Time To Plan Your Winter Milk Supply!

Those who have become acquainted with our farm know that we dry all our milk cows off for the winter. In nature, a "dry period" is necessary for mama to prepare for the next baby. All dairy cows are or should be managed to achieve this, but most dairy farms have calves born all throughout the year so there are always some cows milking while others may be dry. 

At Farm Connection, we have a set calving window in the spring for 6-8 weeks, and the bulls are only with the cows for the required time in the summer, which allows us to keep that calving window fairly narrow. Then we can dry all of the herd off about the same time so we don't have to milk in the dead of winter. Woo hoo! This also follows the cycles of nature more closely, and helps line up cows' nutritional requirements with the cycle of forage growth.

We sell both fresh and frozen milk throughout the green season, but we try to stock up on the frozen inventory as much as we can later in the fall. To date we've never been able to stockpile enough to have frozen milk to sell much past December, however. The cows' milk supply often continues to diminish later in the lactation, so that affects our ability to stock up a lot, especially if many customers are wanting to place orders for large quantities for winter late in the fall.

This spring the cows started milking great...about the best they have in recent memory! But when summer came in full force, they really started dropping in production. Some drop is normal. This was a bit of a nose dive. The heat and humidity was rough on cows and people alike, and while it was great to have plentiful rainfall rather than a drought this summer, the excessive moisture brought its own set of challenges, particularly in pasture quality. We are learning more about managing our pastures regeneratively, so hopefully the tweaks we are making now will have many beneficial results in the years to come!

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This photo was taken of some of the cows being milked one morning this week.

Each morning we must decide where this milk will end up and assemble the pipes accordingly before bringing the cows in. If we need to bottle milk, we'll pump it into the chilling tank. If we're going to add a culture and make cheese or set it for cultured cream (butter), it goes into one of the cheese vats. Right now we're getting +/-35 gallons of milk per day. Peak production was around 85 gallons per day. Like I said, it was a rough summer!

Because most people like to purchase milk as close to the milking date as possible, we have to guess how many gallons we might sell beyond whatever has been pre-ordered so we hopefully don't end up with way more bottled than we needed over a 2-3 day period. Sometimes we're better guessers than others, and we've both underestimated and overestimated. So when you order ahead, that helps us a ton (ordering at least by the night before for farm pickup is your best bet if you need to come on a certain day...otherwise we might not have enough in stock till the next day :) )!

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Earlier this summer we had spread some cover crop seed into a few pastures ahead of the cows and then strip grazed/trampled the pasture. Some fields had better germination rates than others, but this week they have been enjoying some sunflowers and millet along with the perennial pasture. It's fun to see them grabbing a whole sunflower bloom in their mouth...tasty stuff apparently!

Sunflowers ought to do a little something for milk production, hopefully...and soil health too!

If you're a planner and would like to have your own supply of frozen grass-fed unpasteurized (sold as pet food) milk throughout the winter months in the event we run out before milk starts flowing again (we aim to start calving and milking again around the first of April), we advise purchasing some gradually throughout the fall for your winter needs.

One question sometimes asked is, "How long does it last in the freezer?"

Dad says at least 4-5 months in the freezer shouldn't alter the flavor noticeably at all. Doug and I were using on our frozen stache from last November well into April this year and I didn't notice any difference. So if you stock up gradually, just use the earlier dates first.

Although I'm sure your pets would enjoy it either way ;).