SC - Beestings = Bovine colostrum

[Mordonna22@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/26/2000 6:06:47 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
tantra at optonline.net writes:

<< 
 Any time a cow is milked (until the farmer decides to breed her again) there
 is a healthy amount of cream to the milk.  I think they are bred every 3rd
 year - not quite sure. >>

In the US, the ideal is to breed once a year, with the cow "freshening" with 
a calf in the early spring.  Dairy prices are based on the farmer's "base" 
which is the amount of milk he sells on average per day during a three month 
period in spring.  His rate of pay for the rest of the year is based on a 
formula using this base, so farmers want as many of their cows as possible 
"freshening" just before this period, as a cow's volume of production is much 
higher soon after the birth of a new calf, and tapers off the longer she goes 
before giving birth again.  We had a herd of around 120 head, and we'd have 
as many as 110 calves born in February and March.
I'm probably the only one on this list who is a licensed Cattle Inseminator.  
I'm the proud "father" of hundreds of calves.  
My first introduction to computers was in jr. high school, as I was in a test 
group of students trained by Georgia Tech from grade school up to have 
computer knowledge back in the early sixties.  Later in the early seventies I 
participated in a pilot program by Clemson University to record dairy 
production vs. feed costs on computer.  Most dairies now days could not 
imagine operating without such a simple program, and many others much more 
complicated.  The picture of America's dairymen as mud footed louts who 
wouldn't know a computer if it bit them is insultingly inaccurate.

Mordonna the Cook,
SunDragon's Western Reaches
Atenveldt
(m.k.a. Buckeye, AZ)