Our
cows
Portnellan first and foremost is a dairy farm and
therefore we have dairy cows: Ayrshires and
Friesians.
The Ayrshires are brown & white and the Friesians are
black & white. Friesians may look like Holsteins, which are also black
& white, but they are much
smaller. We prefer smaller cows because we are steep
and wet – they don’t cause so much damage to the fields.
Before a dairy cow produces milk she must first have a
calf. Cows are called heifers before they calve. When
the heifers are about 20 months old they are put ‘into
calf’. For their first
pregnancy, we use a Limousin bull
as the sire - we carefully select a bull that
will produce a petite calf to allow the cow to
calve easily. Limousins have a lighter frame than many
other beef bulls.
If the first-calf heifers (as they are called after the
first calving) milk very well and look as if they will
be good dairy cows, then next time we use a good
dairy bull as the sire. In that way, we hope that they
will in turn produce a nice little heifer calf that will
grow up into a good milking dairy cow. This is how we
have slowly built up a herd of healthy and productive
cows.
Although the other first-calf heifers may not produce
future generations of dairy cows, they will continue to be put in calf to a Limousin bull.
And they still have a very important place on our farm, helping to contribute
to the 30,000
litres of organic milk we produce every month, while their
offspring provide us with the wonderful
Portnellan dairy beef.
A cow has a calf every year and
she produces milk for 10 months after calving. Then she
has a rest (the ‘dry’ period) for two months before she
calves again. On Portnellan we believe in keeping our cows
for as long as possible so our oldest cow is 15
years old, which means that she has had about 12 milking
seasons.
The milking cows and the young beef animals live on our
farm, feeding from our lush pastures. The beef animals
are kept for up to 30
months – they mature slowly and are raised with the
dairy herd so that they become very gentle and enjoy human
company. This is very important when they are sent to
the abattoir; everyone comments on how quiet and gentle
our animals are – they don’t become stressed on their final
journey and this too contributes to the quality of the
meat.
Read
more about calving and
milking |
A brown &
white Ayrshire dairy cow
A black &
white Friesian dairy cow
An
Ayrshire dairy calf (left) with a Friesian-Limousin beef
calf
A Limousin
bullock
|
