Chapter 10
Your Organic Cow
Of the many excellent reasons for keeping a cow, quality control of your dairy products heads the list for most people. Following more than a century of advocacy, proponents of the all-organic diet have, I believe, carried their point.
Use of the term organic as an adjective to describe plants and animals thriving on composted soils was popularized in the late 1940s by J.I. Rodale Sr., founder of Prevention magazine. The term caught on at once with the public, much to the dismay of the scientific community, for whom the word organic has a well-established definition in chemistry as “a molecule containing carbon.” The USDA now owns the term organic and has created a strict legal definition. But as a cultural concept, rearing chemical-free animals and plants has a far longer history than does use of the word organic as a nutritional descriptor. The conviction that fresh, whole foods grown on properly nourished soils are the foundation of good health, good physical development, and long life had been already clearly enunciated by the middle of the nineteenth century.
These precepts are now encompassed by the term organic, and most of us non-chemists feel we know what we mean when we say plants or animals are “organically grown.” Our definition is little challenged when all it involves is the choice of which prepacked carrots to put in the supermarket cart. It will require some thoughtful consideration when we are feeding a cow.
For many people, organically grown food is defined negatively: the soil did not receive chemical fertilizer from a big plastic bag. The crops were not treated with chemical pesticides and herbicides. Yet fully eighty years before the word organic was first applied to food production, the whole-foods movement was active under a variety of names in the United States, England, and Europe. What all had in common was a positive belief in the importance of soil improvement. To anyone directly involved with organic food production, this emphasis needs no defense.
As enthusiasm for this positive approach to food production reached critical mass among consumers in the 1950s and ’60s, it met a great deal of antagonism from farmers, schools of agriculture, and the USDA, all of whom had been congratulating themselves for coming up with chemical methods that would end world hunger once and for all. It met equal hostility from a burgeoning fertilizer and pesticide industry, which for the first time felt itself compelled to respond to criticism and justify its methods. With cooperation from the USDA, Extension Service plots using chemical methods were planted side by side with plots that received no fertilizers or pesticides at all. The untreated plants were miserably small and worm eaten. Organic growers were then derided with the question, “If we don’t use chemicals, which third of the world’s population shall we allow to starve?”
This doomed research had asked the wrong question. The contest was never between chemistry and some depleted tract alongside. The contest has to be with soil enhanced for several years with compost and/or animal manures, plant materials, and carefully selected amendments such as lime and greensand. Pesticides, if any, are selected from among those that cannot affect people and that biodegrade completely. The overarching point is that properly fed soil results in big, healthy plants that resist insect damage. These plants in turn support big, healthy animals, such as your cow. Furthermore, and not to be ignored, well-cared-for soil gets better every year and generates no environmental debt. Chemical agriculture can achieve, as any trip to the produce section of your supermarket clearly displays, some very beautiful results. But it also creates an environmental debt in depleted soil, contaminated water tables, and illness among farm workers. To my mind, it is not organic advocates who should be required to defend the question, “Which third of the population shall we allow to die?”
Since “organic farming” based merely on avoidance of chemicals doesn’t work, and since there are hundreds of ways to improve soil, how do we know when we are doing it right? Some of the soil amendments widely accepted as “organic” are the very same ones often used in orthodox, or chemical, farming. Who decides what is acceptable? The USDA has now established certification standards for organic agriculture, and these have resulted in a reluctant truce among members of the various organic growers’ associations. A truce is not the same thing as truth. But it serves to back up marketing and build consumer confidence. Associations in states such as Maine, California, and Oregon have achieved a strength and reputation for integrity that makes their endorsements meaningful. Individual growers in every state make a serious effort to use methods that conform to most organic tenets.
With USDA certification, organic now has a legal definition. However, when applied to animal feeds it remains problematic. Poultry or swine, in order to thrive and reproduce, have a dietary requirement for the full complement of essential amino acids, as is found in animal protein. To meet the organic standard these animals would have to receive a diet that included meat or milk protein from other organically produced animals, or fish meal from wild-caught fish. Not only would this make for a prohibitively expensive diet, but because use of recycled animal products in feed is now largely phased out due to concerns over “mad cow disease,” most such choices are disallowed. Instead, feed is fortified with isolated lysine and methionine, the amino acids in which plant foods tend to be deficient, thus creating a complete protein synthetically. Such feed and the resulting animals and eggs are then touted as having been produced with an “all-vegetarian diet.” This appears to have been a successful marketing ploy but skirts the truth. This use of amino acids is not permitted in food intended for human consumption. Cows, on the other hand, can easily be fed a truly vegetarian diet of plant products because complete protein is produced for them by rumen bacteria.
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Organic Is Easier with Cows
Cattle, sheep, and goats are ruminants and generate their own complete protein, as explained above. They need eat nothing but plants, so providing them a diet wherein everything is grown on improved, “organic” soils becomes more feasible. You can do it yourself if you have the space. As I hope the preceding discussion has shown, that may be the only way you can be certain that your feed contains nothing you disapprove of.
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Controlling Allergies
If somebody in the family is seriously sensitive to environmental contaminants, keeping an all-organic cow is an incomparable way to start building him or her up, as you build up your soil and improve everything you grow. As one who has lived with allergies in their many permutations, I have long been convinced that whereas eliminating allergens may be a necessary first step, what works best in the long run is to build up the general health of the sufferer. The allergies then diminish or vanish completely. Few people who have been declared allergic to milk have any problem with fresh milk from a family cow. None of the substitute foods offered allergic persons is the nutritional equivalent of milk. After temporary relief on an elimination diet, symptoms usually return and health continues to decline as the victim eliminates yet another wholesome food.
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My Own Approach
My way does not meet USDA’s national organic standards but could presumably be made to, had I the resources to become certified.
My cow gets hay made on my own fields, which have never since the land was cleared 150 years ago received any pesticides. Because of the decline in farming, this is the case with every hay field and pasture around where I live in Maine. In bygone times, many fields received animal manures. Most now are merely mowed, resulting in a predictable decline in hay quality.
I have spread lime and I have brush-hogged yearly and left the grass behind as mulch, so my fields are somewhat improved. My hay crop remains thin but nutritionally is within the range of good. If weather and equipment permit making hay under optimal conditions, my hay will be better than hay from a healthier field that was cut too late or was rained on.
The most important thing I have done to improve my land is keeping it stocked with cattle and sheep. My pasture has shown steady improvement compared to another field treated identically but without the benefit of livestock.
My fields are divided so my cow does not get hay from a field where she has grazed within the last three years. This helps break the cycle of parasites.
I don’t compound my own grain mix, so I can’t know exactly what is in the mix I buy. I read the labels, of course, but some information will never appear because the FDA does not require it. As on foods for human consumption, the label will include the statement “from one or more of the following sources . . .” The brand my cow likes best costs a few cents more but has a good reputation, so I buy that. The label does not state that the mix contains any protein from animal sources, which is to be avoided.
I feed COB (corn-oats-barley) much of the year. It is lower in protein than commercial feeds, and its only additive is a little molasses to control dust. If high production is not your aim, COB will help maintain your cow’s condition.
Clarinda gets a couple of handfuls a day of dried ground kelp and a free-choice mineral supplement. I pour two glugs and a gurgle of “wheat germ oil” on her grain at every feeding. I put that in quotes because it is hard to find any pure wheat germ oil except in health food stores. What you get at the feed store is soy or other oil fortified with a little wheat germ oil and vitamin E.
Clarinda gets lots of apples in the fall and any other tidbits I can scrounge. See chapter 9, “Feeding Your Cow,” for tips on crops you can grow for your cow. If the effort is important to you, you really can grow all your cow’s feed and know exactly what goes into her. As you read in chapter 9, you can, with some lowering of production, keep a cow on pasture and hay alone, and properly managed she need not suffer nutritionally. It’s all in the quality of the soil the crops come off, and that is the part of putting pure organic food on your table that takes work and keeps the mortgage on your environmental future paid up.
The feed choices in chapter 9 are equally valid for your all-organic cow, provided you can locate organic sources. At present, obtaining organic feed is keeping a ceiling on expansion of organic dairying, despite pent-up demand.
My commitment to the organic concept goes back more than four decades. But if I must choose between ordinary feed or no feed, I don’t let my cow go hungry, the same principle I apply to feeding the family. Avoiding otherwise appropriate feeds because they aren’t organic can become an intellectual trap.
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Medications
USDA Organic standards do not allow antibiotics for dairy cows. Organic dairymen must grapple with the problem of what to do in case of mastitis or other illness. Many have found homeopathic veterinarians, but few I have interviewed find this to be a wholly satisfactory answer. I don’t have personal experience with homeopathy. I do have considerable personal experience with the following health problems; in fact they are the only health problems that have presented themselves to me in keeping a family cow. We saw a greater variety of illnesses when we had a sixty-cow dairy.
Mastitis
Eventually almost every cow develops at least one mastitic quarter. Read the discussion of mastitis in chapter 16, “Diseases and Disorders,” and be alert for symptoms so you can act quickly before the infection gets far advanced. The important thing to do is to keep stripping out the milk. The cow may kick; mastitis hurts like a bad bruise. Apply hot wet towels and massage the udder to break up clots. Alternate hot towels with stripping. There is a fine description of this treatment by James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small. A poor and desperate farmer had a cow with such a bad case of mastitis that Herriot expected to find her dead by the next morning. But the man sat by his cow all through the night stripping out milk and applying hot towels (supplied, no doubt, by his equally sleepless wife). In the morning when Herriot returned, the cow was fully recovered. I have never attempted this with a mastitic cow, but I believe the story. It works the same way for human mothers with mastitis, and with this I do have personal experience, having assisted many mothers as a La Leche League leader.
If there is a suckling calf, compel it to suck exclusively from the afflicted quarter. You will need help to accomplish this. The calf will keep quitting and heading for a more rewarding teat because letdown is poor from a mastitic quarter and the cow will kick. One person guides the calf while the other person is on the far side holding the remaining teats out of the way. Nothing beats a calf when it comes to getting out the milk. Mastitic milk won’t hurt the calf. If the cow kicks uncontrollably one of you will need to hoist up her tail; this prevents kicking. Do not use the rope cinch method described in chapter 3, “Milking Your Cow,” because you don’t want to interfere with circulation to her udder.
Don’t be swayed by advice in certain veterinary herbals that tell you to cease milking the quarter. The world is full of advice from people who have not had to live with their outcomes. Whatever else you do, keep the milk moving out.
There are reports of success using aloe vera infused directly into the teat as a mastitis treatment. The Louisiana Cooperative Extension arranged for laboratory and clinical tests of aloe vera. In in vitro tests aloe vera did not show bacteriostatic action against Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus uberis, or Streptococcus agalactiae. Infusion of aloe vera into the udder prompted leukocytes to enter the gland. This resulted in a reduction of bacteria present, but no cures resulted. Bacteria numbers returned to previous levels by forty-eight hours after treatment.
There are herbal and nutritional treatments for mastitis. Two that I have used with success on many occasions when mastitis was caught early are cayenne and comfrey. For the cayenne treatment, smear the infected quarter with lard or other heavy grease. Then take a handful of cayenne pepper and rub it into the grease. This primitive poultice is cheap and effective. There are commercial products such as Uddermint that accomplish the same thing more expensively. You are drawing blood to the area. The cayenne burns neither your hands nor the udder, merely warming it. But don’t rub your eyes.
Comfrey is a remarkable plant that deserves much praise. I have a huge patch, as does anybody else who lets it loose in a favorable spot. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. It has a large, juicy leaf. Pick a big handful and make a mush of it in your food processor if you have one; otherwise, chop and pound to release the juice. Rub this mix of leaves and juice on the infected quarter every time you think of it. If you have leaves to spare, feed them to your cow; comfrey is also effective internally. Once they develop a taste for it, cows love it to the point of breaking down fences. It is highly nutritious.
I sometimes resort to an antibiotic infusion with persistent mastitis but combine it with extra milking, massage, and heat, as described.
Once treated with an antibiotic, a cow permanently forfeits her eligibility for federal organic certification. Commercial organic dairies mostly just ship a cow with mastitis to the Golden Arches in the sky. As an uncertified organic farmer, I treat as necessary, withholding milk from human consumption as instructed on the label of the medication. However, by following these suggestions and those described in the mastitis section of chapter 16, I almost never have to treat mastitis.
Prevention is always the best answer. The Iowa State University teaching and research facility in Ames, Iowa, reports having reduced mastitis to negligible levels in their herd of more than 150 cows by making the two following changes in management: They changed to three-times-per-day milking. And they changed from sawdust to straw bedding.
A cow in early lactation presents a very tight, often dripping udder at milking time, particularly if the milking interval exceeds twelve hours. This is an invitation to mastitis due to milk stasis and moist teats. If you can manage three-times-per-day milking for even a short while, chances of mastitis will be greatly reduced.
A number of studies have found that straw bedding remains more sterile than does sawdust. The reason for this is not known. Shredded newspaper is also preferable to sawdust, as is sand.
As noted, the difficulty of treating mastitis without recourse to antibiotics is shown by the fact that dairymen producing organic milk in herds of commercial size often solve the problem by simply shipping the cow. This includes dairies committed to homeopathic treatment.
Milk Fever
This illness is discussed in detail in chapter 15, “Treating Milk Fever.” The treatment is IV administration of a calcium preparation and will be the same under all management systems, including organic.
Ketosis
The treatment for ketosis is also the same in all management systems. See the section on ketosis in chapter 16.
Cuts
It is very important to avoid cuts to a cow’s teats. These cuts, which are surprisingly common, can lead to minor problems, like unpleasant milkings, to severe problems like mastitis. It is important to try to ascertain the cause of the cut so that future ones may be prevented. If it is a downed fence, for example, it is likely to happen again. Indeed, the vast majority of cuts a cow gets are caused by barbed wire, but they can also be caused by the cow stepping on her own teat as she stands up. This can be a problem for prodigious producers as they age, and may require an udder support or “cow bra” for prevention. Cuts may also be caused by the sharp teeth of a calf.
Nothing works better than pure vitamin E oil on cuts. Always have a bottle of big capsules handy or a little bottle of the pure oil sold with a medicine dropper. If the cut is bleeding copiously, vitamin E won’t stick. First make sure there is no dirt under a flap of skin, and do your best to infuse pure vitamin E directly onto the bare flesh. If you are calling the vet to put in stitches, keep applying the vitamin E until he or she arrives. Don’t put on any other medications. Try to persuade the vet to let you keep the injury well suffused with vitamin E right up until he or she closes the wound. Then apply it frequently to the stitched incision. Vitamin E works better if not competing with wound powders and salves, all of which interfere with contact of vitamin E with the flesh and don’t do as much good.
If you have a comfrey patch, now is a good time to make a poultice of ground leaves and slap it on externally. Comfrey has quite remarkable healing properties. I grind the leaves up to a slurry in the food processor. Cows and any other animals you are treating object far less to the vitamin E treatment and the comfrey poultice than to other medications. I have seen amazing recoveries from lacerations treated with vitamin E alone but will augment it with comfrey if it is available. I keep a supply of pureed comfrey in the freezer for use in winter.
If you are dealing with a teat injury in a lactating cow, you still must milk. Cows will stoically endure being milked by hand, machine, or calf unless the injury is very severe. In the latter event, you can get teat dilators to insert in the teat canal. This allows the milk to drain out during letdown. Maintain conditions as sterile as possible when inserting the dilator. Remove the dilator between milkings. If not using a disposable dilator, sterilize it between uses.
If you’re treating a teat or a leg injury, a vet wrap bandage is very helpful. It sticks to itself like Velcro.