Guest guest Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 Hi from NC, Y'all ... The farmer from whom I purchase cowshares who sells pet milk (in NC raw dairy for humans is illegal) is experiencing growth pains and he seems to be more of a farmer and activist than businessman and needs a little help to figure out how to solve the good problem he's having. Can any of you direct me to information on how to set up a small cow dairy? Or can any of you say what is working well for you? He currently has 9 cows and would like to have 10. Right now all the milking is done by hand ... and it's a family business ... twice a day. The milk is also cooled by hand in glass jars in ice water in Extreme coolers, and then packed in ice for delivery day in customers' coolers. The issues are that he and his family are having to handle steps in their process several times, and the entire process is very manual. They would be helped greatly if they could somehow improve their cooling and storage process, and maybe speed their milking process a little. And visibility needs to remain low. Thanks, Barbara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 3, 2008 Report Share Posted January 3, 2008 I highly recommend the walk through parlor. We paid for the stalls from Zimmerman and erected it ourselves. The stalls were around $1000 each. The back-breaking bending over and milking by hand in a flat barn is very difficult and hard to properly clean and care for the cow's utters. A simple one machine (surge or delaval) milker could be implemented at the one stall and directly pipe into a small cooling vat (bulk tank). From there they could cool the milk. Let it separate and sell the cream of the top (take some off to sell as cream) and mix the rest and let it rise naturally to the tops of each bottled jar. Enclosed is a picture of my father and I with our milking parlor. We milk around fifty holstein. Hopefully this helps but I know change is hard and especially when it requires a little capital. Betseyhandyvandy83 wrote: Hi from NC, Y'all ...The farmer from whom I purchase cowshares who sells pet milk (in NC raw dairy for humans is illegal) is experiencing growth pains and he seems to be more of a farmer and activist than businessman and needs a little help to figure out how to solve the good problem he's having.Can any of you direct me to information on how to set up a small cow dairy? Or can any of you say what is working well for you? He currently has 9 cows and would like to have 10. Right now all the milking is done by hand ... and it's a family business ... twice a day. The milk is also cooled by hand in glass jars in ice water in Extreme coolers, and then packed in ice for delivery day in customers' coolers.The issues are that he and his family are having to handle steps in their process several times, and the entire process is very manual. They would be helped greatly if they could somehow improve their cooling and storage process, and maybe speed their milking process a little. And visibility needs to remain low.Thanks,Barbara Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.