good investment!

From "A Practical Guide to Successful Farming."

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