I never knew that milk cows were fed fat. What happened to feeding them grain, grass and hay? The rain forests are cut down so the farmers can plant palms that are used to make palm oil, then the palm oil is shipped to Canada and other countries. I wonder what other unusual "supplements" they feed to Canadian milk cows.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.5927194
Hard butter
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TomK
- Stringy Old Chicken
- Posts: 1850
- Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 9:38 am
- Location: Lovely Rideau Lakes Township
- x 2534
Re: Hard butter
@Shnookie ..dairy farmers get paid a premium for their milk if it exceeds the mandated butterfat content and penalized if its under...so it makes sense for an ( I actually hate to call these people farmers) agrarian businessperson to do whatever they can ( iffy or not) to increase that percentage...its a racket, pure and simple
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If you don't plant the tree, you will never have the fruit...
Re: Hard butter
I think it's more a case of that our grains no longer carry the food value they used to. I don't have a problem with palm oil. It is supposed to be a healthy oil.
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Ontario Chick
- Poultry Guru
- Posts: 5400
- Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 10:12 am
- Location: Carp - West Ottawa
- x 9625
Re: Hard butter
Unfortunately if you look a bit further, rainforests are being decimated , so that palms for oil production can be grown, so natural environment ( the lungs of the earth) is being replaced by monoculture, so that palm oil can be used as cheep filler in absolutely everything, and now they figured out how to run it thru a cow to serve it to us in milk !!
sorry that sounds like a rant, but it's just the facts
sorry that sounds like a rant, but it's just the facts
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Killerbunny
- Poultry Guru - total zen level
- Posts: 7875
- Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 12:04 pm
- Location: Brockville
- x 10170
Re: Hard butter
The other problem is when butter is made from grass fed cows they bitch about the "earthy" flavour! Heads up people it HAS flavour. I prefer the european cultured type.
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Beltsville Small White turkeys.
Mutt chickens for eggs
RIP Stephen the BSW Tom and my coffee companion.
RIP Lucky the Very Brave Splash Wyandotte rooster.
RIP little Muppet the rescue cat.
Re: Hard butter
They will feed cows *anything* as long as it doesn't kill the cow, it seems like. There were some stories a few years back about farmers in the US feeding their cows "Skittles"....like factory reject candies (broken pieces, etc) that weren't good enough for packaging for humans...
It's messed up. Seems like a kind of cruelty to me.
It's messed up. Seems like a kind of cruelty to me.
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Re: Hard butter
Ruminants can eat many things since it’s the micro flora in the rumen that you’re feeding so whatever is cost effective is used even such things as poultry litter. 
As dairy farms get larger, they’re always looking to cut costs and there’s a large feed industry built up around doing just that and sourcing and marketing products to farmers. If we have years where there are weather challenges and shortages of the usual foodstuffs that farmers grow to feed their livestock they have to supplement with whatever is available and for some who may be near a food processing facility that has food wastes then they just incorporate that into the feed. If the new feed works well it often sticks around and becomes part of the feeding regime, assuming it remains cost affective. Environmental impact be damned.
When I was at Guelph University doing Animal Science I worked with a ruminant nutritionist looking at using urea as a supplement and my job was to mix up and feed for the research sheep and rotating diets of corn or corncobs with urea. The sheep with the corncobs and urea were mighty unhappy! Luckily, they were only on it for a week or 2 before they got back to the good stuff.
Also, dairy farmers get paid on components so get a premium if the milk is higher in fat so there is an extra incentive to adjust the diet to get more fat and protein. While I worked at a large cheese factory in the lab, I analyzed the milk from the many truckloads we got every day and I was amazed at the levels of fat in many of them, many over 4% and as high as 4.3%. Over the years it has been increasing and would have averaged closer to 3.6-3.8%. Since most herds are mainly Holsteins known for their volume not components, it is amazing they are now almost comparable to breeds known for their high fat milk like Jerseys. Another marvel of modern livestock breeding and feeding where the market and economics drive animal production often at the expense of animal welfare and the environment.
As dairy farms get larger, they’re always looking to cut costs and there’s a large feed industry built up around doing just that and sourcing and marketing products to farmers. If we have years where there are weather challenges and shortages of the usual foodstuffs that farmers grow to feed their livestock they have to supplement with whatever is available and for some who may be near a food processing facility that has food wastes then they just incorporate that into the feed. If the new feed works well it often sticks around and becomes part of the feeding regime, assuming it remains cost affective. Environmental impact be damned.
When I was at Guelph University doing Animal Science I worked with a ruminant nutritionist looking at using urea as a supplement and my job was to mix up and feed for the research sheep and rotating diets of corn or corncobs with urea. The sheep with the corncobs and urea were mighty unhappy! Luckily, they were only on it for a week or 2 before they got back to the good stuff.
Also, dairy farmers get paid on components so get a premium if the milk is higher in fat so there is an extra incentive to adjust the diet to get more fat and protein. While I worked at a large cheese factory in the lab, I analyzed the milk from the many truckloads we got every day and I was amazed at the levels of fat in many of them, many over 4% and as high as 4.3%. Over the years it has been increasing and would have averaged closer to 3.6-3.8%. Since most herds are mainly Holsteins known for their volume not components, it is amazing they are now almost comparable to breeds known for their high fat milk like Jerseys. Another marvel of modern livestock breeding and feeding where the market and economics drive animal production often at the expense of animal welfare and the environment.
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Retired dairy shepherd and cheesemaker and former keeper of a menagerie of chickens and Pencilled Turkeys, now owned by three cats and a border collie x Australian shepherd who keeps me fit and on my toes!