At How Now we love all our animals. We don’t believe calves should ever be separated from their mums – so we don’t do it! And we don’t put them on a truck to be sent off to slaughter. Instead, we breed using sexed semen to ensure we only have females born, and these will become future members of our herd. Mating this way also allows us to eliminate another big issue. We select genetics which produce cows without horns.
Hell yes! At the new site we plan to expand to a full range of dairy. Products will include – lite milk and cream, butter, yoghurt and artisan cheese (wait till you taste our triple cream brie yum 🙂 )
We use only Artificial Insemination (AI) for now. There are too many advantages and benefits to using AI instead of a bull. An obvious one is safety, but natural mating is not the romantic exercise opponents of AI would like to have you believe. It’s pretty brutal. With AI we can also select for a huge range of genetic factors to breed cows with better health, higher milk quality, no horns, A2 milk and of course, only female offspring (so far with 100% success). AI is managed by our farm manager, to ensure no stress.
We are big fans of biodynamic / biological farming and use most of their practices but we cannot be certified – simply because we use sexed semen, which ridiculously is considered a genetic modification. So, rather than complain, we are developing a holistic farm accreditation that will encourage more farmers to convert to organic/biological/biodynamic farming. Of course, in addition to soil and pasture management, most importantly the certification will focus on the ethical management of our animals, including keeping all the calves with their mums.
At least 4 months, but it depends on how both Mum and the calf are faring. Once Mum joins the herd, the calf can come and go with her. Around 4 months when the calf should be eating plenty of grass and supplement, we often have to push the weaning process as the little buggers gorge on milk rather than graze. If we don’t start gradual weaning we have issues with both the calf and Mum. This is our biggest challenge, as it takes so many hours to manage and we don’t yet have the perfect solution. Just like kids, some are easy, some aren’t so we let them alone as long as we can, but never wean before 4 months.
Not at all! Dairy cows produce much more milk than her calf needs with most regularly producing over 20 litres each day. A newborn calf needs 4-5 litres per day, and never more than 8 (naturally demand increases as they grow – what a 4 month old wants is an entirely different matter). So, there is plenty for both of us without putting 1 ounce of additional stress on the cow. We simply take the excess. Baby always feeds first and we never put pressure on the Mum trying to get more production out of her. In fact quite the opposite – we supplement to ensure Mum is well looked after.
Well first off, our cows aren’t kept in the herd based just on their milk production. In contrast to the average 3 year career of most dairy cows, we expect 6, 7,8 or more. We really don’t know yet. By that age, they will be pretty much members of the family. Cows get retired for a number of reasons, but in our case it will be to a “retirement village” if things go according to plan, and we have already had donations toward this goal. I can’t guarantee every cow will live out their natural life as I don’t know what lies ahead. What I can say is my desire is to have a farm that people can come and visit and hug a cow. Maybe people will donate to support, and/or buy, a cow. All these plans will come further down the track.
Nope, most of our girls have a calf every 18 – 24 months. It’s important they have a quality of life, not just exist as milk machines. This is an important part of our system. If we bred all cows every year as is the norm, we would soon have too many replacements and would have to retire cows earlier. You can see where this slippery slope might end!
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