How to buy a cow, or rather, how NOT to buy a cow.
Learn all our mistakes as we blundered through the ins and outs of how to buy a cow.
We bought a cow. She is a great cow, and we are very happy with her. She is so tame and sweet, and that’s a necessity for our family situation. I need to be able to easily milk her in the field with the kids. We were completely new to the world of milking and cow keeping, and we had the added complication that there is not enough grass to feed a cow on our property 7 months out of the year.
We made some big mistakes. It’s all for the best, and I’m so grateful for the experience. But Margot, our dear family cow, is scheduled to go to butcher this March.
How to buy a cow: our cow misadventure
Why we even bought a cow.
I have food sensitivities. I also have random allergies, and serious symptoms if I have any gluten whatsoever. It’s getting worse and worse. I went on the paleo diet for three years, and it was really helpful. My scariest symptoms went away, but I was still very sick and very sensitive. I was getting more and more frustrated, because I was getting more and more limited on what I could and could not eat. It felt like I wasn’t getting healthier, I was just getting more fragile.
Then I learned about the GAPS diet. It claims to heal people through nutrition in a more effective way than paleo, and I read both of Natasha Campbell McBride’s books. The reasoning behind the diet made so much sense. I was so grateful because finally I had a possible promise of recovery.
I got much healthier from dipping my toes into the GAPS diet.
It changed my life. I never felt so good, literally in my entire life. All my strange lurking symptoms went away, and my food allergies disappeared. I realized that I needed to take this healthy way of life very seriously, and maybe someday, I could have homemade sourdough bread again.
The impact it made on my life was so great, that I was completely sold on the diet. And Ben and I talked about how we could change our lifestyle to be even healthier than before.
This is where the cow became the logical next step.
I had been gardening for the last four years, ever since we moved up to the mountain. And it was great to have garden produce, but vegetables only get you so far. We have American Guinea Hogs, but they are small and slow to grow. What food could we have in abundance that we could ensure the quality and continuous quantity? Milk. It was really the obvious next step. I was not pregnant, my toddler was 15 months old, and we had nothing to lose by trying it out.
Why we are sold on having a milk cow:
- The sheer abundance of milk is a force to be reckoned with. It is so much food. We had milk at every meal, yogurt for breakfast, mozzarella with lunch, paneer or yogurt with dinner, and everything cooked with whey.
- It’s actually not that much work. In the end, I had the whole milking process down to under ten minutes. There was still the bottling, filtering the milk, and washing the buckets, but that process probably took fifteen to twenty minutes. The hardship was really the learning curve at the beginning. I thought it would be hard to learn how to milk, and it was definitely hard, but what I personally found more difficult was figuring out what the heck to do with all the milk. How to sell the milk, how to store the milk off-grid, and how to organize everything so we had clean jars to put the milk in.
- The best pro that I found was that I felt so much better than I had ever felt in my entire life. This is partially because of GAPS, but I also attribute it to having an abundance of real, healthy, living food at my disposal.
More on the pros and cons of a milk cow in another future post!
How to buy a cow: The Cow Saga
We bought Margot through craigslist. We thought we did everything right, but we made so many mistakes.
Details of the purchase:
I received a text from a woman named Lily who was selling a cow. I had reached out to her a month before, inquiring about a different milk cow she was selling. She said she had one and was coming my way to buy a horse and could deliver it to me.
I chatted with Lily on the phone and texted her all day for a couple days. I asked her every question I could think of about Margot. I wanted to know if she was bred, how much milk she was producing, what her schedule was like, what her personality was like, whether she was hand milked or machine milked, if she was fed grain, etc.
Margot’s details:
Three-year-old cow, bred and producing 6 gallons of very creamy milk per day. Very large, easy-to-milk teats. Very friendly and gentle. Only fed grass hay.
She really sounded too good to be true. And I guess she was.
I thought I had asked her every question there was to ask, and told Lily I was interested.
When I said I was thinking we would purchase her, Lily asked for half down. This included shipping Margot to us from Oklahoma, which in total would cost $3500. The half-down payment would be $1750. I didn’t have a real email address for Lily, only the craigslist email. I didn’t want to do half down to a total stranger, and she immediately said if we weren’t willing to do half down then we were done talking.
This should have been my first clue that there was something sketchy about this purchase. But I was dumb. I told her I would be much more comfortable with giving her a downpayment if I had some verified reviews. Did she have any loyal customers we could contact?
She said she couldn’t because they usually just sell horses, and they don’t have any cow customers. I should have questioned this more, but I didn’t. She gave me their website address, but it only had pictures and no reviews or information at all.
We talked on the phone to clarify everything a little better, and at the end of the conversation I said we would think about the downpayment, but we really wanted a review from someone that Lily had sold to.
Later, she texted saying they would lower the downpayment to $500 and never mentioned the reviews again.
Ben talked to her on the phone for a long time. After his conversation he felt comfortable enough with all the details she shared to go for it. So, we sent her the money.
Then we started to get worried. She stopped replying to my texts.
I thought she took the money and ran, but finally, after a couple of days, she started responding again. Those were a very stressful couple of days.
By the time she responded, I guess we were so relieved that she was really selling us a cow that our guard was let down.
How to buy a cow: the day we bought her.
They had asked us to meet them at the bottom of the mountain because they were worried about getting the trailer stuck on the muddy dirt roads. (I wonder now if they changed that plan because they didn’t want us to notice Margot’s issues and back out of the deal.) We said yes and borrowed a friend’s trailer. They were hours late and weren’t picking up their phone.
Finally, they texted, saying they had arrived. Then they texted the exit number. We realized that they wanted us to meet them a couple exits away from our exit up the mountain. And then we realized why. There was terrible traffic on the highway going towards us. So, they wanted us to meet them, and then get stuck in traffic ourselves.
We said they would need to meet us at our exit. So, they started our way again. Within a few minutes they were at our exit. I guess the traffic cleared just enough. We met them and backed our trailers up so Margot could walk straight from theirs to ours. We moved her into our trailer and then shut the door.
Two big mistakes.
While we talked, I had a bad gut feeling about the interaction. If I were meeting them and the cow for the first time, and this wasn’t a meeting to purchase her, I would have definitely second-guessed the decision. But as it was, we had already spent lots of money on the downpayment and the supplies and hay. I felt like it was too late.
I looked at Margot through the trailer, but couldn’t get a good look at her. That was my first mistake: I should have tried to check her out in front of them.
Lily handed me the paperwork and I signed it, and she took it back. We talked briefly, and then said goodbye. As we were pulling out to drive away, I jumped up and exclaimed, “oh wait! I never got our paperwork!”
Ben replied, “do you want to go get it?” (they were also pulling out and hadn’t left yet.)
“No,” I said, settling back, “I’ll have Lily email me.”
Little did I know that she would never email me, and that they would block my number, and never give me a straight answer.
How to buy a cow: bringing Margot home
It was getting dark by the time we returned home. I won’t forget how nervous we were that she would charge and run off as we unloaded her from the trailer. The ground was covered in snow, but she was totally disinterested in the hay I was holding out for her, trying to lead her to the shed. We hadn’t thought about enticing her with grain because we weren’t planning on giving her any.
After a very long time of hauling and coaxing, we finally managed to get her into the barn. In the dim light of the shed, I tried to see her teats and attempt to milk her. She was pretty empty, but milk did squirt out of three of the teats. I moved to the fourth one, and I couldn’t get anything out. I also noticed that they were all small. My hands are on the smaller side, and I couldn’t get more than two fingers around three of the teats. “Very large, easy-to-milk teats” my foot.
I was worried about that fourth teat, but it was late, and we needed to put the kids to bed. I would check it out in the morning at my first milking.
How to buy a cow: the bad teat
I won’t ever forget the next morning. It was still dark out when I went down to milk, and by the time I finished the sun was starting to rise over the ridge. I was so excited to have my very own milk cow in my very own barn! It was such a good feeling.
In the coming daylight, I could see and feel that the fourth teat that didn’t give milk the night before was completely small, shriveled up, and empty. It didn’t produce any milk whatsoever. I realized that it was just a bad teat. And there was no way they sold Margot to us without knowing it.
I looked back at the picture Lily sent me of the teats, and realized with lots of frustration at myself that the picture was angled just so you couldn’t see the fourth teat in the picture.
When I filtered that first batch of milk, I got a gallon and a quart. I had spent an hour out there trying to get every last drop of milk, and yet that was nowhere near the six gallons per day they claimed she was producing.
How to buy a cow: the other lies
The bad teat really got me thinking about what else they weren’t honest with us about. I realized that there could be a bad reason for almost all of their actions.
Why did they not have any reviews? Because they always sell long distance over craigslist and cheat people? Where did the cows come from? Another thing I realized is that I didn’t have anyone’s name except Lily’s. I didn’t even have her last name.
She lied about Margot’s teats, she said she would switch her to alfalfa but never did, and she never gave me the paperwork.
She said Margot was only ever fed hay, but we soon learned that she was obsessed with grain. If she saw me feeding the chickens, she would moo and go crazy trying to get at the grain.
But when it came down to it, the two things I was most worried about were whether or not she was pregnant, and her milk production.
We paid for a pregnant cow giving lots of milk, but we got a probably-not-pregnant cow giving an average-to-low amount of milk.
Was she pregnant?
I was really upset with myself for buying this cow that might not be pregnant. We had spent so much money on her and the supplies we needed. I called vets from hours around in every direction trying to find someone who could artificially inseminate Margot ASAP. But there was no one! I learned that the closest person was near Denver, about eight hours North.
I ordered a pregnancy test and waited for it to come in the mail. All the while we were trying to brainstorm options for putting Margot with a bull or something.
They blocked us.
In the meantime, I tried calling Lily over and over again. I texted and emailed as well. I wanted to know the deal with Margot’s bad teat. Was it always that way? Was it a result of an injury? Did her calf do it?
No response.
My question kept coming up: is she even pregnant?
How to buy a cow: the answer to the pregnancy question.
We got a test kit with three urine tests. We tested once, and a few weeks later we tested again. (We have since learned that urine tests can be less accurate than blood tests)
All were positive! And corresponded to where Margot was supposed to be in pregnancy.
We thought we were in the clear and got settled into having a cow and enjoying the whole experience.
We started feeling more and more sold on the idea of having a cow. It felt so worth it. And it was such a wonderful, peaceful experience. On the days where getting up to milk was hard, I was always grateful by the end of the milking. It was wonderful to watch the sun rise over the ridge and wake up as nature did. It was better than coffee.
And we were grateful. The one thing that Lily had been honest about was that Margot was very gentle and mild-mannered. I loved that she wasn’t a hassle, and I could take the kids milking with me when I went out.
Then we dried her up to go to a wedding.
We stopped milking her before traveling to our sibling’s wedding, and in the meantime, we needed to not have to milk her. It was about four weeks before her expected due date, and people often recommend longer dry periods for cows to give them a break and let the calf build up calcium stores. I was sad to stop milking but also grateful for the break. At the time I was 30 weeks pregnant. I was happy to have a few weeks of time off milking to get ready for baby and have extra rest before Margot calved.
Then one day, she seemed in labor.
It was very close to the early side of her expected due date. She had all the signs that I could tell, except that she had not bagged out. I have heard since this experience that cows can bag out right after they calve, but it’s usually one of the imminent signs of labor. We waited, and waited. Every night Ben and I would take shifts going out to check on her. We kept the dogs out at night to keep predators away. And we expected a calf at any minute. But this dragged on for a week, and soon she wasn’t acting in labor anymore.
We have gone to the vet out here once (another story for a different post) and have talked to the vet on the phone a few times. Our vet is over an hour away and will not do home visits. When we took Margot to the vet, we had to borrow a trailer again and take her all the way, waiting for hours to be seen. It was a very long day and an expensive trip. So we were not going to take her to the vet until there seemed to be signs of distress. And I was able to get advice from a vet friend over the phone who said if she’s not upset, she’s ok.
We tested her again.
We weren’t sure what that was, so moved on with life, hopeful that we had made a mistake. I used the last pregnancy test, and it said “very early or very late pregnant.” So I was sure all would be well and we’d have a calf in a matter of days.
Then, three months dragged by.
I had a baby December 15, and Margot never did. My mom was out to help me, and she noticed signs of heat in Margot. So we sort of gave up. I decided to calculate her pregnancy based on the very last day she could have been pregnant. And that was based on the day we bought her. And I added about ten days. And the latest possible due date came and went. In fact, I tracked another heat cycle right on time after my mom did.
Maybe she miscarried. Maybe she was never pregnant. I was really fooled if she was never pregnant, but that’s totally possible with my inexperience.
R.I.P. Margot
We spend a lot of money on hay where we live, and it was worth it because we could sell a certain amount of milk shares to help offset the costs. But we can’t afford ten months of a freeloader cow eating all our money away. So she will go to the freezer in March.
Are we getting another cow?
Yes. A milk cow is so worth it! So much milk and not much work makes it a necessity in our journey to self-sufficiency.
How to Buy a Cow: What you should take from our story:
- Don’t purchase emotionally. This is obvious, but important to remember. Hesitate for the best and don’t get impatient. It’s not worth it to get stuck with the wrong cow.
- Have someone who knows how to milk a cow come see the cow with you. We are really lucky that this aspect of Margot turned out to be true: that she was gentle and in milk. And I don’t actually mind that she had small teats, because it made me a better milker. But I think how a cow milks is the most helpful test to determine if a cow is worth it.
- Try not to buy long distance if possible, and either way, make sure you get reviews and health certificate before you give them any money.
- Buy the book “how to have a family milk cow
- Remember that “bred” does not necessarily mean pregnant. Ask them to confirm that she is bred before you buy, or bargain for a better price if you have access to A.I. or a bull.
- If you get a bad vibe, go with your gut. This is probably the biggest reason to make sure you don’t buy long distance, and if so, be willing to take a trip that ends in no cow. In the end it was really the bad feeling I got that first clued me in to the fact that there was something sketchy about Margot.
- If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. This is especially the case with how much milk they say the cow produces. Now we know that almost no cows will produce six gallons per day unless they are consuming grain, and even then, it’s unlikely.
Use our story as a cautionary tale, but remember our story has a happy ending
We will be the better for it. We will have freezers full of meat and it will be easier to make the right decision next time because we have experience. I know how to milk well now, and I at least know how not to buy a cow!
Margot was a great starter cow and if we didn’t dive in, we wouldn’t have any idea what we were missing. Experience is really valuable, and we are so grateful for it.
