Raw Milk

I have a friend that has been bugging me about raw milk, and wants me to give it a try.  I was wondering if anybody has had any experience with drinking raw milk from grass fed cows. I’ve done some brief research and its has spiked my interest.

 

Pro: there seems to be a lot of health reasons to switch to raw milk. No I don’t have anything to prove this, just limited web browsing research.  This seems to mainly fall on how the cows are taken car of.

 

Cons:

Availability:  In my area, the milk can't be sold to the public, you have to buy into the herd. 

Price: $6+ a gallon.  Major problem for as much milk I like to drink.

Time: only stays good 7-10 days.  Not  a problem if purchased 1-2 gallons at a time.

I was raised on city water, but well water doesn't bother me at all.

all the beef we eat is local grass fed cattle, better for you (imo anyway) and you CAN'T beat the quality! Wish I could find an in on raw milk, trouble is small dairies are all but non-existant around here these days.

Montana wrote: We just got some raw milk from the organic dairy down the road from us.  Tastes great!  We have two kids under 3 and we go through 4 gallons a week.  We just made a deal with them, my wife gives their daughter horse riding lessons, and we get 4 gallons of milk for a trade.  That's a win for me!

  I work at a milk plant.  We seldomly see raw milk with high standard plate counts or bacteria problems.  We don't accept milk from rBST herds.  Most of the farmers I've talked to have said the use of rBST doesn't pay in the long run with all the increased health problems.  As far as grass fed organic goes, as long as the patures are free of weeds and things like fruit trees, wild onion, ect., the milk should be free of an off-taste.  Only problem with raw milk is the self life. 

grasshopper wrote: Grew up down the road from a dairy.  Literally walked down the road with an empty jug, filled it up and went home.  Brother and I drank a gallon a day.  Awesome.  My mom now milks 30 cows and is always trying to get me to drink it but my wife has me on skim and I dont think I could handle the thickness.  Often wish I could go back to what it was like when I was growing up, eating freshly killed deer steaks, mashed potatoes dug up from the garden and raw milk.  Those were the days.

  Must be a heifer calf?  I have four cows and five calves on my place right now.  We quit milking a few years ago when Grade B manufactoring milk was phased out and we didn't want to build a new parlor.  Now we have beef cows, Charolais bulls with Simmental and Limousin cows.  I only have five acres of grass here, my dad has cattle more cattle four miles from me.  After the end of summer, the cows at my place go to town and the calves go to the feedlot.  The old cows are between 10-12 years old and broken mouth.  My cousin milks about 200 Holsteins a few miles from me.  The milk plant I milk at buys milk from local herds and hauls some milk quite a ways.  We get milk from dairies with 20,000 cows with four or five parlors milking 100 at a time.  The business sure has changed through the years.  We milked no more than 30 Guerneys and Jerseys in a stanchion barn with a Bou-Matic pipeline into a DEC 1000 gallon tank.  Sorry for the life history of dairy farming I just posted.    Just a thought...get some shirt with a caber tosser on it that says, "Got Highland Games?"  Thanks posting the nice picture.  Cows sure beat pigs!!