Introduction 

Did you ever daydream about a family dairy cow out back? Do you experience a little twinge of envy when you drive past a pasture dotted with dairy goats chewing their cuds as they watch the clouds drift by? Do exotic raw milk cheeses wreak havoc on your grocery budget? Have you or anyone in your family struggled with dairy-related health issues and wondered if raw cow’s milk or goat milk products might make a difference for you? This article will introduce the concept of home production of dairy products and touch on some of the basic considerations one ponders in pursuit of producing dairy at home. Future posts will delve into each of these topics (and more) in greater depth. Feel free to comment below for topics YOU”D like to see discussed. Home dairy is not as intimidating as you might be thinking!

Our Background in Family Dairy

Our family got our first introduction to non-commercial dairy when our oldest daughter began to exhibit signs of lactose intolerance as a young kid. A cursory glance at the issue suggested that raw cow’s milk was often better tolerated than commercial milk and we shopped around for someone selling raw milk locally. It’s difficult to buy in many states but was legal to purchase in South Carolina and we all loved the taste of the milk and our daughter experienced no symptoms from it.

We lived in a townhome at the time and keeping dairy animals ourselves never entered our mind (we did keep a hobby top-bar beehive on the balcony, though, more on that another day). However, several moves later, we found ourselves on a one-acre lot in town where the local code enforcement officer was a very understanding chap who said he was happy to overlook our stretching of the zoning laws if all the neighbors were OK. We soon acquired a couple of Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and became the proud producers of two cups of milk per day.  We have since added Saanens to our herd and have moved again to a beautiful acreage in the mountains that will also support our beloved Jersey, Bumblebee, and her AI-sired progeny. The couple of cups a day has grown to gallons a day and we have continued to appreciate the benefits not only of the raw milk and cultured dairy products in our diet but also the peaceful harmony of permaculture webbing (link) these heavy producers support on our homestead. They not only provide milk but hoof traffic, grazing and manure as well (link). 

So, what’s involved in producing dairy at home? Pull up a comfy chair, grab some Einkorn crackers (link) and some chevre (link), and dive with us into the wild and wooly world of the twenty-first century epicurean home milking parlor.

A Brief History of Human Dairy Consumption

Humans have been consuming dairy from domesticated sheep, goats, and cows for millennia. Industrialization and urbanization made it more difficult for families to produce their own milk and dairy farms had to be close to urban centers due to the short shelf life of the unpasteurized dairy. Nonetheless, home delivery of fresh milk was the norm well into the 20th century. The modern dairy industry was born in the 1900s with the introduction of sanitation practices such as pasteurization and later, homogenization, both of which dramatically improved the shelf life of milk and related dairy items like butter and cream. As long-distance distribution and centralization became the norm in the dairy world, the dairy conglomerate grew around a world of mechanization, standardization (confinement raised cows, GMO feed, etc.), extreme dairy breeding, and hormone-fueled production. Dairy as an industrial superpower has obtained enormous economic and political clout (milk production in the US in 2016 topped 38 billion dollars and milk products grossed over 214 billion dollars).

Our home dairy resource library contains several books which discuss some of the health concerns that have arisen from the changes to what constitutes dairy in our diets today but our goal here is simply to note that what we consume in supermarket dairy products bears little resemblance to what a home producer of dairy gets from their cow/goat/sheep/etc. As home dairy producers we are turning the clock back some hundreds of years on dairy production and consumption but with the benefit of choosing the best of modern science and sensible sanitation to aid our small scale production methods. Our family has benefited tremendously from returning to this simpler method of producing and consuming dairy products and we hope that your family might as well!

Home Dairy Safety Concerns

The CDC has an intimidating list of possible effects from consuming raw milk, including just about every horror from diarrhea to death.

These threats to our families’ health deserve to be taken seriously. Raw milk collected using sanitary methods from a healthy cow doesn’t have any bacteria naturally present. However, those of us who work with and consume raw and pasteurized milk know that there is a huge difference in how these two products affect our palates, our GI tract, and how they respond to “shelf life”. Raw milk enables some cheese miracles not possible with the product sold in supermarkets as dairy. Nevertheless,  there may be some bacteria in raw milk that present very real dangers. As a loving parent, I want to make informed decisions for the safety of my kids and I wouldn’t want my access to great cheese to put them at risk. So, let’s dive into some of the CDCs concerns and I’ll give the steps that we take to mitigate those risks in our family. 

I’m a huge proponent of raw milk and its health benefits but there are indeed real risks involved and you should be informed about them, how to avoid them when possible, reduce them in your setup and environment and don’t take risks with the very young (infants GI tracts and immune systems aren’t fully closed/ developed for many months after birth, leaving them susceptible to infections that wouldn’t normally be a problem for older kids or adults), the very old, or otherwise compromised individuals in your household. If you have any concerns about your animal’s health, seek input from a qualified vet. If you have questions about your family member’s health do lots of research and seek the opinion of a qualified human medical professional (I am not one). Use your common sense here and protect your family. If you have to pasteurize your milk for individuals in your family or for the whole family, I believe you still will benefit from the increased nutritional value and freshness of the milk you produce at home!

Build Your Herd / Flock

This section looks at what it takes to choose the best species for your home-dairy goals and what your basic set-up might look like. It also covers some considerations involved in going with registered vs. unregistered animals and what to think about when it comes to freshening your girls (getting them pregnant).

Choosing a Species 

The first consideration involved is which species of animal we wish to add to our homes and lives. In most cases, this is not complicated when the basics are understood and your goals in milk-production are clarified. We have an amusing Dairy Decision Tree you can utilize, but for a more in-depth analysis of dairy animal options, check out our post on What Dairy Animals Do I Need? 

If you’re completely new to milking you might consider starting with goats even if you know you’re planning to upgrade to a cow in the future!

Where to acquire animals

The options are innumerable. Craigslist, facebook groups, livestock auctions, commercial dairy culls,, personal friends, Tractor Supply bulletin boards, They all have advantages and disadvantages. A couple of key points to consider:

• 1) With a large investment like a dairy cow, you don’t want to be rushed into a decision. Auctions are probably not the best place to acquire an animal the first time around. These tend to be problem animals and there isn’t normally an opportunity to have a vet look over the animal for you.
• 2) Insist on visiting the farm when purchasing. Seeing how the animal is housed and the conditions of the other animals on-site can provide a lot of insight into the risks involved in purchasing from this owner. We did this with our dairy goats and never had any trouble with buying health problems.
• 3) Pay a vet to inspect a high-dollar animal before buying. Even this isn’t fool-proof but the investment of several hundred dollars could save you countless headaches and many thousands in bills and problems later. When we bought our first cow she was dry and the vet didn’t catch a chronically mastitic quarter (mastitis doesn’t have to be scary!). It wasn’t a huge surprise as she was a dairy cull but we might have negotiated a better price if that had been on the table.
• 4)  Don’t make pity buys. You will be feeding this animal’s product to your family! Take your time and get any advice available to you before completing a purchase. You might ask for a trial run with the animal on your farm before you complete the sale. Animal behavior can change drastically with a location change. At the same time, any animal will likely show signs of distress on being moved from their home but will settle in well if you provide for their needs and give them the comfort and routine they love.

Registered or Non-registered

There are pros and cons to both ways of proceeding. Proponents of registered animals say that they are confident that they are getting a breed standard with known characteristics and that the value of the offspring born on-farm will be higher and those things are true. We belong to the US Jersey Association and our cows are registered. 

However, as most people who keep livestock will tell you, animals are individuals in the same way people are. Hang out on a cow or goat forum for a while and you will hear vastly conflicting stories about the wonders or horrors people have experienced with any niche breed, whether the animals are registered or not. Some people love their Brown Swiss for the same reason others can’t abide the breed. Personality is really important in a home milk producer and it’s not something you can predict based solely on breeding. Don’t let someone tell you “Nigerian Dwarfs are impossible to fence” or “a Holstein will eat you out of house and home and constantly battle mastitis”. We’ve had some escape artists in all species of animals and we’ve also had tremendous success with supposedly difficult goat species in keeping them inside our 4 foot woven wire fences.  Don’t be afraid to try something out and adjust if you need to! 

Proponents of biodynamic farming will tell you that breed characteristics are developed for a very specific range of environments (my beloved Jerseys come from the French channel islands) and that when you take the breed out of that environment it may or may not maintain all of the qualities that made it such a superior animal in its native one. They would say you breed your own animals to your farm and adopt an “I’m making my own perfectly tailored breed” attitude by breeding those you like best and selling / consuming the rest of them. There is a good deal of sense in this argument as well and while you might not get top dollar for all your animals, most home producers won’t have more than one or two cows to sell in a year (goats and sheep add up faster as they often twin) and if your animals are good producers with minimal input in your area then you’ll eventually earn a reputation for quality livestock. 

Horns or Polled Animals

Another issue to consider as you embark on this journey of home production is the question of “polled vs. horned”. Polled animals are those which are bred specifically to not have horns or whose horns have been removed. The topic is complicated as animal and human safety, milk and meat quality,  and the fencing/housing of the animals all come into play.

Click Here for our more in-depth look at some of the issues at stake with this decision.

Freshening your Animals

Dairy animals are mammals (surprise!) and they only produce milk if female and after producing young. So, in order to get milk from your newly acquired milking camel, you will need to find a sire or seek artificial help from an AI technician.

Doing It Naturally

With smaller animals like sheep and goats, it’s normally most affordable even if you have one milker to keep a buck/ram on hand to serve this function unless you have obliging neighbors close by who already have one and don’t mind providing stud services (this is trickier to find than you might think as disease management often makes animal owners nervous about moving their stock around or hosting off-farm stock on their property).

Most breeders keep their males separated from the females except at the windows of time when their services are required. This means multiple shelters, paddocks, etc. When we started on our one-acre suburban lot with goats we didn’t separate the buck from the does and we didn’t experience much of a downside.  You lose some of the predictability in expecting babies but we tend to keep low-maintenance breeds who don’t need a lot of help giving birth.

Many species of dairy animals will only produce babies within a window of time in the late winter/early spring anyway. Some people say there is a taste to the milk if the males are present during milk production, although I can’t say I have experienced that myself. The beauty of doing things on a small, home-scale is that you can usually make adjustments on the fly without huge investments of time or money.

The difficulties grow exponentially as your animals get larger as keeping a bull on-farm is cost-prohibitive for many home producers both for feeding costs and for fencing/safety issues. 

So Many Genetic Options with AI

Artificial Insemination (AI) is a good option for many small scale producers, but you will want to check the availability of a qualified AI tech who is willing to travel to your location before you plan on this route. With my first cow, I thought I would get the equipment and learn to do it myself. This turned out to be impractical as the equipment is pricey, the “material” is unstable, the technique is learned over the course of many inseminations and your cow may become frustrated with you if you practice on her 5 times/day for weeks on end. Your neighbors may also call the SPCA if they see you with your arm in her rectum very often.

It seldom makes sense for the owner of one or two dams to try to do their own AI. If you can’t get professional service, you are likely to come out ahead by trying to keep a sire on-farm. We were fortunate in that we did find a great AI tech who was willing to come to our mountain top farm. The options for AI are amazing today and you can choose great sires and even get sex-selected semen.

How Long Can I Milk After the Baby Comes?

Post freshening, most animals will continue to produce milk as long as the demand is there. If you wanted to milk your cow for several years after she produces a calf you could do that, although the quantity will drop some as time goes on. Some species are less amenable to doing this and you’ll want to check before acquiring your animals if you plan to go this route. For a top-level overview:

Species	Typical Lactation Duration (months)
Cows	9
Goats	9.5
Sheep	5
Yaks	7.8

Animals can get pregnant while still producing milk and most people freshen their animals once a year and dry them off for the few months before they expect another baby. Some people enjoy the break in the milking routine for those months, others (like us) are heavy dairy consumers and we keep multiple species on hand so that we can stagger the dry times and never be without fresh milk.

Keeping Your Animals Well

Grazing Requirements – rotational grazing, water sources

One of the beauties of dairy on the farm is that they convert grass into nutritious dairy. Goats especially convert not only grass but anything that looks vaguely green or bark-colored into dairy, they are great for clearing overgrown land. The gentleman who sold us our current farm assured us that we would need the tractor and brush hog since mowing was a constant chore. We sold the tractor two years later as we had mowed only once in that time and could keep up fine with a hand-held scythe and riding mower.. Unless you have an enormous spread of land, you’re more likely to have problems with not having enough forage on hand for your animals. All is not lost! Many people keep dairy animals on small lots and just buy in feed. 

We love our inter-species grazing and find that goats, sheep, cows, and horses often prefer different forage and will eat in different areas, providing a well-cropped look after being introduced to a new paddock. 

Grazing management is a science in and of itself and there are books written on the subject and expensive courses teaching the best methods. It affects quality of the pasture (improving the quality with good management and possibly degrading the quality of the pasture over time if poorly managed), animal health as parasite loads build up, water/shade access, and ease of management as many methods require moving electric fence or opening /closing gates multiple times each day.

This is an excellent area for advanced studies but you shouldn’t let it intimate you into not starting with dairy animals. By choosing healthy stock, providing top-quality supplemental nutrition and keeping a close eye on your animals and land,  you can spot any trouble early and make adjustments as needed. It would be ideal to include at least two paddock areas in your initial set up even if you are only planning on housing one animal or species. Remember, we’re dealing with a handful of animals on a household scale and many of the problems that commercial-scale producers face are more likely to spiral out of control. Watch and know your animals and your land and get help / find advice quickly if something looks wrong!

Housing Requirements (Compost Considerations)

Housing requirements vary greatly for different species and even different breeds of animals. Make sure that you can provide adequate shelter for your animals early in your planning stages! Our rough, three-sided shed works for all of our grazing livestock to share, but we do also have a barn with stalls for rotating animals or for monitoring any animal who needs more attention.

Housing that is well-ventilated and is kept clean and dry is critical for disease prevention. One common cause of mastitis in dairy animals is sleeping on dirty bedding.  We use waste hay as bedding in our remote shed and I horrify my children and neighbors by handpicking the poops daily to keep down the need for tons of fresh bedding to cover it and to avoid the semi-annual chore of hauling a mountain of compressed poop and bedding from the shed. It only takes a few minutes to fill the wagon with it after I deliver hay and then I have the option to place it where it is most needed (orchard, future garden, compost pile, flower bed, my horrid neighbor’s driveway, etc). If your shed is remote like mine, you can keep a separate compost pile by it to avoid having to haul it a long way. This pile makes an unbelievable potato bed after it’s fully composted….

This leads us to our next topic which is learning to see all of the produce from your dairy animals as gold, not only their milk.  Permaculture is the science/art of building interlocking webs of fertility and health on your homestead, be it a quarter acre in town or a 5000-acre ranch in New Mexico.

Family Milk Cow, Permaculture Goddess

For the small homestead, a milk cow can be the lynchpin and fountain of nutrition and fertility for plants and animals micro to macroscopic. In the seminal book on biodiversity The Biodynamic Farm, Karl-Ernst Osthaus calls the cow the heart of the agricultural organism. He counts off how many other animals a farm can support and what they can expect production to be base on how many cows are on the farm. He prefers rounding the number of cows on farms to the nearest twelve…

The cow’s odoriferous productions of urine and feces are superfoods for the soil-dwelling web of critters who build the farm’s health from the ground up. A cow drinks as much as 50 gallons a day and only a few of those are turned into milk.  Much of the rest is deposited around the farm as a nitrogen super boost to the microbes busy at work building a soil rich in micro-nutrients and fungal nutrient transfer networks. Liquid Gold is a tongue-in-cheek book reviewing some of the benefits of urine (human and animal) in the growing of plants.

We already briefly looked at how many options there are for utilizing the solid pies produced by our mistress of the garden gold. Organic farmers harvest cow waste in vast quantities and spread it on their fields with manure spreaders for good reason.  This is easily accomplished with a pitchfork and a few minutes a day effort for the owner of one or two cows. This leaves a fresh smelling bed for your cow every day and gives you lots of material for whatever areas of your homestead are most in need of a quick nutritional punch up.

The excess milk nourishes many species on the farm and the by-products of making cheese and cream (whey and skim milk) production feed many of the protein-producing animals like chickens and hogs. You can raise several piglets to butchering size using almost exclusively whey from a productive milk cow.

The calcium found in these by-products also makes them great soil enhancers in the garden directly. Blossom end rot in tomatoes and hollow stems in broccoli are two common gardening nightmares easily avoided by increasing bio-available calcium in your soil.

Disease Management – Mastitis, Vaccinations, and Mineralization

Mastitis 

This is a big one for most home dairy producers. If you’ve had more than one child who breastfed in your household you’ve probably already dealt with this in the human form. Mastitis is a condition where pathogenic bacteria (there are a handful of different bacteria that can cause mastitis) find a way into the milk ducts (through the streak canal or through cracks in the teat) and begin breeding there, causing inflammation and localized infection. Left untreated, the condition can cause much more serious infections leading to sepsis, gangrene, loss of a quarter or even death of the animal.

That being said, you don’t have to fear mastitis, just treat it with respect and have a battle plan in place should you deal with this condition with your girls. Click here to learn more about this home milk producer’s nemesis.

Prevention is the best way to deal with this disease. Provide clean bedding for your animals and maintain good milking hygiene. You’ll want to do these things anyway for your own safety in consuming the milk, but knowing that you might not have to deal with mastitis is another good motivator to throw down that extra bale of straw or muck the stall even when you got a sub-par report card from your kid’s school or your head cold is a nasty one you don’t feel like life is really worth living anymore. We kept milk goats for years and have never had a case of mastitis. We have also had to deal with a chronic mastitis issue in a cow. It can be done!

Mineralization – The Key to Homestead Health

There is some evidence that modern farming practices are enabling the growth of beautiful, prolific food that is steadily decreasing in nutritional value. Chemicals provide the essential nutrients plants need to grow but not necessarily those that make them nutritious. Pesticides and herbicides to help the plants to fight disease or fend off pests often have detrimental effects on the health of those who consume the final beautiful product.

To build a vibrant healthy ecosystem on our homesteads that produces truly healthy and healthful food, we must work literally from the ground up. Mineralization and the restoration of soil biomes is a key and necessary goal in producing food that not only looks healthy but is fully nutritious to the body. The cow is a great place to start this process as she will provide not only direct food products to our table but also a copious amount of food in the form of saliva, urine, and feces to our microbiome and indirectly to our plants. Don’t skimp on providing nutrients to your cow in the form of mineralization. All manner of “free choice” minerals are available for purchase for your home dairy producers and your girl knows what her body needs and will consume what she needs to maintain optimum health and thus optimally nutritious outputs.  

Feed/offer as much variety as you can! Do you have relatives near the coast? Ask for some seaweed to offer your girls the next time they come to visit. Plant a variety of forage in your fields and give the girls regular access to non-grassy browse. Many herbs, brushes, and trees provide medicinal and trace mineral value to your animals and they will self-medicate with a wide range of food sources available. 

Vaccinations

This topic can get almost as controversial as how (or whether) you vaccinate your human children. That being said, I don’t have an agenda of my own to push here. I’ll share a little of my limited anecdotal experience and present some of the pros and cons of different disease management philosophies and let the chips fall where they may.

We selectively vaccinate our two-legged kids based on what we view to be risk factors based on our location and lifestyle and not based on what the CDC recommends. We treat our animals the same way. That boils down to mostly not vaccinating at this period of our lives as our farm is remote, we don’t board other animals or send our animals often to other farms and we breed most of our replacements on-farm. Several of the animals we purchased in are vaccinated. We do occasionally purchase Tractor Supply chicks or mail order ducks/meat chickens. Some of these are vaccinated. Our cow was a commercial dairy cull and while I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing she had a standard dose of vaccines during her two years there.

That being said, vaccines, by definition, are protecting against something that may or may not ever occur. There are some differences between vaccinating kids (who even if homeschooled on a farm still interact with other kids from time to time) and vaccinating my homegrown chickens or sheep who will never set foot off the farm or meet anyone but mom and dad. Some diseases are easily brought on-farm from wild animals or birds and these ones are worth considering vaccination against especially if they are regarded as a problem in your specific area. It pays to stay informed.

Your vet or your UT Extension agent will have information available regarding which diseases are most common in your area and you can research them specificially to determine what your animal’s exposure level is and determine if the risk/reward favors vaccination for a given disease or not.

The Tools of Home Dairy Production

Still with me!? You’ve made months of plans, put up fencing, housing, acquired a cow, got her pregnant and producing and now you need to get the milk from that intimidating four-pronged udder into your cereal bowl or coffee mug. HELP! (You goat and sheep owners can pat yourselves on the back as your two-handled and smaller models are slightly easier to master). Up until now most of our discussion has revolved around the teeming, lively and sometimes pungent world of the homestead farmyard. As we transition into the in-between world of the milking stanchion we also move into the realm of the semi-artistic, and toward the fiercely clean and potentially epicurean milking parlor. 

Milking Parlor 

Layout Considerations

When I have kept the cow in the barn (close to the stanchion) she often relieves herself soon after she is put into the stanchion (usually she waits till her udder has been washed so that I have to re-wash). However, I have found that when she has a bit of a walk between her pasture and the stanchion that she usually does her duty on the way and seldom drops a load in the stanchion. This is worth considering in your top-level planning for animal management. The process of ambling across the farm for a few minutes pre-and post-milking is also a good time to chat with your girl (see our post on Hand Milking Without Fear).

Stanchion Construction

The Purpose of a Stanchion

The Parts of a Stanchion

The Process of Stanchion Use

The Milking Process

Learning to milk a cow can be fun. The mechanics are not difficult. You’re using either your hands or a machine to apply pressure on each teat such that the milk contained in that teat is expressed out the nipple and into an appropriate container. Then you give the teat a short rest and it refills with milk contained in the udder above and is ready to repeat. I encourage new dairy owners to acquire a well-trained animal already in milk as their first animal. Preferably ask for a few on-site lessons in milking technique from the seller. If you can keep as much of the process the same from one owner to another you will increase the comfort level of the cow the change in ownership will be less traumatic for everyone. If the cow is used to a gentle warm water udder wash and grain being fed in a certain sequence, try to continue each step in that process in her new home and introduce any desired changes gradually. 

That being said, our first dairy goat was a baby when we bought her so, when she finally freshened, we learned how to milk simultaneously with her learning how to be milked without serious issues. Our daughter was seven at the time and she did the regular milking entirely herself after a training period. Our first cow was a commercial dairy cull and her second owners were selling her because she was difficult to hand milk. She was open when we bought her so we had lots of time to develop a routine and spent time introducing her to the milking stanchion and getting comfortable with the process before we were actually milking her and she is an easy milker now. Most animals are creatures of habit and they prefer to have a lot of routine in their lives. Milk as close to the same time each day as is feasible and follow the same preparation steps in the same sequence as much as possible. This lets your girl know what is coming and she will be calm throughout the process. 

My milking time is my zen time each day. I can ponder the imponderables of life while I rest my head on Bumblebee’s busy stomachs and the milk just flows into the bucket.  We only hand milk and she came from a commercial Jersey dairy as a cull for mastitis that wouldn’t clear up in one quarter. Her second owner was unable to hand milk her because of her lively disposition. We acquired her dry and open and spent a long time familiarizing her with the new milking set up, and got her into the routine through her nine-month gestation so that by the time we had her in there to relief milk some of the colostrum off after the birth of her calf she required a very minimal amount of comforting and coaxing. Milking her today is a joy and a breeze and is usually the most predictable period of peace and quiet in my day. I’d hate it if anyone else in the family wanted to take it over…

We cover hand milking in more detail in this post.

Machine Milking Without Fuss

Milking machines are a different animal. They do save your hands some repetitive motions but they also carry their own risk of inducing mastitis in your girl if not set properly or monitored carefully at the end of milking. They also require careful cleaning (some models are more conducive to this process than others). Milking machines are often noisy and skittish animals should be introduced to them gradually. Have the machine present in the stanchion for a few milkings. Run the pump but don’t use the machine for a few more milkings, Then try introducing the cups on the teat. 

Milking Kit

The process of extracting the milk from your girls can and should be relaxing and comforting for both you and your cow/goat/sheep/etc. That being said, there are problems that might occur and you will eventually build up a little arsenal of tools to help you monitor what is a problem for your animal and to improve the comfort/cleanliness of the milking process. Here is a quick overview of the tool kit I keep on hand in the milking parlor.

Essential Milking Tools

We cover the essential milking tools you’ll need (really pairing it down, there are a LOT of nice-to-haves!) here.

We’re Calving Preparedness Kit

Coming soon!

Medical Emergency Kit

Coming soon!

Kitchen Kit

Coming soon!

Using The Milk – Home Creamery

The biggest benefit to producing your own dairy on-site is that you have access to the raw milk for your own family’s consumption. Raw milk from a properly nourished cow is a superfood that bears little resemblance to the product you buy off the shelf at the supermarket. But milk to go with your cookies and cereals is only the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to the wonderful products a cow (or several goats) can offer you in the kitchen. 

Cheese! 

Even when we had a substantial income from engineering, we spent a lot of it on cheese. We love artisanal, raw milk cheese. A spring living in Quebec taught us to appreciate good Brie and we picked through even the better American grocery stores with disappointment trying to find cheeses that met our expectations for good cheese. 

When we were milking only the Nigerian Dwarf Goats we never had enough milk to do more than just drink it. When the Saanen came online we were getting a gallon a day. We drink close to that, but with a little effort, we were able to set aside some milk from time to time and make some Chevre. This soft goat cheese is a breeze to make and can be flavored with any number of herbs to suit a wide variety of palates.

When we finally had a cow’s worth of milk to play with, though, things got much more interesting! We made some truly awful mozzarella (this cheese has a reputation for being easy but we found that the window of proper pH for obtaining a good stretch is way too narrow for our busy family to consistently catch). We made a few batches of accidental feta cheese and our Goudas provided another great use for the box of beeswax that sits around while we look for uses for it. 

American consumers are perhaps beginning to break out of the Kraft stable and are learning to appreciate top-shelf cheese. We’ll have a lot more to say in future articles about the fun that cheese making can be at home. Our library recommendations contains several books introducing the art of cheesemaking at home. Many of them can be made in the kitchen with normal equipment and as you increase in your confidence and as your palate broadens you can acquire piecemeal some of the tools necessary to make the more difficult cheeses. You can’t tell me you’ve never dreamed about having a cheese cave tucked into the shady spot on the hill out back!

Butter!

There is nothing like freshly churned sweet butter slathered on toast. The yellow is nearly fluorescent from our Jersey’s beta carotene. Goat milk has smaller fat molecules that don’t separate naturally from the milk the way a cow’s does and it’s more difficult to make butter from goat milk (though it can be done). 

Cream!

A cup of coffee in the milking parlor on a cold morning is not much amiss and the frothing milk squirted directly into the coffee from a clean teat gives a barista-foamed look to your coffee. 

Ice Cream!

Several recipes for ice cream don’t involve cooking (or only cook some of the milk) which allows you to maintain some of the health benefits of the raw milk you consume in this fashion. We consider our sucanat (or home harvested maple syrup) sweetened ice cream a health food and have had it for dinner on more than one summer evening…

Kefir!

This cultured milk drink is similar to yogurt only the culture grows in grainy clumps in the milk, rather than being distributed evenly through it as yogurt cultures do. The cultures that make up kefir are also much more diverse than those typically found in yogurt. Kefir can be used as the inoculant for almost any kind of cheese you wish to produce, it also produces a rich, probiotic sour whey that can be used to jump-start lacto-fermentation. This is something easy to do at home even for those of you who are not yet ready to make the plunge into homegrown dairy. Kefir does very well with homogenized/pasteurized milk. 

Buttermilk!

Buttermilk is the liquid left behind after the butter has been churned. It’s rich in proteins, fat, calcium, riboflavin, vitamin B12 and lots more. It is often fermented to further increase the nutritional value.

Whey!

There are edible whey cheeses, whey butters, and other whey products and we do occasionally make some, but we make so much cheese that we couldn’t possibly consume all the whey ourselves. This is one of those areas where we allow the abundance of a cow’s production to spill over into benefiting the rest of our homestead. It’s rich in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, protein and traces of fat. Chickens love whey. Pigs can be raised on it. Athletes pay good money for the powdered form in health food stores. It is a compost feeder, a garden fertilizer, 

Other Resources

We recommend these other resources for those interested in producing home dairy.