So this Spring I did something - I bought a cow. Not just any cow, but a Jersey cow, and more specifically: Tulip the Jersey cow. This decision was not taken lightly, but is also not entirely sane. Cows are absolutely laden with ‘Have To’s’ (things that you HAVE to do, as compared to the less onerous SHOULD do’s, and the highly desirable COULD do’s) like large amounts of daily feed and water in winter, stall mucking, and of course milking. Have To’s provide purpose and meaning to life in a lot of ways, grounding you in the Real and Now. But of course, Have To’s are also anchors and too many can crush you. As a small livestock farmer, I have rather a lot of Have To’s, so I add new ones with much trepidation.
But this one is important. Because Cows are important. Simply put, cows make farms work better. This is an opinion, not universally shared and not universally applicable, but it's also mostly true. Domestic cows have been around in some form or another for nearly 10,000 years, about the same amount of time as goats and pigs, though the geography of those are different (the origins are fascinating, but well out of scope for this article). Actually my small farm has all three of the above— a small herd of 5 dwarf Nigerian goats, and about 14 KuneKune pigs. Each serves a purpose and has a niche to fill, but back to cows and their importance. Cows, simply put, are the easiest way agriculture has found to turn roughage (hay/fodder) into protein. Sure, you can point to rabbits, cuyes, em. but the protein from cows is special because it’s available WITHOUT KILLING THE COW. I’m talking, of course, about milk.
Milk, even in this age of veganism and lactose intolerance, can still be an incredible thing. Cows are fucking alchemists. They take pasture grass, not even good pasture grass if you get the right breed, and turn it into proteiny, fatty, vitaminy goodness that makes farms work. Again, a cow will take a meadow, and turn it into butter (yes I am yada yada-ing rather a lot, but that is effing brilliant) and give you a calf every year to boot. Milk matters, and Jersey Cow milk especially so. Why? Because fat, that’s why.
Scale is important.
A Jersey cow will produce about 5-6 GALLONS of milk a day. Yes gallons. A day. A gallon of whole milk is ~2500 calories. The fat content of a Jersey cow is nearly 5%, a full third more than the more popular Holstein dairy cattle. So Jersey milk is well over 3000 calories per gallon. Now, sure Holsteins make more milk per day (almost 9 gallons! WTAF), but are also over a third larger. With livestock, size matters- especially for the small farmer. A Jersey is 1000# of calm docile doe eyed cow at maturity, a Holstein is a 1300# behemoth that is always hungry and not terribly bright; and the new versions are even bigger. And dumber. More animals means larger stalls, more feed and water, so the quality of the milk is more important than the quantity for a small farmer. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t drink 5-6 gallons a day of milk, let alone 9 (more on that in a bit). And the 5-6 gallons of a Jersey contain as much fat as the 9 gallons from the idiot Holstein mega cow. Again with the fat, what’s up with that? Fat has over 2x the calories of carbs. And calories make farms work. Well soils make farms work, but that’s another post.
Now an aside, when I talk about farms, I am talking about small, mixed species, multi crop, rotational grazed/cropped farms. Farms with patchwork fields of corn, small grains, hay, pasture, fodder crops, a large garden, and barns full of cows and a pig or 2 and chickens and ducks running around. Or in other words virtually every farm East of the Mississippi until 1945. There is a reason that every farm had this model. IT WORKS. It provides most of its own needs, radically cutting down cash inputs (important in, ya know, depressions) and also on off farm input (important before, well internal combustion). Today it is important because reduced inputs and relying on your own system to produce fertility and fodder also has a radically lower carbon footprint and with some tweaks, rebuilds soils at a scale that is up to 500x what nature can do.
“No, small farms kept a cow to make the farm work.”
Infinite Butter
So calories make farms work because most of the calories on a small, integrated farm stay on the farm, turned back into feeding animals which then grow and make more animals; some of which are sold to other farmers to expand the production of the county, and others are then made into calories for humans when those animals have their One Bad Day. Back to cows. As I stated earlier, cows turn fodder into calories easier than anything I have found. Goats can eat different fodder (why I have them), but are also more futzy to milk (milking a goat does not take that much less time than milking a cow, but produces a fraction of the milk in that time [takes cover for the goat farmers flaming me in the comments] ). If you have the land, a family cow can turn mediocre pasture/fodder into a staggering 12,000- 17,000 calories a day in milk. Every day. 10 months a year. Holy Hell! Now a family, let alone me as a One Dude Show, can’t consume even 5 gallons of milk a day. Yes butter, yes, ice cream, yes cheese. NO to 5+ gallons a day. As usual, I turn back to the old timey farms, those bucolic farms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those farms often had a cow. Not to run a dairy. Dairies were larger specialized farms. No, small farms kept a cow to make the farm work. After milking, the milk was left to sit— the cream would then rise to the top. This cream was then skimmed off and used for butter and cooking and oatmeal and poured over berries and anything else that needed sugar fat and protein which is a lot of things. Grandpa Robert Frost the First, who raised Jerseys in Wisconsin from 1920s to the early 60s, never drank skim milk and would scowl and shake his head at the thought. Why? A Jersey cow makes about 7 pints of cream a day from their 5 gallons. Which is A LOT. If you have almost infinite cream— my GODS why would you drink skim?! On Grandpa's farm, and every other farm— skim was for the pigs.
And this is why cows matter. I raise pigs, as my ‘cash’ crop, but skim can be added to the feed of every omnivorous animal on the farm— mixed with ground grain for poultry and watch them go nuts. Chickens will drink skim milk with relish and be fat and happy and lay eggs like what. My pigs are Kune Kune, and they graze for a substantial amount of their total calories. Hell they can even gain weight on high grade pasture, which is why I have them. But pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys are not ruminants. They need far more protein than leafy greens can provide, and none of the above will eat dry or stalky fodder like a cow will. A pig needs ~ 1600 calories a day to maintain and every 1500-2000 calories above that you give them is weight gain. So Tulip’s 4 gallons of skim milk, (1300 calories per gallon) a day will add 2-3# of pig gain to my herd per day. For free. And don’t forget I get the still ludicrous 7 pints of cream per day (I will have a nice grass fed butter side hustle to be sure).
“Tulip, by following the pigs in the rotation, is providing all their protein needs FROM PASTURE THEY COULDN’T EAT and also giving me infinite ice cream and butter.”
Let's talk more about the beauty inherent in an integrated farm and its rotations - because this is where the alchemy of a small farm really makes gold. To do so, let's take a paddock that’s currently in pasture. It was planted 2 years ago to a rich mix of forbs, clovers, and some hay grasses and hayed for 1.5 years. Now it's being rotationally grazed. Pigs go through first, they will eat the forbs like chicory, dandelion and fodder brassicas as well as the 3-4 clovers with relish (pasture planting is a whole post in itself!) leaving most of the grass and a not insignificant amount of manure and urine further adding to the pasture fertility. After 1-2 days, I will move the pigs out and let in Tulip and the dwarf Nigerian goats. Most of the richness of the pasture has been gleaned, but that is actually fine - that mix was too rich for them anyhow and they’d have gotten a bit sick on it as it was. After 1-3 days, they have eaten the pasture down to 3-4 inches or so and are moved to the next paddock that the pigs are leaving. This continues for a month or so until the paddock regrows. But I want to stress the beauty in the rotation of adding ruminants to the pig pasture. IT'S FREE. The pigs won't eat the rough grass or forb stalks. The ruminants will. Without the ruminants the rough grasses would take over the forbs and clover within a year because the pigs are eating the good stuff and leaving the roughage which shades our the clover and forbs. So Tulip is then making 5 gallons of milk (a gallon of cream and 4 gallons of skim) FOR FREE-and maintaining the pasture. Tulip is then gleaning 15,000 calories a day, every day, off a pasture that was left over from the pigs. 6000 of those calories (or more if I give the milk whole) per cow is then fed back to the pigs as a protein and vitamin rich supplement back to the pigs as a 2x daily feed. Tulip, by following the pigs in the rotation, is providing all their protein needs FROM PASTURE THEY COULDN’T EAT, maintaining the pasture, and also giving me infinite ice cream and butter.
“Cow manure = Soil Probiotics”
But wait… there’s more
Tulip (or Tulip and friends depending on my scale) is now fattening my pigs for free, maintaining my pasture, and saving me purchasing bagged feed for 10 months of the year. That's amazing, but it's not even half of it. For Tulip to be in milk, she also needs to be ‘freshened’ (bred) every year. So, there will be a calf. So also for free, I have a Jersey calf as a bonus- either a heifer to sell or add to my herd or a small steer to be raised for beef which will weigh about 500# by December. This alone pays for her winter hay if I needed to purchase it, making all the milk again, literally free. And then there’s the Real Shit. Like actual shit. Cow manure is AMAZING. As a ruminant, cows have like a dozen stomachs (it's actually 4) and they use a dizzying array of probiotics to turn rough fodder and grass into calories to make a cow run and produce milk. Those biotics pass through in the manure and literally make the pasture better. Most gardeners know that compost is good for gardens as a fertilizer. But when you add compost to the soil, yes, you are a bit of fertilizer, but what you are really adding is zillions of bacteria, fungi, em. to the soil to make the soil better able to MAKE ITS OWN fertilizer by breaking down organic matter more completely. Every time Tulip takes a deuce, that cow pie is absolutely riddled with the best biotic mix that money can’t buy. Cow manure = Soil Probiotics. Those microbes will then wash into the soil in the rain and then get to work breaking down organic matter in the soil, fertilizing the pasture in situ and sequestering carbon for decades in the form of humus. Cow shit builds soil like almost nothing else.
Let’s Review
Tulip, my beloved doe eyed, long lashed bestie who frolics around the pasture whenever I come out and follows me around like a 500# puppy because Jersey Cow, is a massive game changer for my small farm. Every day, she makes my pasture better with her literal shit. In 2024, she will make 4 pounds of the best butter I can’t buy. Every day. She turns inedible pig pasture into vitamin rich protein for those same pigs. Every day. She makes a new cow every year that can be sold or butchered which more than offsets any hay expense. And this is hard to explain, but the best things often are. Cows are… special. You can’t be angry around a good cow, not if you are paying attention. You can’t be sad looking into those eyes. All your problems fade away when you give them a side hug and stroke their neck letting your fingers into their soft winter coats as they rub their impossibly large head against you for no other reason but because they love you. And… cows are a massive pile of Have To. They drink so much water. So. Much. Water. They poop ALL THE TIME and all that water turns into urine so your stall mucking chore went up 10,000% v. goats. And milking — once or twice a day every day for ~9-10 months a year. She might kick at you now and then because of who knows why and put her foot in the pail as she learns the routine or if you have bad vibes. She can be stubborn on bad days (can’t we all) and you have to breed her every summer- either getting a bull over or taking an active role in her sex life yourself. But there is no other component of an integrated farm that ties it all together more than a cow and Tulip is just awesome.
-Rob
This all sounds like common sense to me, stuff our ancestors knew and practiced. Have you read Gene Logsdon? He loved cows for the same reasons you do.