Basic Safety:
I’ve seen a wide range in temperaments in the jersey breed, from feeble calves, wild heifers, and sweet cows, to stubborn and lazy cows. A jersey in any of these stages will err on the gentler side than a beef cow, so if you’ve had any experience with beef cows, you’re well-equipped! A few rules I’ve come to adopt include: 1. I will never keep a cow with horns. 2. When dealing with especially energetic heifers, always be aware of her back legs as even excitement may cause her to kick and crow hop. 3. I tend to consider milking the cow a family affair, but I never let my toddler into a pen with a loose cow. When our girl is in the stanchion, Lydia is free to milk her but I’m always between those back legs and Lydia. I’ve been stepped on a couple of times by our cow just adjusting her feet slightly. A four-month bruise for me would be broken toes for Lydia! 4. Cows will establish dominance by shoving their heads into one another; it’s sweet to get a little nuzzle from your cow, but don’t let her push you around. You are the boss cow!

Buying Your Cow:
Things I look for in a daily milker that will be hand-milked (ideally, but not always realistically): 1. Long teats! This makes milking so much faster and less likely for you to get cramped hands. (Our first milk cow had smaller back teats which seems quite common for jerseys. I appreciated the experience of milking short teats as now I feel spoiled with anything I can hold onto more than two fingers.) You may also notice that some cows have crossed teats, this isn’t a deal breaker for us but can sure make milking more awkward if you’re a newbie. We also prefer four working quarters. Quarters can be lost for a variety of reasons and the reasons can impact how averse I am to buying them. Losing a quarter to mastitis spells future problems with mastitis so I stay away from those, but a lost quarter from being stepped on as a calf or a genetic deformity doesn’t mean there will be less milk so it’s not a deal breaker. Oftentimes my husband and I will milk together and to have one dead quarter would make one of us feel slightly less useful.
2. Purebred. We’ve seen gorgeous cows go on the market that just won’t sell because they are crossed with something. It’s a very niche market trying to find someone looking for a specific cross, and so for resale value we stick to purebred jerseys.
3. A2/A2 beta-casein. This info is not always available but if I intend to keep a cow and breed her, I will always test her as soon as she comes home.
4. Demeanor. This is less of a concern for me now as daily working with jerseys greatly improves their manners and they pick up on your expectations quickly. When we first started out, our first cow was so lovely and it helped me get comfortable with everything else about milking and I wasn’t worrying about breaking a cow on top of it. If you do get a broke cow, be prepared to pay extra as those hours of training are worth a lot!
5. Feet. I’ve never seen a jersey with terrible feet, but if you see curling hooves that is a red flag and it’s important to get her trimmed as soon as possible. We don’t shy away from a girl needing to be trimmed, but it is definitely a consideration if you don’t have the facilities to get it done.

Calf Sharing:
We exclusively calf-shared for the first year of owning a milk cow and absolutely loved it. It gave us flexibility to leave for weekends and we also never milked on a Sunday. For the first two weeks of life, I Keep the calf on the mom 24/7 so it gets all the milk it wants, and during that time I milk morning and evening to establish a large demand so her milk production doesn’t wain. After those first couple weeks, I start separating the calf at night (must be across two fences or one solid fence as the calf will suck through the fence!) and milking in the morning and then leaving the calf with the mom during the day. To give you an idea of what a jersey can produce, I’ve calf-shared with three calves at a time while still milking once a day, and I’ve also moved one of my gals to just a nurse cow with five calves on her. Cons: Calf-sharing does come with some drawbacks. The first and most troublesome concern is cut teats. For the year of calf-sharing with our one jersey calf, our milk cow only got the occasional minor cut from the calf’s teeth. When we moved some more beef calves onto our cow we noticed more cuts and after a month of using her exclusively as a nurse cow, we had to pull all of the calves off and handmilk her to heal up her teats. In my experience, beef calves or crosses seem to cut milk cow teats a bit more. This may have been an extreme case, but it’s something you’ll want to watch for if you intend to calf-share. You will of course be getting half or less as much as you would be at two-a-day milkings, and as the calf’s demands change so will your cow’s milk production. Milk cows also have a funny trick of holding their cream back for their calf. I’m not sure how they do it, but I will almost double the amount of cream I get by weaning the calf and hand milking exclusively.

Calves and Keeping Them Alive:
I have found jersey calves to be so vulnerable in their first couple of months. This is similar to all calves, but jerseys commonly weigh less than half of the beef breeds at birth, so you’re dealing with a weaker calf in every respect right off the bat. There are a few preventative measures I take when I know I’ll have a jersey calf on the ground: 1. Jersey calves can get dehydrated quickly from scours (diarrhea) so I always have scour pills on hand as well as electrolytes and a tube bag in case I have to tube a particularly weak calf. 2. I keep my calves in a pen inside the pasture made with movable panels so that the calves can’t escape through my regular barbed wire and rail fencing. (They will always escape, even by accident, they’re just so small!) The movable panels are also important as calves should be moved to fresh grass often to keep them healthy and out of their scourry mess. 3. I’ll often bring my milk cow into the stanchion the first couple of times she feeds the calves so I can easily observe how much milk the calves are getting and that the cow isn’t kicking one particular calf off.

Dehorning: I am quite opposed to horns on the farm, especially after dealing with minor injuries on our heifers from a cow that had an unfair advantage in the fight for boss cow, so we dehorn all of our calves. We also dehorned our old bull, Cliff, when we bought him. Dehorning calves is decidedly easier than waiting until they are older so I will always recommend that. We dehorn calves using dehorning irons that we heat to red hot and then press firmly against each horn bud to permanently stop the horns from growing. We have also used a dehorning paste, but I would not recommend this method. For us, the paste had our calf in pain for a lot longer than with the irons; she also kicked and rubbed at the paste and spread it down her face causing a minor chemical burn. She healed up and there’s not even a scar where the paste had spread to, but when it was all said and done the paste had only removed one full horn and half of the other one! We used a dehorning wire saw to remove Cliff’s horns. When removing large horns from older animals, it is important to monitor the area for infection and it can also be useful to use a fly spray to prevent bugs from picking at the open wound while it heals. Removing horns at an older age won’t stop them from growing again, and after a year of having Cliff on the farm, the base of his horns had grown a half inch after removal.

Expectations: Expect and be prepared for the worst. Owning a milk cow has been so fun for our family, but it is not for everyone and it’s best to take off the rose-coloured glasses before taking on the responsibility for the life of any animal. Mastitis, milk fever, bloat, bad temper while in heat, and cut-up teats are all things that can strike the best milk cows. Being prepared for these things makes them much less stressful in the moment and, after you get over the hurdle, owning a milk cow seems like a breeze.

Halter Training: A cow can be as food-motivated as anything, but I always try to halter train them in preparation for eventually needing to take her somewhere she doesn’t want to go. Halter training calves is my favourite job on the farm. Getting a rope halter on them is easy enough when they are little and then tying them to a post once a day will for sure have them tie-broke in a week. After your calf has spent ten or twenty minutes tied up, brush her lots and get her real used to people. I’ll pull the calf once around the pen and let her off the rope. (Don’t let the calf back up from you, always keep her moving forward or have her stopped. Otherwise, she’ll learn that if she pulls hard enough she can do what she wants. After a week of this, you should have a calf ready to be led wherever you take her! When it comes to halter training older heifers and cows, you have to be patient and consistent. First, start with tying them up to an immovable post and get them used to people by brushing them down and feeding them grain out of your hand. I don’t move on to trying to lead them until they have completely stopped fighting the post and aren’t skittish of people. When you start to lead, it’s best to have a friend behind your cow to give her a motivational tail twist if she isn’t moving forward. For two of our more stubborn cows, we have hooked their lead rope up to a truck moving slowly to get them moving forward and submitting to the halter. Consistently doing these things will get you a halter trained cow eventually, but patience is required for those older girls.

Mastitis: Mastitis is a common infection in jersey cows and it is important to know how to spot it and treat it. How to spot mastitis: 1. Hard to milk the cow/udder is hard or hot to the touch. This is usually the first sign of mastitis someone notices and should trigger an investigation to see if there are other symptoms of mastitis. This shouldn’t be used as a mastitis marker on its own as there are other reasons an udder may be warmer or harder than usual. (Edema, too long between milkings, etc) 3. Salty milk. When I suspect a quarter may have mastitis, I bring a glass out with me to milk so I can taste the milk coming from each teat individually. Infection-free milk should taste slightly sweet whereas mastitic milk will taste salty immediately. 2. Slow to filter milk/stringy bloody substances in the filter. Slow-filtering milk and stringy pieces in the milk are not an indication alone that there is mastitis, but it is almost always present when there is mastitis. (Milk could filter slowly due to foam from hand milking, a vacuum created by the filter, etc).
How I treat mastitis: I keep Spectramast on hand to immediately treat an infected teat with a local antibiotic administered right into the affected teat. If I had the time, I would milk up to six times a day to keep the infection moving out. Calf-sharing can be a huge benefit if your cow has mastitis as nothing is better at emptying a mastitic teat than a hungry calf. I would halter my calf and let her suck from the cow while she is in the stanchion, gently moving the calf’s head with the halter to keep her only sucking from the mastitic teat until I’m confident the calf has gotten what she can. I will also massage Bag Balm all over the affected quarter for as long as I am able.