Never cooked with it. Its too valuable. I have several gallons of cow colostrum in the freezer and would not feel comfortable using it. I need it in case of bad things happening during calving season. Its good to know its setting properties though.

I had enough in the freezer from the getting eztra from the first few sheep that lambed that I didn't feel the need to save more.

Once I have all my Jerseys sorted out, I will have a boat load of the stuff and then I will give this a go. Its going to be a while yet. Trying to get them on a calving schedule so I have tons of milk year round instead of 2x a year. With the lousy feed situtation this year, I am not getting as much milk as usual and I dried some of them up early to take the strain off of them. My pigs are really complaining about my decision making. I will dig down deep in the freezer and see if there is some colostrum left that I missed from last years collection; if so, I will look into this. Its interesting. Problem with living on a farm; it makes you fat. One would think with all the work that couldn't happen but making your own food is a hazzard and you are not helping with those pictures.

LOL, considering that I am currently making sheep milk icecream, you might be on to something here.

You have Jersey's! Oh, you lucky duck.. do you have a blog/website or could you just post a photo or two of your girls here?

The books say that freezing does not stop the colostrum from being good for cheese making but I am not sure it will have the same pudding qaulity, as it seemed to need to be fresh for that to work, but if you do try it, I would be very interested in hear if it worked or not.

I can believe it on the pigs, I am very grateful that the cow will freshen in time for me to finish off my pigs with milk..

What is your average yield in regards to gallons of milk per jerseys? we had a half beef/half dairy milk cow when I was growing up and she was a steady six gallons per day girl, I am expecting right around the same from my girl, but I am flexable, I really would like it to be over 4 gallons per day, but I am not sure I want over six gallons but only time will give me that answer.

I get 2-4 gal per/day/cow depending where she is at in the reproduction cycle. I keep the calves on the cows so by the time they are getting older, we are down to 2 gal 1x/day. We don't push them as we aren't a dairy and cannot feed like one. Some of our Jerseys are retired dairy cows, so they were maxed out and sold off. I give those a year off to learn how to be a cow and adjust to pasture only ect... without a big drain on the system. They usually do just fine for farm purposes.

Thanks for getting back to me, are you share milking with the calvies? or only milking after weaning? So you are grassfed only, no grains or any other fodder feeding, examples by that I mean, no beets, turnips, apples, burdock roots, squash, sprouted grains or green seven day old fodder sprouts etc.

I will be happy with whatever my girl naturally produces but I do intend to support her with fodder, sprouted grains and lots of homegrown goodies from the gardens.. I am lucky that I got my girl as a babe, so she has grown up being taught to like and eat or at least try pretty much anything I put in her dish or mouth.. There are a few things she does not care for much.

Late getting back to this. I keep the calves on the cows. When they are about 3-4 weeks I start locking them up at night and milking only in the mornings and then turn the calf out for the day with mom. The calf does the evening milking. When the calf gets much older, I will sometimes leave one quarter for the calves in the morning to not drag mom down. I leave the calves with mom until they are 8 months old. I am reconsidering leaving the bull calves on and simply selling them as bottle babies but then I would have to milk 2x day and that means more work and no time off so it I am not too sure at this point.

I don't feed fodder. I haven't the equipment or manpower to plant acres of the stuff and harvest it. I am working on the concept, but for 6 cows its a big opertion. I hope to plant a few acres for the pigs who can dig their own. I could maybe pull some for the cows but it still must be chopped for them to be able to eat it and there is simply not enough hours in my day at this time.