Dairy Cows

Keeping a few cows and goats will allow us to produce our own milk for the ecovillage. Some eco villagers will learn to make butter, cream and a whole range of cheeses which they will be able to sell to other villagers or on the market. The dairy calves can be slaughtered at 8 months old. Cows are lactating for 270 days a year. We need three cows for

Value of milk available for human consumption: 14 Liter. x 270 days = 3700 Liter.; bottle-fed calf drinks 800 litres in about two months before weaning; net 2900 Litre. If you milk only once a day and allow the calf to nurse instead of feeding it with a bottle, the calf will drink more milk daily and can be weaned when it’s 8 or 9 months old. In this situation, you could expect about 1700 litres. of milk for human consumption per year per cow

Average consumption of 200ml per day per person. Thus 50 pax need 10 litre per day which is 3650 liter per year. We should thus have three cows so that 2 are always in production and we have 5000 litres per year – of which we drink 3700 and we use 1300 for the production of cheeses.

We will have three calves per year also.

https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/raising-cattle/family-cow-zmaz10jjzraw