high dollar milk

[Rock Chuck]

This isn't exactly gardening, but I guess it fits here better than anywhere else.

Organic milk - the widow of a chiropractor friend of mine has a milk cow, or at least part of one. She's very into organic food and has managed the local food co-op in the past. When my friend died a couple years ago, she was in a quandary as to what to do with his cow. She 'loaned' it to a local dairy for a while but now has it at home and has her grandson milking it. She wants raw milk and it's about the only way to get it. She also sold shares in the cow to others.

The organic crowd wants their milk raw, not pasteurized. However, it's illegal in most states (if not all) to sell raw milk. However, it's perfectly legal to drink it from your own cow or goat. So, they'll own a cow as a group. You buy a share of it and pay someone to care for it and milk it. You pay a flat fee to purchase your piece of cow. You then get so much milk a week and pay for the feed/care when you get it. You'll find that labor is high. Your raw milk, bought as a share, will cost you around $10/gal plus whatever you initially paid for the share.

A cow will only milk about 9 months in a year as it has to be dried up for calving. The milk price has to be high enough to cover costs during the dry period when there is no return. I'm told that some people are trying to keep them milking for 20 to 21 months and only breeding them every other year. I don't know how that's working out. The milk yield would have to be substantially reduced the 2d year, I'd think. I've read that after a year, the percentage of fat and hormones is increased so quality goes down substantially.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

And this is to drink unpasteurized milk?! As I understand it you can get one bad case of scours from drinking that. I love milk and drink a lot (by most people's standards. About 2 gallons/week) so I'll just stick with the $2.99/gal stuff from the store. #1 wife has tried for years to get me to drink 2% but I drink O'Doul's beer, by golly I'm going to have at least one vice and drink whole milk.

Alan

[ncboman]

Goats milk is far more healthy than milk from cows.

Sometimes/often the organic crowd gets stuck on method over product and pay thru the nose for inferiority.

Rich hippys ....

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

I won't go into my "Milk Cow" story, but suffice it to say, it was the most expensive milk on the planet and I have yet to taste a drop. That was 33 years ago. I don't know what goat milk tastes like. I used to get some Liebfraumilch every now and again, but that was a long time ago too. Pretty expensive that too!

Alan

[Rock Chuck]

And this is to drink unpasteurized milk?! As I understand it you can get one bad case of scours from drinking that. I love milk and drink a lot (by most people's standards. About 2 gallons/week) so I'll just stick with the $2.99/gal stuff from the store. #1 wife has tried for years to get me to drink 2% but I drink O'Doul's beer, by golly I'm going to have at least one vice and drink whole milk.

Alan
$2.99? We have a lot of dairies around here. The going price for 1 or 2% is $2.
Whole milk, raw or pasteurized, is about 4%. I suppose it could give you the scours if you're not adapted to the high fat content. Raw is also not homoginized which is a process that breaks up the cream droplets so they stay in suspension and don't rise to the top. Raw milk is usually lower in fat because the cream is skimmed off for butter or whatever.

Cows can be carriers of tuberculosis and it used to be a BIG problem. It still is in much of the world. Pasteurization has pretty much eliminated TB in this country. We milked cows when I was a kid and we always had raw milk. It definitely tastes different.

[ncboman]

2.85 to 3.15 a gal here.

I never can figure some groc prices out. Peanuts are a major crop here so you figure we'd get them cheaper. Not so. I can buy peanuts cheaper in Mo than here.

[Rock Chuck]

Peanuts aren't cheap here, but I'll trade you for some taters. They're almost give a way here sometimes. A 10 lb bag in the stores is just a couple bucks. They're cheap enough so that it's not hardly worth the effort to grow them at home. That's for white ones, though. Reds are about double that price because they don't grow them commercially here much.

We have a half million cows in a 75 mile radius of here. There are some huge cheese plants in the area where most of it goes. There's almost no transportation cost to get the milk to the stores so it's quite a bit cheaper than most places. Most of the dairies are transplants from CA where the feed and water costs plus all the environmental laws have run them out.

[Bushman]

Well being that "America's Dairyland" is on our license plates here in Wisconsin I feel duty bound to report that our cow milk costs $2.59 for 1%, $2.69 for 2% and $2.79 for whole milk. The last time anyone counted, they figured out that we have more cows here than people. Now if only the darn things would help pay taxes. Locally there is one place that milks 4,000 cows (that is thousand, not hundred) and they are lobbying to try to get 8,000 head. That is a lot of milking. Lots of manure too which seems to be the issue.

[Rock Chuck]

Would you believe that we have some 10,000 head dairies? 5,000 isn't a bit uncommon. They milk in shifts 24 hrs/day. There are far more cows than people here in so. central Idaho. Some of them are located out in the desert, wherever they can get water, usually by pumping. That's a good place for them as they don't stink up the landscape so bad. There's one of the mega-dairies about 2 miles south of me. The smell is overwhelming and they've had some lawsuits by neighbors were there first (who also lost because they live in an agricultural zone). Luckily, we normally have a west breeze so the only time we smell it when it's dead calm, which isn't often. The only thing that smells worse is a mega pig farm near Delta, UT that has a quarter million hogs. I'm told it can be smelled 50+ miles away.

[stinky]

yep, goats are the way to go. If you are going to drink milk and care about your health , than natural milk is the only way to go. The milk you buy in the store relates to "Real" milk the same way that a french fry relates to a potato....the processing will kill you

[Bushman]

Those are pretty amazing numbers Dick. I knew about Idaho potatoes, but I never realized that dairy was that big out there. WI. is dotted with 120 acre farms and seeing 50 head or so is pretty common. Those big corporate farms seem to be the wave of the future.

[ncboman]

yep, goats are the way to go. If you are going to drink milk and care about your health , than natural milk is the only way to go. The milk you buy in the store relates to "Real" milk the same way that a french fry relates to a potato....the processing will kill you

goat milk vs cow milk (http://altmedangel.com/milkcomp.htm)

[Rock Chuck]

With these huge dairies, you can imagine the manure disposal problem. There's only so much you can spread on fields. They've been experimenting with digesters to covert it to methane but practical use is in the future. There's a deal going on now about farmers piling manure that came from other operations. Seems that the dairies are paying farmers to pile the stuff and it's causing problems with neighbors. There are also several large commercial composting operations going that sell compost to landscapers, etc.

[ncboman]

They were giving those milk facory operations hell tonight on tv.

Crowded, never going outside, living in shat, cutting the tails off with no painkiller, etc.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Laying houses, broiler/fryer operations, farrowing houses, feedlots, de-horning and castration without painkillers, etc. What the Hell do people think happens on a farm, that the armer walks around with a bucket feeding chickens? There are 3000,000 million people in this country that think they are entitled to eat three meals every day. Less than 2% of 2% of the population runs operations that provide milk, eggs, meat and vegetables to the rest of them and themselves. Let them all go out of business and stop piling that manure and it'll damn sure cure the obesity problem in this country and much of the rest of the world too.

Alan

[Rock Chuck]

PETA & HSUS programs are having some effect on the kids. Factory livestock farms are under constant attack by them and kids are impressionable. Now we have the global warming crap about cow farts. They can't see what they're doing to our food supply.

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

Laying houses, broiler/fryer operations, farrowing houses, feedlots, de-horning and castration without painkillers, etc. What the Hell do people think happens on a farm, that the farmer walks around with a bucket feeding chickens? There are 300 million people in this country that think they are entitled to eat three meals every day. Less than 2% of 2% of the population runs operations that provide milk, eggs, meat and vegetables to the rest of them and themselves. Let them all go out of business and stop piling that manure and it'll damn sure cure the obesity problem in this country and much of the rest of the world too.

Alan


There, fixed it.

Alan

[Alan R McDaniel Jr]

PETA & HSUS programs are having some effect on the kids. Factory livestock farms are under constant attack by them and kids are impressionable. Now we have the global warming crap about cow farts. They can't see what they're doing to our food supply.

As long as it doesn't affect PETAs food supply. I'm sure all of them would gladly starve to death to keep from harming any animals.

Alan

[stinky]

NC Boman, yep agree w/that link...100%. But, what that link doesn't touch on it what pasteurization or homoginization does to milk. In the circle that I hang with, there is no problem selling goat's milk or open range eggs....btw, a yolk should be orange, not yellow.