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A bears guide to keeping a milk cow

A couple milk cows can easily provide all the dairy for a half dozen bear families.

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If you have the desire and ability to keep a milk cow, it can be one of your biggest homesteading assets. The amount of food that one cow can provide for your family is amazing. Raw milk, home made yogurt, raw butter, and if you have the time, cheese. The quality of such homegrown dairy products is so much higher that you literally can not buy it from your local grocery store. In most cases the only way you can get access to food that real and that nutritious is if you grow it and make it yourself.

The nutrition your family will get from daily access to the raw milk is incredibly high. I have noticed that many of the local giants come from multi generational dairy families. There’s just something about that raw milk. If you want your boys to be above 21 rogans in height, keeping your own milk cow is going to raise those odds dramatically.

Buying a cow

I don’t recommend spending a ton of money on a cow. The best cow I have was a 2 year old Jersey in milk that I paid $700 for. You should be able to find a good cow in the $1000 range. If you are new to cows I recommend going to a local farmer and seeing if he will sell you an experienced milker. Ask him if he has any 3 quarter cows that he wants to sell. (sometimes a cow will dry off a quarter due to injury or mastitis and will only milk out of 3 teats instead of all 4). A 3 quarter cow will still give plenty of good milk, but is usually higher up on the farmers cull list so the farmer may give you a good deal on the cow.

If you are new to milking a cow, I recommend going with an experienced milker so that you aren’t both learning at the same time. Once you know what you are doing, training a first calf heifer to milk isn’t hard. But it can be very frustrating if you and the cow are learning at the same time.

Don’t buy milk cows at the sale barn unless it’s a whole herd sale where the farm went out of business or retired or something like that. If the whole herd is being sold you should be able to get a good cow out of it.

If its your first cow, buy a cow that’s already milking and bred back if you can (that will save you some hassle for the first year). When you go to look at a cow, bring a CMT kit with you and test the milk on the spot. The kit will indicate if the cow has a high somatic cell count and you can test each quarter individually. If the cow has a high SCC than you will likely have problems with milk quality and possibly mastitis. Pass on that cow and find one that is clean.

Cow care and feeding

Don’t pay for genetics. That gets expensive. Expensive genetics are for fine tuning an already successful farm. Most cows if fed properly will be great cows.

Mohawkfarmer Bear 2020

Keep your cow clean. This will prevent diseases, mastitis, and contaminated milk. Provide plenty of dry bedding in the winter time and good pasture access in the summertime. Keep your cow out of mud and manure and all will be good.

Not all hay is equal. Early, early cut first cutting is the best hay you will ever find. A pattern in the old Testament is that God required offerings from the first fruits of a harvest. There’s a reason for that. It’s usually the best.

Don’t be cheap by holding back on feed. Don’t try to save money by buying low quality hay. If you want your cow to be healthy and provide you with plenty of milk, feed only good hay, and plenty of it. Good genetics won’t do anything if you starve your cow. This may seem like common sense but I’ve seen it happen many, many times.

Of course, during the growing season, a well managed pasture is the cheapest and highest quality feed you can provide for your cow.

Once a day milking

The downside to keeping a milk cow is she needs to be milked everyday, even when you don’t feel like it. If you stop milking your cow, she stops giving milk. That being said, if time is limited due to your job and raising a family, you can get by with once a day milking. You will get less milk, but it will still be plenty to provide what your family needs. When the cow first has her calf and starts milking you may need to milk her twice daily for the first 3 to 6 weeks because of the flush of milk. But after that you can safely settle into a more relaxed once daily milking.

Milk Quality

If you put the work into keeping a milk cow, you want to be able to enjoy sweet, delicious, quality milk. Here’s some things to pay attention to.

Chilling – have a dedicated fridge to cool the milk down fast. This is important because if the milk is not cooled fast enough it will spoil sooner and have some off flavors. Quality raw milk if kept cold will last up to 2 weeks. Bottle the milk in half gallon containers. Larger containers just can’t cool down fast enough.

Equipment- If its not properly washed, your milk will develop off flavors and spoil faster. After milking rinse of the equipment with warm water and then wash with hot soapy water. A hot water rinse will cook the milk leaving minerals from the milk on the stainless steel. That is called milk stone and it causes problems by holding bacteria from one milking to the next. It doesn’t make the milk unsafe, but it will cause the milk to spoil faster shortening the shelf life. Your buckets should be nice and shiny when you shine a flashlight on the steel. If you see a white film, that is milk stone and you will need to use white vinegar or acid wash (from a dairy supply store) to get the milkstone off.

Somatic Cell Count – this is the white blood cells in the milk. There will always be some present but if the SCC gets too high the milk will spoil fast and will taste sour, or even salty if its really high. It will also reduce the yield of cheese you get from the milk. A high SCC (700,000+)can also be an indicator of mastitis, an infection in the cows udder. To prevent a high SCC keep your cow clean, feed her well, and provide her with a good quality mineral mix. Dipping the teats with an iodine solution before and after milking will also help prevent bacteria infecting the udder. For quality milk you want the SCC to be in the 70,000 to 100,000 range. The simplest way to check the SCC is to use the CMT kit.

Community

A couple milk cows can easily provide all the dairy for a half dozen bear families. Going in on a couple cows in order to share the daily care and responsibility of milking and feeding, as well as teaming up to make cheese and butter, can be a great way to enjoy the nutritious bounty without being overwhelmed by the work. Crush, grow, and milk a cow as you build your part of Beartaria!

Guest Article Written By,

MohawkFarmer Bear

@mohawkfarmer_bear on IG

Farming

Micro Greens – Macro Benefits

Having good nutrition is important, sure, but that’s just scratching the surface of the benefits growing your own greens offers.

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By: BalanceBear (aka @johnny.greenleaf)

This article was first printed in our very first issue of The Beartaria Times Magazine, Origins, A Revealing of Legends

Microgreens, as the name suggests, are small by nature, but the benefits they offer are quite the opposite of their size.

What are microgreens and what exactly do they have to offer? Microgreens are vegetable greens harvested just after the cotyledon leaves have developed (7-10 days after germination for most varieties). The benefits? Well, they are countless. We’ll get to many of them, but a few of the biggest advantages of growing microgreens over traditional vegetables are their space efficiency, time to harvest, & ease of getting started. Just because you don’t have a yard, doesn’t mean you can’t grow your own food. With as little as a shelf in an apartment, and a few supplies, you can start sewing seeds and reaping the benefits of these nutrient dense greens in no-time. I was introduced to the world of microgreens this past year by the legendary Urban Farmer, Curtis Stone, and in just a matter of 8 months they have already had a profoundly positive impact on my life, and my community.

Now how could something so small offer so much? It’s been theorized that the reason microgreens are so nutrient dense compared to the leaves of their mature vegetable counterparts is because they are harvested shortly after germination, when all of the nutrients they need to grow are there. Regardless if that theory holds true as to the why, nutrient tests have shown that microgreens contain 4-40 times more concentrated levels of various nutrients than leaves in the mature plants, depending on the variety & specific nutrient (i.e. red cabbage microgreens contain 40 times more vitamin E than mature red cabbage). Buying microgreens from a store can be significantly more expensive than normal mature vegetables, but growing them yourself, especially when you consider the time from planting to harvest, is much more affordable. Furthermore, when you buy anything from a grocery store, the vitality of the food has already been severely diminished due to the fact that it takes so much time for the product to be packaged and shipped off to the store. From the moment a fruit or vegetable is harvested, the nutrients begin to break down. This vitality can actually be measured. Realistically, the freshest produce you can get from a store is 4-7 days post harvest. The total time it takes to get from planting microgreen seeds to harvesting the greens is 10-14 days total (for most varieties), which is right up there with the nutrient density when it comes to the best benefits microgreens have to offer. When you compare that to typical times like 2-3 months for a mature plant to bear fruit, it’s quite astonishing that the microgreens pack such a dense nutrient punch, and when you grow them yourself, you can eat them living, which means you don’t lose out on any nutrients like you do when you get already deteriorated greens from a store. 

Having good nutrition is important, sure, but that’s just scratching the surface of the benefits growing your own greens offers. One of the biggest benefits I have personally experienced since becoming an urban farmer, is the community connection that has come from it. I believe that food and community are two of the biggest sources of energy in this realm, and when you grow your own food, and further when you exchange it within your community, the energy boost is multiplied. Picture a closed-loop energy cycle; that’s what you get to experience when you buy, sell, or trade locally within your community. First, you get an energy boost from growing your own food, you then experience an additional energy boost when you exchange your food to someone in your community, because you see the joy it brings them, and you know that it will nourish them. They receive that same energy boost when you buy or trade for their food, and thus the communities’ overall energy goes up by a multiple factor, and the energy loop remains closed. When people in your community buy food from a corporation, especially one that’s not local, energy gets siphoned off into the ether, rather than being kept in your community where it can continue to cycle & recharge.

I’m speaking from experience here, as I have felt a tremendous difference since buying, selling, & trading with local bears at our Southern California Bartertaria Meetups, as well as exchanging my greens for fruit from my neighbors’ trees.

Even if you live in an apartment in a city like I currently do, microgreens can be a great starting point for you to tap into that energy cycle. Furthermore, if you’ve never grown food at all, consider these greens as a great micro-step to start the journey that is gardening/farming.

I won’t go too much into detail about the equipment you need to get started, as there are plenty of great resources online and on YouTube for that (seek and ye shall find), but I will tell you the basics of what you need to get started, and a few good online resources to look in to if you want more details. You will need some kind of tray or container to put the growing medium in (I use 10×20 trays from Bootstrap Farmer), seeds (I get mine from TrueLeaf Market), a growing medium (I use an organic potting soil from ProMix), and lights (I use 4’ Sunblaster Fluorescents) if you want to grow indoor, otherwise you can obviously use sunlight if you have space and want to grow them outside. That’s basically it. Anything else will just upgrade your operation. A few of the best online resources which helped me along my journey, from setup, to growing, all the way through harvesting are: Curtis Stone’s From The Field TV, Donny Greens on YouTube, and OnTheGrow who have great experiments on YouTube & an ebook.

So, whether you just want to add some nutrient dense greens to your smoothies, juices, salads, or dishes as a garnish, have some sunflowers to snack on, take a micro-step towards learning to grow food, or go big & contribute to the energy cycle of your local community, the macro benefits of microgreens are there for you.

“To a man’s heart it brings gladness to eat the figs from his own trees, and the grapes of his own vines”, and to your heart gladness can come from eating the microgreens of your own stem.

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Farming

Using Hay to Import Fertility and Feed the Pastures

A recent study I read indicated that pastures responded better to feeding hay directly on the field verses hauling manure and compost from the barn.

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By: Mohawk Farmer Bear

When we took over the farm in 2015, the fields were constantly being cropped and hayed. Modern agriculture focuses on production at the expense of soil health and fertility. While we have good soils here, it’s obvious that fertility is low, and the pastures are nowhere near as productive as they have the potential to be. This winter, rather than feeding the cows down by the barn as usual, I focused on rotating them around the pastures and feeding the hay directly on the pasture. By the time grazing starts in May, I will have fed 200 round bales of hay or 50 to 60 tons of hay onto the pastures. That’s a lot of manure, organic matter from wasted hay, and fertility to spread on 50 acres. A recent study I read indicated that pastures responded better to feeding hay directly on the field versus hauling manure and compost from the barn. More fertility is captured with winter bale feeding on pastures. So, this summer, I’ll get to see it. Either way, 50 tons of hay (5 tons to the acre) should have a huge impact on the pastures. More fertility means more grass, which means more beef.

Unrolled hay bale. It spreads the fertility around the pasture and gives all the cows access to the dinner table. 

In early February, you can see where the cows have been without snow. I covered this part of the farm well. 

The farthest and highest point on the farm. Typically the hardest to get manure spread on, but I fed a ton of hay up there this winter. It’s a pretty good hill, so even with heavy baleage, I start at the top and push the bale down the hill to get it unrolled.

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Farming

Building a Beartarian Homestead

So, how does one get into homesteading if you don’t have any experience with it? The big thing is, to take it slow.

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By: Mohawk Farmer Bear

This article was first printed in our very first issue of The Beartaria Times Magazine, Origins, A Revealing of Legends

There’s something romantic about homesteading. Thinking about building a chicken coop, or milking your own cow. Making butter, cream, and cheese with that milk. Raising a few sheep and pigs that you slaughter yourself and put in the freezer. It all gives you a wonderful homey feeling as you daydream about all the possibilities of building your own homestead and growing your own food while reading homesteading books by a warm cozy fire with snow gently falling outside.

But then comes the daunting task of making it happen. Pounding that fence post into the ground or putting up dusty, scratchy, hay in 90 degree weather… all of a sudden it doesn’t seem as romantic as that homesteading book made it feel. Truth be told, it’s not romantic at all. But it is good, and it’s extremely rewarding.

So, how does one get into homesteading if you don’t have any experience with it? The big thing is, to take it slow. Raising animals requires building infrastructure and dealing with living animals, weather, and predators. There’s a huge learning curve that usually takes years. So don’t try to do everything at once. Start slow and work into it. Get good at raising chickens before getting a pig. Likewise get proficient at keeping a few pigs or goats before adding a milk cow. As you learn how farm animals behave and what is required to manage them, you will become more confident with keeping larger animals.

If you try to do everything at once… chickens, pigs, beef cows, milk cows… you’re going to be overwhelmed. So take it slow, start with some chickens, and work up from there.

As you build your homestead there are a few things you should strive for.

Functionality

Remember, you are growing food to feed your family. While we do want to properly care for our animals, we also want to keep our costs down as much as possible. The goal is to grow the best food we can at a very affordable price. Don’t let money be your go to solution for everything. When faced with a project or a problem, challenge yourself to think of solutions that don’t require spending money.

Animal housing and infrastructure should be primarily about function, not looks. The chicken coop needs to keep the chickens comfortably out of the elements, give them a clean place to lay eggs, and keep the predators away. You can have an attractive chicken coop, just figure out how to do it without spending a boat load of money. If your homegrown eggs are costing you $50 per dozen, you probably overbuilt your chicken coop.

Efficiency

If you just got into homesteading, You’re probably still working a full time job. That means everything you do needs to be efficient. Daily chores should be under an hour per day. Right now I have 11 cows, 1 milk cow, 5 pigs, 70 chickens, and 3 sheep. My daily chores usually take 45 minutes. Mostly this boils down to just a few things.

Sturdy reliable fencing, You don’t want to be chasing animals that escaped. Good fencing is a must and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Accessible water. Hauling water is a pain and very time consuming. Black plastic pipe is cheap. Run some over the ground to where you need and pump the water instead of carrying it. During the winter, keep the animals close to a central watering point so you don’t have to carry buckets very far. Automatic feeders and waterers are a must. There’s tons of options out there but the main thing is to always have clean fresh water available to your critters.

For Chickens I like the Poultry Bell waterers. They can be gravity fed from a 5 gallon bucket with a float valve filling up the bucket. All you have to do is check daily to make sure the water is flowing into the waterer. For pigs I like the Brower 85gallon field drinker. The weight of a full tank keeps the pigs from tipping it over and a float valve keeps it full. 

If all you have to do is collect eggs, add a little dry bedding here and there, do a walk by inspection to ensure feeders and waterers are working properly, then your daily chores won’t take hardly any time. Occasionally you’ll have to clean out the coop or load pigs to go to the butcher, but your daily chores will be minimal. 

Forgiveness

Don’t get discouraged when stuff happens. Things will go wrong from time to time. You’re dealing with living animals, nature, weather, and seasons. A Pine Marten will massacre your chickens, your sheep will get out and eat your garden, drought will dry up your pastures. Whether your toddler steps on a chick, or your goat gives birth to stillborn kids, don’t let the emotions overwhelm you. Life and death is all part of homesteading. Take a moment to ponder what happened, learn from it, and move on. After all, the other critters on the farm still need tending to. Just pray that God would give you the wisdom to learn, prosper, and crush despite the challenges. 

Homesteading is about continually building, refining, getting more efficient and more self-sufficient. It’s the journey that makes it so much fun. Enjoy the building process as you build your homestead. 

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