When we researched house cow keeping, all the conventional advice warned us of purchasing a heifer (a young female cow that has yet to calf). However, we found it difficult to find suitable milking cows that weren’t being offered at exuberant prices. So with our humble budget, we went against conventional wisdom and purchased Ivy, who was sold to us as a fourteen month old heifer. We reasoned, since she wasn’t in calf, that we’d have at least a year to establish the necessary rapport to make the leap to milking.

Most people suggest that first timers shouldn’t purchase heifers as they require training, and may experience birthing difficulties with their first calf. Since Taranaki Farm houses a number of angus beef cattle, birthing issues have been experienced in the past, and if you’re going to involve yourself in animal husbandry, you’ll eventually have to deal with some interesting circumstances - probably sooner than later. So exercising a measure of good faith, we bred our heifer Ivy to our angus bull Zeus, and nine months or so later, she gave birth to her calf with no complications.

Once your cow has calved, training her needn’t be as punishing as our first experience. Indeed, it should be quite straightforward but you’ll need to use a bale of some kind. On Taranaki Farm, the original dairy shed still stands, although we’ve been short of time in making the necessary repairs for it to be of any usefulness. Instead, we’ve employed our cattle yards for their basic facilities. In the long term however, we must resurrect the superannuated dairy for several reasons, including shelter and food storage during the colder, wetter months of the year.

In the meantime, we’re using the crush situated in our cattle yard. It provides the necessary confinement a new milking cow needs to become accustomed to her role. Each morning, we walk her into the crush, and when she is closed in, provide her with a bucket of feed. On the first morning, she wouldn’t eat while we milked her, the process being simply too alien for her to relax. She didn’t protest or kick even though we’d tied her leg back to reveal her udder. Instead she watched intently while issuing the occasion tail swat. One the second day Ivy was notable more relaxed eating a little food. This time we tied her tail making it a less effective means of her expressing annoyance . By the end of the week, she was chewing away as though it was perfectly natural situation, with her calf sleeping beside her.

However the crush is less than ideal. It lacks a concreted floor, which would allow a cleaner more trouble free experience. Presently, we milk smaller portions direct into a stainless steel bucket, then transfer the milk via a metal strainer into a milk billy. Though we’ve found method this interrupts ‘let down’ which is the time during milking the milk flows most freely from the udder. In the picture shown (right), the milk is visibly yellower than ordinary milk. This is the Colostrum or beesting milk that carried vital antibodies and vitamins. After five or six days, the milk becomes markably lighter with a bluish tint instead. At this point, it is suitable for drinking. With a properly constructed undercover milking bale with concrete floor, the whole process would be far cleaner, and any muck immediately washed away. We’re looking forward to this.

It’s said that stripping (emptying) the udder is important for udder health. In our case, it’s probably less critical as we’re keeping a hungry calf with her, however for those with a milking cow without calf, stripping the udder would be critical. It’s simply a matter of massaging the udder while milking to ensure it’s completely empty. Stripping is also rewarded with much creamy milk, since the most cream is expressed in the final stages of milking each chamber. This is advantageous to us, since we’re using the cream to make butter, and the more cream we can collect, the better. When we’re done, we release Ivy and she and her calf wander off into the adjacent paddock. The calf feeds on anything we’ve left behind, and being as productive as she is, it isn’t long before she sports a swollen udder again.

Then, to the cling clang of steel bucket and billy, we shuffle back to the house, normally showing a limp since we’re not yet accustomed to sitting under a cow for any length of time. Once home, we filter the milk through a funnel and cheese cloth into sterilised glass bottles. This process removes any impurities like dust specs or hairs. that might have slipped through our earlier filtering.

What’s left is 100% pure raw whole milk - the most delicious drink. To finish up, we wash our equipment ready to be sterlised the next morning for the whole process to begin again.

Milking a house cow is a dynamic activity and we’re adjusting our routine frequenty to changing conditions. Currently, we’re experimenting with separating the calf at night to ensure a better yield. We’re also considering twice daily milking as we’re particularly interested in cream. It’s remarkable how useful this liquid is, as we’re only just beginning to explore all of the possibilities.

It’s been several weeks since we’ve started milking our house cow Ivy, and it’s proven a very rewarding experience. We’ve come a long way - Ivy included - in understanding the process of milking a house cow. We’ve developed a renewed respect of our cow and appreciate the milk that she provides for us.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

In order to prevent mastitis, on the day of the birth of her bull calf, we undertook our first attempt at milking her. Since the milk would mostly consist of colostrum, we were only milking her for udder health, hence a milking bucket was unnecessary. Jersey cows, like many dairy breeds, are more prone to mastitis than others. Mastitis is a condition of the udder that develops when demand for milk is lower than production.

This first attempt can only be described as amateur hour! Ivy is as new to being a house cow as we are to milking - a fact this first attempt surely confirmed.

We wrongly assumed that since she was a ‘quiet’ cow, offering herself for scratches and pats, that this would translate into her being perfectly relaxed with a human being tugging on her teats and trying to extract her calf’s precious milk. Of course what better way to dissolve misconceptions involving large bovines and their ‘willingness to co-operate’ than to roll up one’s sleeves and attempt to wrestle with the 250kg beast.

Sporting no more equipment than an poorly fitting rope halter and plenty of determination, we managed to corner Ivy and her calf between the side of a small hay shed and a gate assembly. I say ‘corner’ as her attitude towards us had shifted considerably with the birth of her calf and she rightfully expressed distress at the clumsy efforts we’d made in approaching her with a halter.

Maybe it was a combination of her protectiveness and our nerves but stupidity certainly factored, as our chosen location for the first milking also featured a three feet high pile of fresh horse manure. Manure attracts flies and it was a hot day. Not a great start. In our defense, we took this approach of simply confining her to a small area based on the experiences of our friend Bianca, who’s house cow also recently started milking. She is able to milk her cow without a halter standing free in the paddock.

The next hour consisted of me approaching Ivy as though she was a horse - repetitively tossing a lead rope over her shoulders to convince her that she was ‘caught’. For added appeal, this method also required her to trudging through the horse manure at every rotation. While this spectacle unfolded, her calf lazily watched on, from the sidelines. Eventually, with a fair amount of luck, and several too-close-for-comfort horn thrusts, she was in halter and ready to be milked!

Just because a cow is wearing a halter doesn’t mean she has to go along with it. This a fact that Ivy was determined to teach me one way or another. Picture this - I’m crouching down on her left side. My left arm outstretched, holding onto the lead rope attached to her halter in order to prevent her from turning or moving. My right arm, equally extended in the opposite direction is reached for her udder to milk her! JC would have been more comfortable. It was some kind of deranged waltz - her pulling lethargically around in a slow circle - her dance partner shuffling in tow, all the while, only managing a few pityful squirts of milk.

This foolishness continued for a considerable time, as the stubborn goal of ’stripping’ (emptying) her udder played priority over thinking straight. Perhaps heat and persistent flies installs dementia, or more honestly, a dogged sense of determination not to fail, dragged this on. Finally, we accepted defeat and gave up for the day. It was only later that it dawned on us how silly the whole exercise was. We slept that night with the gnawing feeling made made life a whole lot more difficult by giving Ivy a bad first time milking experience.

But it wouldn’t be long before we climbed out of this failure, as we were right back at the next day. This time with experience to boot, and some forward planning. The second milking, needless to say, a lot smoother than the first.