Do Cows..............

[rebajayne]

This might be a really stupid question but my friend told me that cows only produce milk when they are pregannt, is this true, I know humans produce it whilst being pregnant so maybe its the same.

[cymruambyth1]

Cows produce milk all year round.

[B00]

Yes but first they have to become pregnant- that's why the calves are taken away when they are so young :-(

[rebajayne]

He also said thats why they are pregannt a lot, do they have a lot of babies in one year?

[Cetti]

No question is stupid rebajayne.....and yes your friend is right, a cow can only start to produce milk when they've had a calf. A young female, called a Heifer is only able to be milked once it's given birth and then the baby is taken away almost immediately and reared artificially. This is because the mother's milk is the prime product for the dairy farmer.

[Cetti]

You'll have to check this out but I believe the gestation time is 9 months for a cow, so they must have one calf a year to keep the milk yield coming. Poor little things!

[ursula62]

They only need to have the one calf - then they are fed hormones to keep the milk coming after that.

[Clanad]

Actually, the gestation period for cows is 284 days plus or minus about 10 days. Cows can only give milk when the calf has been born (called freshening here in the western U.S.). The calves are usually weaned, at least in dairy herds, at around 6 to 8 weeks following birth. The cow is milked each 12 hours for the next 300 days or so. During this time she will come into estrous and be bred again (cows are polyesterous, coming into cycle each month if not bred). She is rested after the 300 days and prepares for her next birth, etc. Hormones are closely regulated and have nothing to do with continued milk production. Most dairy herds are made up of Holstein cows, since they give large quantities of milk. The milk is lower in fat content than other breeds, but the butterfat content is only a secondary consideration, since most markets already want lower fat milk. Here in the U.S., and, I would guess, similarily in the U.K., the average dairy cow prduces about 1,500 gallons of milk during the 300 day cycle...

[Eels]

It's terrifying how so few people know how such basic things come to be on our supermarket shelves!

Cows, like all mammals, produce milk to feed their newborns. Hence they only produce milk once they give birth. Dairy cows give birth, then after the calf has suckled the colostrum (first milk) it is removed and hand-reared. Modern dairy cows produce more milk than a calf can drink, so these calves are bucket-fed spare milk, while the mother is milked twice daily in the parlour.

A cow has a 'dry' period every year, usually for a couple of months. This allows her to get into optimal body condition for giving birth. No farmer in the UK gives his cows hormones to make them produce milk all year round without having calves, it just doesn't happen.