And that's what my father in law did until the 1950s when E.H. Maytag died and his heirs stopped the breeding program. In the 30's for a cow to be sold at a high price for breeding stock, or rather her progeny to be sold for a high price, she should give around 30,000 pounds of milk a year and 1000 pounds of butter fat...all this with out the hormones that are so often used today..Selective breeding produces cows who give more milk with fewer health problems, hogs that gain faster and produce less fat and more muscle.....but all this takes time and costs money. back in the 30's a bull calf that had good breeding, who's mother produced a lot of milk, could sell for $400, when a farm worker got $50 to $60 a month.
And that's why Claudia has a name instead of just cow #6.

Even NPR, geez, when did Monsanto buy them off?

Grain is not good for cattle. Period. It's not what they are meant to eat and I don't care how much more milk they produce or how quickly they get fatter for market, it's not healthy. Cows are ruminants and are meant to eat grass. There's also no mention of how much rBGH Claudia gets in that ration of feed.

NPR needs to educate themselves before they start with such nonsense, or else stick with "Prairie Home Companion". Ugh.

Annie

Is hay good for cows? My grandmother lived up the road from a dairy farm and I spent a lot of time there as a kid. We always gave hay to the cows in the barn. I think they were eating some kind of grain but were let out in the field for most of the day. It was fun to have them pull the hay out of your hand.

Pam, my hay IS grass, it's just dried. I feed my cattle grass hay, no alfalfa and in the summer they get pasture grass. It takes more good quality grass hay to keep them in top condition, but they don't seem to mind chewing more. That's what cows are meant to do, chew, regurgitate and chew some more.

They also get the leftover pumpkins and squash from the garden, they love those, and they get all the apples that are too icky to go into the cider press. Sometimes they get powdered sugar donuts, so they aren't technically organic, LOL.

Annie

That story just makes me sad.

Sally

There are a lot of people who took exception to that story and slant.

"V Adamski (grassfarmer) wrote:
Oh dear. City slicker Adam Davidson, (I normally love your reporting) really missed the mark on the dairy farm as an example of "giving a business shot at thriving" in a global economy. As a modern, organic grass-based dairy farmer I do indeed embrace the 4 principles reported as keys to success. 1) On our farm we've adopted appropriate technology (portable electric fence); we've been using corrective breeding for 20 years now; and we milk 90 cows in a modern New Zealand swing-style parlor; we run the farm completely on electricity generated by a 30kw wind turbine. 2) We stay focused on our "natural advantage" which is growing cool season pasture grasses better than anyone else. 3) We buffer against change by diversifying to pastured beef, poultry and hogs. 4) We make a premium, high quality, differentiated product consumers love - Organic Valley milk! Here's what we don't do. We don't feed commodity GMO corn and soybeans that are highly subsidized and may disappear in the next farm bill. This "perfect" corn-soy ration that allows "Claudia" to produce so much milk also puts her and her herd mates on the brink of acidosis. And when she is inevitably culled the e.coli in her corn-fed guts puts humans at risk. We don't use as much fossil fuels as other tractor intensive farms - since our cows graze they harvest their own feed and spread their own manure. Well, I could go on and on about the really modern, progressive and sustainable farms-but Ive got to go work with my apprentice (yeah, like plumbers and electricians - we train our replacements too)."

"Mia Crosthwaite (Mia8) wrote:
I am a dairy farmer in Idaho. There is nothing new in this story and it covers none of the costs of these advances like chronic health conditions, reduced ability to fight infection, early culling, etc. The perfect food for cows is grass! The last time the AI guy came to breed our cows he said many dairymen would love nothing more than for some semen from those 1930s cows to turn up so that they could recover what they've lost. NPR is off their game on this one."

"chris oconnell (chrisco) wrote:
I echo Evan Reiss (Familycows) comment regarding the notion that "we can formulate the "perfect" feed ration for cows is simply ridiculous. The perfect food for cows has existed for thousands of years. It is called "GRASS"."

It reminded me of soylent green. Or our scientists concocting Pringles and other food-like substances. We can conclude, like the farmer here regarding his cows, that if we feed the humans partially hydrogenated soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup, it is the magic formula. It works perfectly because they put on weight!

Michael Pollan talks about the ridiculous notion of our food scientists and really how clueless they are when breaking down food into its moleculur substances."

And that was just a few that I looked at.

I will watch for a more on this topic from NPR. They blew it for sure.