Is pastuerized milk really bad?

[Guest guest]

Carmen,

I have forwarded most of the messages in that thread to her and she said that

she was going to consult with some friends of her who raise goats....

Sonja

[Guest guest]

Dear ,

I have been researching the subject of feeding calves and this is

what I have come up with--please post this on the chat group

Regarding the statement that calves fed pasteurized milk die before

maturity, we have on our Board an ex-dairy farmer from New Zealand.

He read the brochure when we were working on it and I brought this

subject up to him again. He remembers a study that was done in

Australia (but I don't have a reference for this) in which they fed

calves pasteurized milk and they died.

I then had a long conversation with his nephew who raises calves in

New Zealand. The calves are then sold to dairies. He raises the

calves on raw milk. They have access to hay from birth and are given

a mixture of barley, corn and molasses at 2 weeks. But they stay on

the raw milk until 12-14 weeks of age. He confirmed the truth of the

statement--if the calves are fed pasteurized milk, they do not reach

maturity.

I asked him about milk replacments. He said that some calf-raisers

use the milk replacement but he said these calves are much more

delicate. They must be kept inside and warm, but not crowded because

they bruise easily. I asked him whether he thought using the milk

replacement was one reason that dairy cows now have such short lives

and he thought this might be so.

Now here is the interesting conclusion to all this. . . that it is

actually better to give calves a milk replacement than to give them

pasteurized milk! Think of what this means about the degradation of

milk by pasteurization. Obviously the vitamins are denatured to such

an extent that there is no longer good nutrition for the animal, and

the synthetic vitamins in the milk replacement do a better job than

the vitamins in milk that has been pasteurized.

As for goats, I had an email conversation with a friend who is just

getting in to raising goats. She confirmed that goats are given a

combination of dried colostrum and a milk replacment to avoid passing

CAE (Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis) on to the kids. She sent me the

ingredients to this replacement which contains lots of minerals,

synthetic vitamins plus dried milk protein, dried milk, dried whey

and dried lactobacillus acidophilus " fermentation product. "

I suspect that the risk of passing CAE may be exaggerated in order

for the industry to sell lots of milk replacement, but even if this

is a true threat that must be countered with artificial feeding, the

conclusion is the same. A replacement containing vitamins and

minerals must be used because the pasteurized milk will not provide

all the kid needs to grow.

So the statement on the website is basically correct. We may post an

article on feeding ruminant animals containing this information at a

later date.

Sally