Keeping a Family Cow: The Complete Guide for Home-Scale, Holistic Dairy Producers, 3rd Edition

by Joann S. Grohman

Book Overview

The cow is the most productive, efficient creature on earth. She will give you fresh milk, cream, butter, and cheese, build human health and happiness, and even turn a profit for homesteaders and small farmers who seek to offer her bounty to the local market or neighborhood. She will provide rich manure for your garden or land, and will enrich the quality of your life as you benefit from the resources of the natural world. Quite...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1603584781
• ISBN13: 9781603584784
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

No Bull

Such a great read, I almost forgot I was researching a mundane topic: how to care for a milk cow. Having raised beefers for years, I thought I had the maintenance part down - not. But even more interesting than the psyche, physiology, and common sense of nurturing and milking a cow, the book gave an entirely digestible account of how our nation's dairy products have regressed for years from creamy, delicious body builders into waxy white dead cells ciphoned off listless animals and spewed from factories in cartons with impressive expiration dates - AND WHY! Don't miss this one.

New cow owner

Even though my cows are beef and not dairy I found this to be one of the most valuable books I have read. Easy to follow information that applies to anyone thinking of raising cattle on a small scale. Highly recommend !!

Convinced me to leave the city and buy a cow!

At the time when I ordered this book, I was living in a trailer park, and researching nutrition carefully. I am a mother of five children, and our family keeps growing, so I want to be sure that our family gets the best nutrition we can. I feel that good nutrition is something every mother should strive to give her children, no matter how rich or poor. So, after learning that untreated milk (unpasteurized, unhomogenized) is better for your health, I went looking for a legal way to obtain raw milk for my family. I started out at www.westonaprice.org (the Weston A. Price organization is aimed at getting nutrient-dense foods onto America's dinner tables) and could not find any suppliers in my area.I started looking at the possibility of getting my own cow to milk, and ordered this book. In the first few chapters, Joann explains the value of the cow, and untreated dairy products. Then, she goes on to explain all the how-to's of having a cow. This book alone convinced me that I wanted to leave the city and the trailer park and have some land with a cow! Since owning the book, I have referred to it often. When my cow got bloat, I quickly referred to the book to find out what to do. I saved my cow's life because Joann's words were right there, even though she lives far away from me. I'm so glad that she wrote this book, and even more glad that I own it. Joann also has an online diary (which I LOVE to read) and an online discussion forum that has been very helpful.Oh, and one more thing, there is nothing comparable to the taste of food that you've raised yourself, not to mention the superior nutrition and absence of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and herbicides. It is a wonderful life, and this book helped me to have the confidence to jump in with both feet and do it!

Worth reading just to savor the first couple of chapters.

Why is modern America so dissatisfied with life? We're rolling in wealth to the extent that we can afford vacations to Europe, boats, swimming pools and $100 concert tickets. We don't have to bother raising or even cooking our own food, because multinational corporations continue to discover ways to produce technologically advanced, highly processed food products at lower and lower cost. We don't have to repair our own cars, clean our own houses, or mow our own grass. We own multiple automobiles, televisions, computers and even places to live. We take advantage of a standard of living that exceeds most other countries on the planet. To quote a popular song, "The Future's so Bright, We Gotta Wear Shades." Why then are so many of us taking Prozac, seeing therapists, and finding less and less joy in our daily lives? It's difficult to contemplate, but many of us somehow feel disconnected from our daily existence. Despite being surrounded by incredible riches, we somehow long for a lifestyle that no longer seems attainable. Something important seems to be missing. No only can't we identify what's missing, we don't have a clue on how to restore it to our lives. Joann Grohman's book, Keeping a Family Cow, provides a great deal of insight into this very issue.Keeping in character with the book's premise, the author provides a detailed guidebook for nurturing and managing a dairy cow while successfully integrating such a creature into a modern lifestyle. Presented in an easy-to-understand, straightforward manner, the book offers up a plethora of information designed to turn the most inexperienced neophyte into a competent dairyman. The book provides details on animal acquisition, feeding, disease prevention, breeding and food hygiene, and is written in such a way to offer enlightened reading to a diverse audience. Joann also maintains a free web site,..., that provides a discussion forum for cow-related issues. If you've ever contemplated adding a bovine member to the family, this book will go a long way toward helping to make this project a success. Even though these technical topics make the book worth the price of admission, I strongly believe that there is more to this book than initially meets the eye. During my undergraduate years, I stumbled upon a book called The Continuum Concept (authored by Jean Liedloff) that contrasts Western child rearing techniques with those of more primitive cultures. Even though I was not yet married, and had no interest in starting a family, I realized that there was something about her ideas that resonated with my innate sense of right and wrong. I couldn't identify why I could so easily relate to her views on nurturing infants, but it just seemed as if Liedloff had illuminated obvious truths about human nature that no one had previously discussed.Joann's writings resonate in the same fashion. The first couple of chapters in the book seem to emanate from someone who shares Liedloff's understandin

no family cow should be without it

This is an excellent book! It covers all areas of keeping a milk cow for your family practically, clearly, and concisely. It covers caring for your cow, feeding and health concerns, milking, breeding and calving. It also covers caring for your milk, making butter and other home dairy products. My copy is dog-eared and butter-stained, I refer to it often.