How Much Milk Does a Family COW Give in a Day?

Well, it's cream separating day. A good day to talk to you about just how much a family cow will give you. How much milk did we end up having, honey?

10 gallons.

10 gallons? That's a week?

It's a little over.

A little over a week. Because we didn't—

well, I don't know when we cream separated last.

Is 10 gallons a good amount for doing cream separating? Yeah. You going with Mr. Brown? Milk the cow?

No.

Somebody left the flashlight on. The boys are on their way to bring the cows in. Looks like you can hear them bellowing. They're ready to go. Looks like Josiah and Grace are going to get the calves. You guys going to get the calves? We put the calves with the sheep last night, so the calves are on the moms during the day. And if we take the calves off at night, your milk builds up at night. Why?

What the heck? You just let Seth through.

Okay, I'm trying not to. Here we go. There you go. Come pull my line up. What about the calves?

They can run under anything, you think? Yeah. Okay, good.

All right, Flossie, she you won't come in unless I put some of these greens in there. Here you go, honey. Come on. There you go. One scoop. Oh, all right. Come on, come on. Hey, let's go, let's go. Good girl.

Well, we came out and let the calf out, and then Hamburger came and, um, Stud Muffin's balls.

Hamburger is trying to nurse Stud Muffin. He's hungry. He's been away from mom in the night. Stud Muffin, you're tolerating it? Are you tolerating it, my friend? Oh, and Stud Muffin's guarding him.

So he nursed him and he couldn't get anything, but Stud Muffin tolerated it.

Stud, man, you're too kind.

I know.

Your motherly instincts are coming out, huh? I'm gonna need a staff. Been dealing with cows all my life, I've never dealt with this. All right, there's a staff behind you, Josiah. Let's pull this gate tight and maybe he'll go through underneath and Stud won't go through.

Solve the problem. We herded him off of Stud Muffin.

There you go, there you go, there you go. There's a chance, there's a chance. Come on, there's a chance. Now shoe Stud Muffin back. There you go, go after the calf quick. Good job, good job. Okay, he doesn't know where his mama is, so once he sees her, he'll go. He hears her. Watch the camera there.

Millie was nursing Stud Muffin on the balls. He was sucking on them. It's so weird.

Jonah, what if—

Jonah, what if the stud had his—

Hey, wait, wait, he's going to ruin my camera. Are you guys gonna come tie him up?

Yes, we're trying.

Okay, I'm dealing with both calves right now.

I was gonna try to deal with one. Here, let go of this one.

Take care of Grace. No, she needs the leash right there, Jonah.

It's right there.

What are you gonna do with Moose?

Train him, halter.

Sure, for sure. So what we do here is what you call calf sharing. The calf. We're not weaning the calf, so it's like 6 months old. Calf can have her all day, but we separate the two calves at night so that she can have, uh, that mama's milk builds up. You're gonna be loaded because you just had a calf. This is her calf, Handsome Hamburger. The H for hamburger and the H for handsome. He's adorable. So he will end up being beef for us. And Stud Muffin, whom he tried to nurse, is his dad, so he's gonna— he's gonna be nice and beefy. Now I've got her cleaned up and ready to go. Hey, hey, Beezy! The kids are taking Moose on a walk. She's pretty full. She's got smaller teats. I'm having to milk that one like this at first because they're so full. Pretty soon I'll be able to get my whole hand on them. Man, you guys gotta see this. Oh look, I still have to pour it.

All right, all right.

I've been having a reservoir here in case she kicks my bucket. That's a strong 2 gallons. Okay kids, come get Fussy.

We have all the milk in pots heating up. That one is still very cold. This one is not very warm either. So we're just going to keep doing that. And while this is going, I'm going to set up the cream separator. Hey Justin!

Justin!

Well, I need some Skim buckets!

Mom needs a skim bucket. I'm with your leche. Where do you want your skim bucket?

Put it over on this side.

I need to pour out this water.

Spaceship about to take off.

Pause.

You need some help?

No.

How do you do this?

I got it.

You lift that up?

Yeah, it's It's 5 gallons, it's 40 pounds.

I'm a strong lady. This is going to be the skim, that's going to be the cream.

But the filth— you need to filter the milk.

Okay, there's my milk coming from that bucket.

We're gonna have another approximately 4 gallons.

Okay, the reason she has those things on the stove, it's got to heat it up to 100 degrees. This out of the cow is 100 degrees, so that works out. Oh, it's picking up the rain, Rebecca. There's your 2 gallons from Quassy. Okay, you're good. I'm gonna go get you another skim bucket.

That's great.

And then start milking.

Any more skim buckets? Liquid buckets? None in there. Could you guys help me find some skim buckets real quick? We haven't been going through this fast. No, you gotta skim more. All right.

Yeah, Papa, they're gonna come out, but you just bring them back in.

I try not to because I don't want to mess up their wall of mulch. Come on, come on, come on, come in here, Jonah. This needs mulch. Okay, it's wet.

Oops, I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry.

It's okay, it's just wet. Okay, here we go. There's your skim milk. That's a pig heaven right there. The pigs had a water bucket I could use, and we emptied one skim bucket. Two more buckets. Here's your skim bucket.

Okay, you gotta get on, um, okay.

Rebecca is ahead of me. I need to get her some milk. She wants to get Phyllis's going while the machine's going. Killer, this is the first round. Okay, I'm doing the second round now. Okay, thank you.

We are done with all of the things, and Brianna ran down to get me some more milk from Phyllis.

So that's about, I don't know, a gallon, maybe a little over a gallon. Show y'all a magic trick. You eyeing me, honey? We didn't do this with the other one because, well, the other one, Frosty, doesn't seem to hold back. Phyllis, on the other hand, holds back for this calf. Her calf's a bit bigger, almost weaning time. How old are you, Moose? 4 months? October, November, December, January— 4 and a half months. You'll be weaned in about 6 weeks at 6 months. Good Head Start has been able to nurse during the day, so he's nursing. He's— he's— she's holding back for him. So if we put him on her, she'll let down for him. He also knows how to get it out of her. See that pumping? He's going back and forth from each one. He'll bump her. Okay, I think he's getting it. All right, rewards for everybody. Thank you, Mustang. Now these guys are 100% grass fed. This is an alfalfa pellet. It's a little treat for them. And we only milk once a day. We could maybe almost twice as much as if we wean the calves and milk twice a day. Just another day. If not 2 gallons, very, very close. That's 2 cows Mainly Jerseys. The Flossie is 1/8 Frisian. 100% grass-fed. 2 gallons a day each. Hopefully we're on time. Knock knock. Hey, am I on time? Yes, we made sure you were. Look at this, not running too.

It's like yellow cream.

So 3/4 of a gallon. It took what, 14 gallons to get that?

Yeah, and then we have this. This will be a good amount of cream.

Okay, Rebecca, are you gonna turn all this into butter or are you gonna make cultured cream?

Cultured first.

Oh, that's right.

I have cultured cream in the fridge though.

You have from some from last week?

Yes, that I'm gonna turn into butter and freeze it.

All right, what can I do to help? Um, get in and clean up. These are our creams that we just separated.

Correct.

You're putting some of our yogurt because it's been cultured.

Hold this up over this.

What, a tablespoon in each quart?

3 tablespoons.

What's the advantage of cultured cream over just regular cream?

Well, it's fermented, so when on a GAPS diet you are supposed to eat only fermented dairy.

We've got the culture cream— well, the cream right now at this point. 100 degrees?

Yes.

24 hours under towels. Why under towels?

To keep it dark.

Okay, cultures like darkness.

Yes.

And, uh, that'll be cultured in 24 hours. How much milk you drink every day, Josiah?

I don't know.

I'd say they go through what, a gallon?

Each do a quart because there's 4 quarts in a gallon.

Good for you guys. It's good for you. Is this our cultured cream? Are you gonna put cultured cream on yours?

I am.

What would you say cultured cream tastes like, Rebecca? This is from last week's—

I feel like it changes taste, but it tastes It tastes a lot like sour cream. It tastes a little bit like cream cheese.

Let's see you eat some of that cultured cream, my man. You like to eat it straight up? A little sour for you?

Yeah.

No, it doesn't— it's not spicy.

All right, so now I'm going to make— I hope I can see myself. Since I have, um, cultured cream in the dehydrator, I'm going to make butter.

Sure works.

This may be done, but I'm going to stick it in the fridge to see if it hardens up. I should have used the mixer like I normally like to do, but I wanted to try it in the Vitamix. I don't like the blender method. I know a lot of people swear by it, but I don't.

Afternoon chore time. How'd cream separating go, babe?

Um, well, I need to use the mixer instead of the blender. I don't like the blender. I just need to use a mixer. So I don't know how it went. I'm putting— I put it back in the fridge to see if it firms up, and then if it doesn't, I'm just gonna pour it all into my mixer.

So you got two posts and reels ready for the lanes for moving the sheep? Because it's a bit of a tricky move today, but not too— cut out the thing, man.

He's been doing it a lot today.

We don't need to measure the—

the—

I was curious how that was.

They're good.

Just putting our line up for our cows. Oh, they're coming over! You don't have to beg them. They stepped over, right over, and started eating. You out on a walk with Mom? He wants to see the bowl. Oh yeah, bowl, he says.

Bowl. Good.

We lack one little gap right there to there. I hate to use an entire fence for that little gap because you have to do so much overlapping. But that's how it is. Look at that sight! You got them all at your fingertips, honey. Making a temp lane from where the sheep are to where they need to go. Good job, guys, coming in. Where I want to be, over there. The animal garden miracle. We got some work to do on it. Gonna get the chickens in action very soon. Hopefully tomorrow if I have enough time to set some things up today. But first I gotta pick up this old sheep. Hey, you guys want to go for a ride? Let's go. Let's do it. He's gonna have a new life. He might, he might hate it. We'll go slow for you, okay? Yeah, chicken, look, look at that one. Sally over here, right to the stall. It's our first job to get the chickens on the garden. Let's get some of this hay and manure out of there. Thank you, getting all that, man. It's good to have somebody know something around here. He knows we're gonna muck the stall so he knows. Well, you got to get the hay strings out of Sally. Manure, some spent hay. This is— hey, I call it the animal garden miracle. In this case, we're going to use cows and chickens. This is affectionately called Arun's Garden. This is our front yard garden. This is going to be our fall crops. Nice. They tend to have— need more maintenance. We're gonna put them close to the house. Oh look, these are carrots, kale, collards. Been warm enough that these haven't freeze-died, man. But anyway, instead of carrying these to the chickens, let's bring the chickens here, get some more nutrients here. Oh my word, you got a ton of carrots in in here. This is my favorite time to eat them, honestly, because they, they like mellow out and they get sweet. All right, hey, y'all come get some carrots and eat them, but do wash them off crazy first. Let's, uh, spread this cow nutrients. We didn't quite get all the rows covered with our holy cow squat. You could go get a little more. I'm afraid this hay isn't going to break down quick enough. The chickens will help. They'll shred it. We put it right on the rows. We have this leftover compost, leaf compost, right there. Nice, huh? Beautiful, huh?

Looks good.

Look at that.

Yay!

Jenna's getting our wash station ready. We did decide to go ahead and get these carrots. We're not— we're going to be real with ourselves. We're not going to come out here periodically and get them. But really, you got some—

oh, I got a nice one!

We got restaurant envy baby carrots in there, like right there. And if we wash them all— did you get—

is that one that you got and washed it?

That's big! And we cut off all the greens and we put them in the fridge. These will be gone in 2 days with all these niños. I'm very pleased with all this material that's going on these raised beds. What do you think, Arthur? Is this not like— I think it's awesome. Black gold we're walking on here. I think it's awesome. Giant savings account. We got a little pile for the pigs. Hey, what's going on here, guys? We need to make piles.

Look how nice that is.

Good job, Brighton. Oh yeah, perfect. Well, it's got a hole in it. It's hard to fill that up with water, but you can put the pig ones in that. We fill that up for me, Art. Thank you. Jonah, go get me a, uh, a white bucket please.

Uh, like dirty?

Yeah, like a feed bucket. Fine, because it's for pigs. Pig's feet. Thank you for washing out my wheelbarrow. You got a knife, Art? Nope. I'm sorry, I don't either. What kind of homesteaders are we? Vacation? Are you on vacation? Okay. All right, you want to help me pick this up and pour it onto the— sounds great. Clean. We already got them just by soaking them. So we go find us a plastic food bin for the finished goods. Thank you. I got you some scissors. We just cut the tops off, or you just break them like that. Look at this, that's a bonus. Look how beautiful. Go for it, my friend. Okay guys, good work today. Tomorrow, do not put the ices out. You got it?

They get 4 eggs.

Good. We're gonna move them up to that garden. You know, go back to this morning with the cows. They basically gave us— well, they gave us 4 gallons of milk. Around here you will pay $12 a gallon for raw milk. That's, uh, $48. Hey, we harvested $48 of milk today. Bedtime. Let's do it. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Work on the animal garden miracle together.