Drying Off: Pros, Cons
A reader recently submitted these questions about continuing to milk through a subsequent calving:
1) Is the quality of the colostrum something that is significantly affected by not drying off? Does it affect the quality for the new calf?
Not in our experience; our calves enjoy very good health. As far as our own observation goes, the colostrum we get from the cows we don't dry off seems to have exactly the same qualities as that from the cows we do dry off.
2) About how long before calving does the milk transition to colostrum and do you have any culinary uses for the colostrum, or do you just feed it to livestock?
The period of time before calving at which a cow begins to make colostrum varies a lot - it can be weeks before, or just a week or so. Since we milk several cows and their milk is combined in the dairy (all goes in the same can/cans) we don't necessarily notice the shift immediately; the most striking effect is that colostrum will stop your cream from forming butter when you churn it - very annoying. It's fine for making cheese with, though, and, of course, it’s great for pigs and chickens, too.
3) Does not drying off decrease milk yield next lactation? This is something that the articles I have looked at claim, but I'm wondering if this is significant in the lower yield family cow (vs. top production dairy) or not.
We haven't noticed that it makes any difference, but our goals are so different from those of people and industries focused on milk production. We breed for small, efficient animals that thrive on grass and have a (relative to their breeding cycle) long lactation. They have to hold their condition and health through a winter outside, on grass, and make some milk while they do that; when spring comes, they'll pick up production amazingly, so if we've bred for a late calving, we may have months of higher production before we have to decide whether to dry off or milk right through. But we're not graphing production of individual cows and making comparisons, so we can't really answer this question.
4) Are there other considerations or reasons not to keep milking through that we should consider? Or on the flip side, other reasons that one would lean toward not drying off?
The decision to dry off or not dry off is, for us, mostly a factor of how much milk we're presently getting (from that cow, and also in total, relative to our household needs) and the condition of the cow. Mostly, our little cows decline in production in the last few weeks before calving, so we seldom have to decide based on how hard it will be to dry her off (as opposed to a cow that is producing very heavily). We always dry off at least 8 weeks prior to due date, to make sure the cow in question is really dry (no lingering mastitis from the drying-off process). If a cow is producing a couple of gallons a day, and she's less than two months from calving, we'll keep milking her right through to avoid mastitis issues when she drops the calf.