Mythbusting Mondays: We All Milk Cows

I remember the first day that I met my roommate’s boyfriend. He seen on my table an alarm clock that was a trophy I won from our 4-H show and sale, he asked me if I was a farm girl then when I replied yes he asked if that meant that I got up every morning bright and early to milk cows. This, like many other myths about agriculture is false.

First of all to begin with some basic cattle knowledge. There are two broad categories of cattle, beef and dairy. Although dairy cattle can be used for beef and beef cows due produce milk they do much better if they stick to their own thing. This would be like having a math teacher teach biology and a biology teacher teach math, they both could probably do ok, but if they taught their own subjects it would probably make a lot more sense.  

A holstein Dairy Cow from:
http://carolvaage.net/images/cow5.JPG

Dairy cattle are the ones that people are most familiar with (the white ones with the black spots) This particular breed of cattle is called Holstein and although there are many different breeds of dairy cattle that don’t look anything like this Holstein is the most popular dairy breed in Canada by far.

Beef cattle is where things get a little more complicated. I have talked frequently about my Angus cattle, but there are many different breeds raised (such as Charolais, Herford, Limousine, Semimetal etc.) Each breed has a different advantage when it comes to meat quality, taste, temperament, adaptively to climates, and other features.



many different breeds of beef cattle from:
http://www.usask.ca/beefresearch/herd72.jpg



So to answer the question, no, I do not get up and milk cows in the morning; neither do most of the cattle farmers in this area. But people who own dairies do. they have to get up at certain times and milk cows on a schedule. There was a day when most farms had a dairy cow on their place to produce a little milk for themselves, but now a day’s most people raise either beef or dairy.