Dairy Goats vs a Family Milk Cow

Hey guys this is Megan from YouGoatToBeKidding. Summer is starting to wind down. The temperature is starting to get cooler but that also means we don't really have any big projects. There aren't any big changes on the farm right now. So this week we're just going to talk about something that's been on our minds for a few weeks and that is should we keep these guys? Should we keep our dairy goats or should we consider a milk cow? So we wanted to talk about it. I'm sure that that is a question that lots of people have. I know we've been trying to weigh it over. We've got some cons and some pros for both and so I just wanted to kind of go through our decision making process. We are still torn on what we should do for our farm but I wanted to talk you through the things we've thought of, the things we've experienced with having goats for these past three years and just kind of walk through whether we should switch and get a dairy cow or keep these goats. So our biggest reason for considering a milk cow has to do with quantity and cream. Cream is probably actually the number one. So goat's milk is naturally homogenized and that means that it stays together and it's pretty hard to get the cream off of it and so we've been considering should we get a dairy cow so that we we can better have cream and use that to make sour cream or ice cream for cheeses and things. So all of the thoughts that have gone into it. Let me give you some pros for a cow. It's obviously that cream line. You can also get lots more quantity and if I'm starting to learn how to make cheeses I need more milk to have on hand. But here with my goats I have three ladies that I'm milking right now and I get about a gallon a day and then I have all six of these ladies prepped for next spring and so then that would give me roughly two gallons a day. It does not take me very long. It's about five minutes each goat and then there's some logistics swapping you know the goats off the stand and stuff but it's really not hard to milk the goats. My daughters can help me and it really goes pretty quick. A big cow can give me a lot more milk in one fell swoop but it would probably take me longer to milk one cow although less logistics. The biggest con for one cow that has kept me from switching has to be that it's just one animal. If one animal gets hurt or sick or injured or has a rough birth like we could be out our entire dairy source in one animal where these ladies I've got six of them so if somebody gets sick with worms or injured I still have some replacements on hand. I'm not going to lose my whole milk source at the same time so that's been a big consideration. Do I really want to go to one animal that can possibly get sick? On the flip side if I just had one cow we could just have a single strand of electric fencing. We would not have to move these nets. We could just single strand this whole area here and run it in much larger pastures. It would be much easier to manage. We would only have one animal to move that would stay in a single strand so that would be a huge blessing to simplify our processes and get us from moving animals but at the same time a cow is really big. A cow is huge. She could potentially be pretty dangerous for the kids. We've never had a cow. We had a donkey for a few months and kind of didn't have a great experience because we are so inexperienced with large animals like that. I know dairy cows have a reputation for being really awesome and I know we'd get used to her but when she goes in heat they can be unpredictable and they're just big and that's a consideration with small kids on the farm so it's definitely something we're thinking about. We're not sure how much that matters. We also have to deal with dry off time so these ladies have to end up drying off usually around November after they've been bred and then they're dry for about three and a half to four months and I think the cow's time is about the same so if somebody knows better on that I haven't looked up that number for sure. I think it's right around that same three to four month mark. So the animals being dry the same amount of time is not a huge deal but then it leads me to think well maybe I should keep a couple of goats and have just a few goats that are off cycle from the cow so that we can have milk all the time but if I still have goats and a cow then that didn't simplify our routines. So you can see we've been going back and forth and back and forth and there's not really a clear winner for us. A huge one is that we already have the goats they're already here so they do get I guess it's frustrating to move them it's just tedious you know moving them around all the time but they're already here I don't have to invest any more money in them. A cow is a pretty large investment it'd be several thousand dollars and all wrapped up in this one animal and so that I kind of keep coming around to that whole thing one animal. Then there's also the issue of breeding season so we have a buck on hand he's been a pretty easy keeper it really hasn't been too much trouble at all to have a buck on property. He gets smelly and stuff but it's not it's not been a problem he's not hard to handle and he hasn't been dangerous. We don't have any interest in running a bull so we would have to find an AI tech we'd have to get familiar with the cow and figure out when she's in heat and what those signals are. I don't know if that's a huge problem but it's something I don't know and so it's a big learning curve. These goats I've had several years with I know them pretty well I kind of know what to do when they get sick or they need something I know how to manage breeding I know when they're in heat so learning a new animal is just a little bit of a stressor you know trying to figure out something new on our farm but it might be able to help us simplify so trying to always kind of go through that. A huge thing for us that we're trying to figure out whether it comes from six goats or from one big cow is quantity we want milk enough milk to be able to make cheese. I've started making mozzarella and some soft cheeses but I don't have enough milk to try any of the cheddars or goudas or stuff like that they the recipes I've seen or at least the ones I've been trying to work on require five gallons and for me that would be five day old milk I'm getting about a gallon a day so I don't really want to use five day old milk in a cheese like that I'd love to have a cow I'd also love to have enough milk left over maybe the skim milk left over to feed pigs we've never run pigs here so a cow could help with that burden. If you've been considering a cow versus some goats I hope that these are some of the considerations that you've been thinking of or maybe I've thought of some that you haven't I hope it helps you try to narrow down the process to decide we still haven't narrowed down what we've decided we already have the goats so they're kind of a given where if you were trying to start out and weren't sure which to pick it just kind of depends on your land and your circumstances and even your family which one works best for you but we're still pretty undecided I think if we saw a cow who was bred come up for a great price you know was grass fed and used to that we might go ahead and jump on that but we're coming into winter so getting a cow over winter is a bad idea makes it even harder to manage hay and pastures and things but so key is stay tuned you never know what we might do it kind of depends on what pops up right so but if you have any tips or anything that I've missed I would love to hear about it in the comments if you have experience switching from goats to a cow and you either love it or you regret it I'd love to hear about that too just help us give get more information on what to do before we make a decision and just kind of share with you the process that goes behind the animals we have and the decisions we make it's not always a very straightforward decision and I don't think in this case that there's actually a wrong answer our goats have served us really really well the thing I'm missing is butter and cream to try to make sour cream pretty much at the store I'm pretty those are some of the very few things I'm buying at a store at this point and so it always feels silly to be paying out for these dairy products when I have dairy animals so maybe the next answer for me is to just buy a cream separator anyway that's a decision we are playing with this winter we've been thinking about it all summer we actually even went and visited a cow and a farmer who raises grass-fed milk cows here nearby to us so again I hope this video helps you out if you are trying to make that decision for your own farm and if you have any tips that could help us out we'd love to hear it thanks for watching we'll see you next week