Somebody check my math!

There was a recent post in an online forum which was making a case that vegetarianism is better from a carbon emissions standpoint than eating meat. It referenced one of many articles that complain (rightly) about the greenhouse gas emissions generated by feedlot meat. It spurred me to look for some data on grass-fed meat, by way of comparison. Here's part of what I wrote - including some rather surprising numbers:

I'm all for ending the practice of stuffing livestock with grains, and turning manure into sewage. Not to mention the health and disease considerations for the animals as well as the people! I'm also all for drastically reducing the amount of meat consumed.

But (you knew I was going to put one in here!) I just did some quick digging and came up with this*:

Conventional beef:         2.13 kg CO2 / 1 kg meat
Conventional corn:         0.15 kg CO2 / 1 kg corn
Cover crop + no-till corn: 0.06 kg CO2 / 1 kg corn
Grass fed beef:            0.02 kg CO2 / 1 kg meat

* based on numbers in these two links, converted to common units:
http://tinyurl.com/lccjap
http://tinyurl.com/mgq65o

I picked corn because it was the easiest calorie dense crop I could find carbon numbers for. I couldn't find numbers for organic corn. I suspect it varies according to scale.

To be fair, I haven't added in electricity for the beef to keep it frozen or whatever. I guess it depends if you're keeping it all yourself for a year, or splitting it among many people, to be eaten relatively soon after butchering.

But even I found the numbers above surprising. (Maybe I should re-check my math.)

Is this a fair comparison? I don't know. Just throwing it out there. Is manure a methane disaster or a fantastic fertilizer? Depends how much you have and what you do with it I guess. Is growing perennials like grass and clover for grazing better for the soil than no-till corn and soy, or is that canceled out by cow farts? Did buffaloes fart? Can people grow veggies and beef using much less than the numbers stated in the referenced articles? (That I'm sure of. I'm trying to do both myself!)

But like I said, I'm all for getting rid of feedlots and cutting meat consumption in any case. And I salute vegetarians. It is a very effective approach.

My only point is that there's more than one workable answer, and the answers will vary based on many factors. There's no way in hell India is going to feed itself on pastured livestock. (I fear I could have stopped that sentence partway through.) Nor Japan. Nor New York or Los Angeles I suspect. But on our little 8+ acres, I'm pretty sure I can raise a cow on grass & hay for less fuel (and less money) than it would take to cover the whole property in annual crops.

(My dream is pastures with rows of mature nut trees in them....)

This line of inquiry was partly spurred by our recent purchase of a quarter of beef from the neighbor whose cattle are currently grazing on our property. He finishes his on grain, but I was thinking about how little fuel (and money) it would take for us to raise Meadow's (presumed) calf on pasture and hay alone. It couldn't take more than five gallons of fuel to cut hay for one bovine for one winter. And that's pasture I'd have to mow anyway! So what other expense would there be besides the butcher's bill? Water is abundant here. We wouldn't need any other feed. A few pennies worth of mineral block. And free fertilizer and mowing.

I bet we could beat that 0.02 / 1 ratio. Of course, if I was man enough to scythe and stack the hay, I could get to 0.00. But I'm not.

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News in Brief

Today the temperatures were up into the 50's F. The baby was asleep, the other two kids were occupied... I saw an opportunity and I went for it.

I started what will be a very long process of cleaning out the barn. This winter has been long already. Not extreme, but long. We haven't caught many breaks. And the barn has become a big frozen mess.

Is it weird that I was looking forward to cleaning out a barn stall? Is it weird that, though I got pretty filthy in the process, and it smelled pretty bad, that I was happy to do it? Is it weird that I'm exhausted, but I don't mind?

There's something satisfying about tangible results. You should see the size of the pile of future compost I made today. You should see the size of the ice cube I extracted from the watering trough. (It's about 4 feet long, 1.5 feet wide, and almost a foot thick. It weighs approximately one Volkwagen. I hope that cow appreciates the effort, though I wouldn't bet on it.

The chickens even gave us two eggs. They've only just started laying again, after shutting it down back in mid-November. Of course Amelia found them on the drying rack in the kitchen and dropped them on the floor. But if we're very lucky, tomorrow or the next day we can resume eating the Best Eggs Ever.

The barn is not clean. But it's cleaner than it was yesterday. Meadow has fresh, unfrozen water in significant quantities. And I don't have to haul buckets or come up with ever more creative ways of providing it.

I guess pushing bits around on a computer for 40 hours a week has some major advantages, but strangely, I find I'd rather be shoveling cow shit. Which is good, since there's plenty more where that came from.

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I got nothin' - now in bite-sized chunks.

You know that capitalism has run its course when you learn, through a baseball-oriented blog no less, that there is an entire series of NASCAR-themed Harlequin romance novels. Go on. Click Here. You know you want to.

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For all those who are wondering what I decided to do about our cow issue... After consulting with two different vets and one choose-your-own-adventure poll, I did dry off the cow. For those who care about the details, here's what I did: I stopped her grain and kept milking for 3 more days. Then after milking her out completely, I treated her with a dry cow treatment. Then I waited 3 more days and milked her out again and treated her again. For future reference, I also found that changing technique can alleviate carpal tunnel problems - the key, apparently, is to use more wrist and arm instead of relying mostly on finger and hand muscles alone. I made some adjustments just after I posted that poll, and it did help some, but not enough for the moment. Next time I will definitely start that way from the get-go. And keep an eye out for a good deal on used milking equipment, just in case.

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My older son has determined, using a line of reasoning available only to those five and under, that the person doling out punishments is to blame for all the problems of the recipient. Punishing is mean and unfair. He'd behave better if only we wouldn't punish him any more. So, yeah...

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My daughter has determined, using a line of reasoning available only to her, that all clothing from the waist down is considered optional. It is her solemn duty to remove shoes and socks within 3 minutes of having them put on. It is also her solemn duty to remove all pants, skirts, dresses, overalls, pajamas and diapers at every opportunity. I'll spare you the story that really pushes this over the top, but let's just say she's practicing to be the Michelangelo of fecal matter. The Picasso of Poo. The Dada of Doodoo.

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Speaking of special needs and artistic talents, check out this guy, dubbed "The Human Camera":


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Our youngest, Owen, is well on his way to taking over the world by the force of sheer cuteness. He's almost 7 months, and bursting the seams of his 12-month clothes. His latest skills include crawling, saying "Mama," and eating everything he can get his hands on. He gets really mad when you don't share your food with him. Beans, peas, carrots, rice, cookies, crackers, pasta - and none of that pureed crap. He wants the real thing. In fact, when I tried to spoon feed him some bits of apple scraped off the one I was eating, he rejected it in favor of gnawing on the apple itself. Those one-and-a-half teeth don't do much, but apparently there's a lot of satisfaction in being self-sufficient.

He also imitates cat noises. Seriously. When we take him out on the front porch to sit on the swing, Kiki, our resident barn cat, almost always comes running. She greets everyone with her squeaky little meow, and Owen replies with a fantastic cat impression. If I can capture it on video, I'll post it. Assuming I can figure out how. I'll also try to capture his absurd laugh. It sounds like a cross between a baby dinosaur and someone choking. I don't think he can top this laugh though:



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In other news, Lori's blog is back from the dead.

Our tractor, however, is not. I guess I'll be headed to the parts store one more time...

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Choose-Your-Own-Adventure result

You walk out to the barn on a crisp fall morning, a little before dawn. Your decision made, you feel a weight lifting, knowing that this will be the last time you'll be hand milking for a good long time. After this, your wrists can recover and life can resume its usual crazy course.

As you enter the darkened barn, you are eaten by a grue. Your cow dies of dysentery.

THE END

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Another poll - Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style

You bought a Jersey cow about five months ago, and you've been hand milking her every day since. She's developed a persistent case of mastitis that neither veterinary nor homeopathic medicine has cured. Usable milk production is at about three quarts (liters) per day and falling.

Over the past two weeks or so, you've noticed a steady increase in pain and numbness in your right hand and arm: the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome. It's making milking a bit harder. It's making your day job working with computers harder as well.

Your cow may or may not have been successfully bred yet, but at best you've got at least seven months between now and a new baby calf (and the new milk supply that comes with it).

Winter is coming. You'll be needing to buy hay soon. In the background, you hear loud creaking, cracking, and crunching sounds as the economy teeters on the edge of the abyss.



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[ Don't forget to vote in the previous poll as well... ]

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Craziness all around, and my first ever poll...

Right. So we made the brilliant move of starting a big fundraising project on the day after a major hurricane and the day before a major stock market meltdown. Thank you very much to all who contributed, or even considered it. I'm hoping to do some fun stuff both locally and online. More on that below.

We had the odd experience of hurricane force winds in Ohio, as the remnants of Ike joined forces with a big cold front. We apparently had sustained winds of 50+ mph and gusts up to 75 mph. Lots of places around the state have been without power for days, and some places actually have gas shortages because so many gas stations have no power. We were lucky to have only brief outages, and no real damage.

Amelia had a blast sitting out in the wind, giggling like a maniac as her hair streamed out behind her. For some reason, I didn't take any pictures.

I'm really worried that we may have to get rid of the cow. I seem to be developing carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. The cow thing has just been very frustrating in ways that nobody could have foreseen. I'm not giving up yet. Just venting. It doesn't help that the tractor died in her pasture, and she's been mercilessly trying to eat every cable and wire. She pulled the ends off two spark plug wires and pulled out two or three smaller wires (some several times). And every time I try to work on it, she starts eating my clothing, licking me and/or my tools, and just generally being a pest. I tried putting a tarp over the whole thing, but she just dragged it out of the way. So now I have a temporary fence made of cattle panels surrounding the tractor.

My attempts at taking advantage of getting to know my neighbors isn't going very well. The guy who helps me fix my tractor from time to time isn't returning my calls. He works night shift I think. The other guy who was going to cut our hay and bring us some loaner cows and a loaner bull and all sorts of other good stuff has also disappeared from the face of the earth. He did cut our hay once, but it got rained on about a half dozen times before it was baled. And it's pretty stemmy and weedy stuff anyway. Meadow won't touch it at this point.

Other than that, everything is under control.

Okay, not really. But let's just move on anyway.

Back to the service dog thing... I'll probably mostly post about this stuff on the 4paws4amelia blog, but it doesn't have much regular traffic yet, so I'm going to subject you to my fundraising brainstorming session:



Thanks for your input!

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Just what we need... another escape artist.

Our cow is still struggling with mastitis. Or I am. Both, I guess. I'm pretty certain we've now had to dump more milk than we've gotten to use since we bought her. It's no fun milking twice a day and pouring it all on the ground, day after day. And then to going to the store and buy dairy products.

Not Cool.

So the vet came out to get a culture and treat her with an IV antibiotic, since lesser methods didn't get it done. She fought like a good 'un. For some reason, she didn't appreciate getting jabbed in the neck.

And then she managed to sneak past both of us and squeeze out through the open stall gate.

This led to a Keystone Cops chase, as Meadow frolicked in the tall weeds, the neighbor's manicured lawn, and the ditch by the road, while being chased by me, my somewhat elderly vet, my five-year-old son, and the vet's wife in her white slacks and pink blouse.

We opened up several gates because we weren't sure which way we could get her to go. So when we finally did get her back in through one gate, she ran straight through, past the vet's wife, and back out a different open gate.

So jump back two paragraphs to see what happened next.

Eventually, we got her in. But she still needed to be milked. Of course she wouldn't go anywhere near the barn for quite a while, so I was nearly milking by candlelight by the time I coaxed her in.

The poor vet left covered in sweat, blood, and dirt, being hounded by his wife because he was supposed to have drank something two hours before in preparation for a colonoscopy early the next morning.

So I guess difficulties are all relative.

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Finally catching up...

Help! It's going to harvest my brain!!!

AAIEEEE!

A lot has happened in our lives over the past few weeks. Some good, some not. So this post may be a bit like drinking from a firehose.

Let's see...

- We had one late night emergency room visit (for something neither serious nor interesting)

- Our 20+ year old cat Pepper was put to sleep. He had a good, long life.


- One of our chickens died - not from predators, but some other malady. The rest seem fine.

- Our cow got mastitis. She got it pretty bad and we had to medicate her and dump her milk for about 10 days. (A big thank-you to my wife for playing vet.) I was actually surprised that it hadn't happened earlier, what with my inexperience and all. But still it's a pain. As with many bacterial problems these days, it flared up again after the medication wore off, so we're back to new medicine and dumping milk for several more days.

- I took the twins to the county fair over the weekend, where much fun was had and my wallet was beaten to a pulp. And Amelia tried to escape that ride where your back is against the inside of a giant rotating drum, which then tips up vertically. Her escape attempt was basically to sit down, but that put the little safety strap above her head. My brain knew enough about physics to realize she wasn't in any danger, but I still held her arm with a death grip until the ride was over.

- Our hay was cut - though our neighbor who was doing the cutting couldn't fit his equipment through our 10-foot gates. Another neighbor stepped in and cut it for us. Unfortunately it's been rained on like five or six times since then. So, uh... hooray for compost!

- We harvested our first blueberries! They don't really grow well here because they are so picky about acidic soil. But I have such fond memories of picking blueberries with my grandfather in Connecticut (and my grandmother's endless blueberry concoctions) that I had to plant some. So I got three dwarf varieties and planted them in a big planter box full of peat moss and mulched with pine nuggets. Mmmmm. I hate to say it but they're even better than my grandparents' berries...



- Our gooseberries are almost ripe. Let's hope we get some before the chickens eat them all. The blueberries have bird netting over them. I may need to do the same for the gooseberries. And the currants. The grapes are coming along nicely. We'll have to wait another year (or maybe more) before we get apples, peaches, blackberries, or raspberries. Probably two more years for cherries. I'd guess even longer for any of our nut trees or paw paws.


- On the other hand, our "garden" is literally knee-high with weeds. I guess between the baby, the cow, and all this other stuff, something had to give. Thank you CSA for providing our garden veg, since my own efforts are doomed.

- I decided to abandon our worm bin. The chickens end up getting most of our kitchen scraps rather than the worms. A neglected worm bin generates fruit flies and the like.

- Speaking of which, I moved our "compost bin" (quotes because the chickens eat it all so I never have any compost) from it's old location between the house and the barn to a new spot right under the kitchen window. So now when cooking is done, you just crank open the window and dump the veggie scraps out. The chooks didn't have any trouble adapting to the new location.

- We saw our first eastern bluebird today. They might be my favorite bird, just because they're so rare at this point. Here's a really poor photo...



- We made strawberry jam for the first time. We got about 7 pints. Then we followed that up with five pints of black raspberry jam. Oh. My. Goodness. My mouth is watering as I type this.

- Our cow's been bred (artificially) to a Jersey bull. Our neighbor with the loaner Angus was taking too long. We're already a month or two later than we'd like. At this point I may be milking well into January. Next time we'll know better.

I did see something rather interesting the other day. I wandered out to the pasture to find Meadow. Usually when I go out to milk she's already waiting for me, with her head in the stanchion, looking expectant. But for some reason yesterday she wasn't around. I soon found out - she had a new friend. There was a red-winged blackbird perched on her back, gobbling up flies.

The flies have been a nuisance. but the home remedies didn't do anything, and the store-bought fly spray didn't do much either (and is a possible suspect in our chicken death). So instead of spraying anything, I've switched to closing up the barn to keep it as dark as I can get it. I also try to shoo the flies off her before she comes into the barn. Of course that doesn't work if she's already in there tapping her hoof waiting for me. I also hung some 3-inch wide strips of screening material in the doorway (which will make more sense after a future post). The idea was that as she walks through the strips, the flies are brushed off. It does seem to help a little, but I didn't have enough strips to go all the way across the doorway yet.

Another trick that Meadow came up with the other day, which was pretty successful, was to gallop and buck a little while swishing her tail, just before she runs into the barn. The flies all take off and she runs out from under the cloud. It's interesting what can happen when you leave the work to Mother Nature.

Speaking of which, I was talking to the vet about her mastitis problem. She said one thing that can help is to run cold water on the udder - it can get very hot and feel feverish. I thought, well, that explains why Meadow's been in the pond so much - right up to her udder.

And finally, a photo I took of Amelia one day while Lori was out all afternoon with the boys.

I call it, "Bad Father":
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More cow notes

Sorry, no baby pictures this time. Actually, no pictures at all. I'm a slacker... I'll post some non-cow stuff next time. Just getting caught up on some interesting developments in this area...

I don't think I've mentioned or cow's name yet. It's Meadow. You know, because she's a Jersey girl and and all.

If you are laughing right now, you watch too much TV. If not, well, it is a nice name for a cow, don't you think?

Something cool happened the other day. A neighbor I hadn't met before stopped by. (One cool thing about living out here is that you can call somebody a "neighbor" even if they live a couple miles away.) He was initially going to ask if he could put a couple cows on our overgrown pasture (like we've done in the past), but then he heard the tell-tale mooing coming from the vicinity of our barn.

I told him we were planning for another neighbor cut hay for us. Meanwhile Meadow plaintively bawled in the background. So he proposes a solution: He'll cut our hay for us in exchange for bringing some bovine pals for Meadow. And my first thought was, wait, I thought the way barter works is that you get something of value and you give up something of value. Both halves of the trade were beneficial to me.

Obviously what we'd be giving up is theoretical future hay, based on the grass the new cattle would graze. And theoretical wear & tear on the fences. I'm told I should ask him to cut hay and ask for money in exchange for grazing a couple of his animals in our pasture. But I really do feel like we're benefiting in multiple ways, and the trivial amount of cash ($20 per head per month, apparently) is unnecessary at this point.

I mean, we'd be getting our hay cut and baled. We'd be getting additional grass cutting and fertilizer spreading. We'd be getting companions for Meadow. We'd be contributing to the local, naturally raised meat supply. And we'd be developing a relationship with a guy who knows things and knows people and who lives right up the road from us.

He's already told me he can provide us with corn for our winter heating needs (instead of driving 25 miles each way). He can provide us with an Angus bull for breeding purposes (since we now know for sure that Meadow is not bred). He can put us in touch with a small local grain mill (which apparently is hidden from the general public because I've been searching for it for a couple years now). He can put us in touch with a vet who is closer than the one we use now (and is also apparently in stealth mode). He can provide us with freezer beef (at least unless/until we grow our own). He'd be interested in buying any of Meadow's calves that we don't want to keep. And he just seems like a good guy. I'll take building this relationship over a little gas money.

In other news, we successfully made homemade ice cream. Mmmmm. No cheese yet, but we're getting there.

And we were happy to learn (or have even further confirmed) that our milk, just like our eggs, is much more nutritious than the usual suspects. I guess animals are like computers (and people, come to think of it) in one sense: Garbage in, garbage out. Or not, as the case may be.

Milk from pastured cows:
• 39% more Omega-3 fatty acids
• 33% more Vitamin E
• 60% more CLA9 (conjugated linoleic acid)
(and I suspect more, but that's all this particular study covered)

Eggs from pastured chickens:
• 1⁄3 less cholesterol
• 1⁄4 less saturated fat
• 2⁄3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

So.... woohoo!

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Followup note: I just found this site that shows all kinds of nutritional benefits to our little backyard endeavor.

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Variety pack

I've got a whole range of things today, so hang on tight...

First, I've been invited to join Chile and her gang on her Oregon Trail wagon team. Thanks Chile! Can I bring my family too? Can we trail the cow behind? I have so many questions!

I also wanted to point out that my semi-dormant doomer blog is ramping up a bit again as time allows. Hopefully.

And blogged.com rated this blog an 8.1 out of 10... so I've decided to double the price for reading. You always get what you pay for here at Green, Blue, Brown.

We're settling into our cow routine, and she's settling in to her people routine, more or less. She's decided she's not totally thrilled at grazing alone, and she's not impressed with the neighbor llamas as pals. (Besides which, they're too busy with mating rituals to pay much attention to her anyway.) She's doing okay, but complains a bit when given the chance. Or occasionally at 2am outside our bedroom window. An interesting solution is in the works, but that's another post.

The good news is that she's pretty well-behaved. There are some mornings when she thinks milking time is an audition for Dancing with the Stars, but for the most part she does well despite our inexpert hands. She's not very impressed with the grain we've been giving her, but she does like the alfalfa hay quite a bit, so that can keep her occupied for part of the time.

Unfortunately, we're still working on getting the milking time down. She was used to having two people milk her at once - one on either side - and two experienced people at that. So now instead of the 15-20 minutes she was used to, it takes us more like an hour at this point. And she lets us know with some shuffling and sighs by the end.

But at least I've finally built up enough arm strenght to get through the whole milking without asking Lori to spell me. My forearms are going to look like Popeye's by winter. I may need to get some anchor tattoos.

Did it ever seem odd to anyone else that cream is white, but we call something "cream colored" if it's like a light beige color? Wouldn't that be like naming something that was yellow "an orange"? Well, I'm here with the answers. This is what our milk looks like straight out of the cow:
I guess not all cream (or milk) is white, eh?

We get a very high percentage of cream, so while some friends were visiting, we decided to try making butter. You basically make whipped cream and then keep going. It took quite a while even with the stand mixer, and we began to lose faith that it was actually working. But our patience was rewarded with some vivid yellow butter. The photo doesn't quite do it justice, but here it is:

For those who asked on the last post, I think the mama robin abandoned her nest. Not surprising to me, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't going to like it driving and jiggling around our property aboard the tractor either. And speaking of the tractor, I've been seeing a particular rabbit hanging around a lot lately. (It'll make sense in a sec.) I first noticed him hanging around last year, and running in terror any time I was out clearing grass and weeds with the rotary mower:

I call him Lucky... I thought about "Buzz," but he does still have all four rabbit's feet.

In other news, Fatty Lumpkin's smile has finally been caught on camera:

Aawww. Let's enlist e5's help to get a big grin....

Okay, now it's just getting gratuitous...
He's not really old enough to warrant any good stories so far, but he's got cuteness down pat.

I've got nothing to follow that right now. Another post coming soon. Maybe.
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I've got your stimulus package right here!

Er... no wait...

Right here:

Yes, we got a cow.

Not the one we were looking at before. The timing just didn't work quite right. He needed to sell sooner than we could be ready to buy. So we moved on.

I've spent the last few weeks putting in several hundred feet of fencing to enclose some additional pasture and connect our barn to our existing fields. I also built a pen and a milking area in the barn.

Ok, I guess I should tell you about the cow. She's a Jersey, about three years old, hand-milked by an Amish family who lives about 75 miles from us. She may or may not be bred to a Holstein.

How did we find her, you ask? Craigslist, of course. Yes, really. The Amish don't use computers or most technology, but sometimes their neighbors do. This man's neighbor posted the listing for him, I saw it, and next thing I knew I was talking to an Amish farmer on a cell phone.

We all drove up to see the cow a couple weeks ago, and I ended up driving back a week or so later to try milking her. (They were selling because she was slightly awkward to milk. Well, any cow would be slightly awkward for me to milk, so...)

And now, here she is, settling into her new surroundings.


In 2005, this is where we lived:
...on three-tenths of an acre in suburban Cincinnati. Most days I don't think about how strange that is given where we are now. Today is not most days though.

As of today, we have a sweet Jersey cow to milk twice a day. Six gallons per day - an essentially unlimited supply of milk, butter, cream, yogurt, buttermilk, cheeses, ice cream... assuming we can figure out how to make them all. After our yogurt experience, I'm pretty confident we can figure it out. Then we just have to find ways to use the other 90% of it.

What about the baby, you ask? He's doing really well. Fabulously. I don't know that we'd be doing this if he wasn't settling in as well as he is. I think after having twins, one high needs and one special needs, with a couple hospital visits thrown in, this has been a cake walk. Sure he's still a baby and still needs time and attention. But we decided we could manage an hour or two a day between us to handle our Jersey girl.

Are you crazy?

In fact, I've already been using milking time every morning and every night to get the fencing and other work done. It's worked very well, and now that all that stuff is taken care of, I guess the fun can begin.

I should also mention the truck driver. He brought his pickup truck back to our barn, pulling a three-horse trailer, into an area that I can barely turn my pickup truck around in. There are four small apple trees along one side of the area, and two tiny Chinese chestnut saplings on the other side. He noticed them, pulled up within a foot of one of the saplings, backed to within inches of the apple tree, and then somehow cut sideways so that the other sapling passed through the gap between the truck and it's trailer. And before I knew it, he was turned 180 degrees and perfectly positioned to unload the cow. He did all this without stopping & starting, or even hesitating. It was about the most impressive piece of driving I've ever seen.

Now, in the middle of all this, I have let a couple things slide. The grass is getting very tall, which will hopefully yield us some usable hay, but there are a few areas that need a little more regular maintenance. And I know I've gotten a bit behind on a few things, but come on! A robin's nest in the tractor?!

I don't know if it'll do any good, but I relocated it to a slightly safer location. Not sure if it'll do any good, but it was done in full view of mama.

Anyway, off we go on another adventure. Stories of our incompetence to follow...

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"When are you gonna blog about the cow?"

So, we're thinking of getting a family cow. The one in the picture, in fact. (The little red one, not the momma...) How's that for a way to use those "economic stimulus" funds?

Crazy, right? With a baby on the way?

Well, we've got fenced pasture and a barn full of hay. And we do miss the unlimited milk supply we had with the goats. And cow's milk would be much more versatile for us. Not to mention that beef is a better fit for us than chevon. (We wouldn't actually be milking for at least a year and a half, in case you're thinking about the baby and getting ready to call the men in white coats.)

Goats really are better in many ways. They're more efficient and less picky grazers. They are smaller. Their milk is better for the lactose intolerant people of the world (which is actually the majority, by the way). Their manure is more manageable.

For us though, they were not a perfect match. And who knows, a cow may not turn out to be an great fit either. I tend to think otherwise, which explains the existence of this post, I guess. And for you long-time Green, Blue, Brown readers, this may come as no surprise.

And really, you rarely learn anything by not trying it.

We wanted a smallish, hardy, multipurpose breed. Unfortunately, yaks aren't in abundance around here. We kicked around the idea of Dexters, but they are hard to find in our area, a little bit pricey, and their milk is apparently naturally homogenized, which was one thing we didn't like about the goat's milk. We thought about a Jersey or Gurnsey, but they're fairly milk-centric. Not a bad thing, per se, but not quite what we were after. We even looked into mini-Jerseys, but they were too expensive. There are Angus cattle around but those are a meat breed, of course. Holsteins are readily available, but they tend to be more about "maximizing production". It brings to mind a joke about an old-time dairy farmer keeping a barn full of Jerseys for the milk, plus one Holstein in case they ever need to put out a fire.

In the end, the American Milking Devon ended up at the top of my list. Despite the name, they're good for both meat and milk, and even draft power if I ever got really ambitious. They're a very old breed, and they're said to do well on pasture and hay alone, even while milking. And there are a couple breeders within a reasonable distance to us. [If you want to read a cool article about this breed (from an admittedly biased source), check this out.]

So after asking around a bit, we found - among various other options - a heifer calf who is one half Milking Devon and one half Angus. (Well, mostly one half Angus. Maybe a little Holstein or some other breeds mixed in.) She's got the trademark red color of the Devons, with no horns and a slightly beefier frame. And her price reflects her non-purebred status, which is good for us.

A couple weekends ago, when we went out to take a look at her and her herdmates, the temperature was well below freezing, with a biting wind that sent e5 scurrying back to the car before we got 100 feet. The cows were not in the barn. They weren't in the field shelter or behind the windbreak of trees. They were just out basking in the sun like there was a nice September breeze wafting through...

We're still working out the logistics and the financials, but we figure we're spending over $1200 a year on milk now, and that's not counting our next kid's eventual consumption. It's not counting the continuing price increases that are sure to come. It's also not counting any butter, cheeses, cream, yogurt and other dairy products. Or the inevitable offspring a cow would produce, which could either be sold or, well, frozen. Given the fact that we've already got fenced pasture and a barn, we could certainly keep a cow like this for less than $1200 a year.

So it's under serious consideration. Just so you know.

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