Recently, I noted that the price for a store-brand block of butter had risen from $6.49 to $7.19. A 1kg block of store-brand cheese had gone from $11.99 to $12.99. And a 2 litre bottle of milk had risen from $3.00 to $3.50.

And it left me thinking. I have enough land to keep a house cow. There’s even a space in our existing herd of cows for an extra head or two of stock.

Should I be thinking about a house cow?

To help process my thoughts, I started writing them down. I run through this process whenever I’m thinking about/talking myself out of a wild new idea.

Many a lifestyle-block owner has jumped into animal ownership without thinking it through. I’m not innocent myself—I knew almost nothing about cattle when I inherited my first herd.

While it usually works out OK in the end, there’s a lot of pain and stress to experience in the meantime. Since we arrived here, I’ve completed a formal qualification in sustainable management practices, as well as learned a lot about gorse control and fencing. I’ve spent more than half-a-decade living it, learning, and paying attention.

And I guess that along the way, I’ve also learned to be critical of a situation before I dive in with optimism blazing.

What is a house cow?

A house cow is a cow which is milked for the occupants of a house. She is impregnated at around 2-3 years old. Once she’s given birth, she is able to be milked to supply the household.

To clear up any confusion, the house cow lives in a paddock with other cows, rather than inside the house.

They’re usually particularly friendly – that helps a lot when you’ve gotta get down there and milk by hand every day. You do not want a grumpy, anxious, or flighty house cow. Temperament and conditioning are important.

Of course, a house cow also comes with a daily responsibility to milk, particularly once their calf is weaned. And honestly, it’s that daily work that gives me the biggest doubts.

But while watching the prices of dairy go up and up and up, I began wondering how the numbers might shake out.

Dairy usage

Roughly, we go through a block of cheese in about 10 days; a bottle of milk about every 5 days; and a block of butter each week. There’s also a bit of cream, yoghurt, cream cheese and sour cream but they’re a lot less regular, so we’ll leave them aside for now.

So, $7.16 for butter multiplied by 52 weeks is $371.32.

$3.50 for milk multiplied by 73 bottles is $255.50.

And $12.99 for a block of cheese multiplied by 36 is $467.64.

Meaning our annual dairy spend at the current prices is around $1,100. There are pregnant house cows for sale on TradeMe for $1,130 + GST + transport. Roughly $1,400 all up.

Financially, a house cow would become “profitable” for our household in her second year. And it could be even less if we got one of our existing cows pregnant, rather than buying a pregnant cow (though, circling back to that ‘temperament’ problem, we don’t currently have a suitable cow).

Bonus cow

And, of course, that’s without considering the bonus cow you get out of the equation. Assuming that calf is born healthy and doesn’t need additional vet attention, there’s a lot of value in breeding cows.

After 6 months, that calf will be worth about $600. And after 2-3 years, it’ll be worth $1,500-$2,000.

Financially at least, a house cow isn’t a terrible idea. Even if there’s a couple of vet call-outs (for example, to steer a male calf or treat mastitis in the mother) during their lifetime, I think the whole endeavour ends up in the black pretty quickly.

I would have to figure out how to get the new calf registered on the NAIT (National Animal Identification and Tracing) system, but I don’t think that’s a biggie.

The real questions are where do I milk my house cow; and will I get up every single day to do so?

Infrastructure

Many other animals (goats, sheep, alpacas, pigs) have been ruled out simply because we don’t have the right fencing, and that alone is an investment that quickly runs into the tens-of-thousands.

But we’re already set up for cattle. All the basic infrastructure is there, making a house cow one of the easiest additions to make.

However, we do not currently have a place suitable for milking. We’d need to build it. It doesn’t need to be a flash milking shed, it just needs to keep us both safe and shelter us from the weather.

I’d need a spot to sit, a stall for the cow, a bucket to collect the milk, and perhaps some kind of feed-holder so we could give her additional food to keep her happy while we milk her.

Certainly, that’s a project. But we have most of the equipment and many of the materials we’d need. There’s no lack of space for such a thing.

After purchasing some treated poles, concrete for a floor, and some timber for framing, we’d probably get away with this for under $1,000. We’ve got enough roofing iron for the walls and roof. It would be basic, but I think it’s achievable. The investment could be recovered by selling the calf.

Longer term, we might want to invest in a milking machine. Those are going for around $2,000 on TradeMe so I’d probably sit and wait for one to come up at a good price. 

I imagine that would help a lot with the next consideration—my commitment.

Commitment

Frequently, what seems like a good idea at the time turns into a big hassle and my enthusiasm wanes. That’s not fair on the cow. If I do this, I have to consider my commitment first.

Beef cows require us to move them about once a week to a new paddock. We put out a salt block for them when it’s warm and humid. Their troughs are cleaned annually. Sometimes they need drenching, but we only do that if we need to.

Chickens are daily work, but it’s like a 10 minute job most of the time, and it’s never a long walk to reach them. Sometimes it’s more like an hour, but it’s not a huge daily commitment.

So far, all our options here on the farm are pretty relaxed. The day’s “farm jobs” can be completed relatively quickly. And when the weather is terrible, a small delay doesn’t mean anything of any consequence. It’s not a huge ask.

But a house cow is a whole other level. It’s daily work to get your cow, take her to the milking shed, milk her, and return her to the rest of the herd. And that does need to be done daily to maintain production.

I’d have to do it on days where it’s heaving with rain. It would need to be done if I were off-farm at a wedding, concert, or family emergency. If I were bed-bound with illness or injury; or it was snowing, or the hottest day ever recorded, I’d have to milk the cow.

And that’s the bit I’m struggling with.

Of course, once the milk is collected, at a minimum it needs decanting into bottles. But given butter and cheese is part of my thinking here, there’s also regular processing.

Production

So, assuming I can be bothered building a milking shed, purchasing and transporting a friendly pregnant cow, successfully aid her to give birth, and then begin milking her (something I’ve never done by hand) every single day, I’d then have to work out what to do with all the milk.

Soon after a cow gives birth, they produce a lot of milk. More than the calf needs. On a dairy farm, the calf is taken away and fed milk powder to maximise the mother’s output. But Happy Cow milk have proven there’s more than enough to share. If I let the calf have the morning’s milk, and milked in the afternoon, I suspect it would still be heaps.

As time progresses, the calf begins eating grass and the house cow produces less milk. This is when most farmers would dry her off and get her pregnant to increase production again.

But the cow can actually continue to produce milk for 2-3 years after pregnancy. The trick is to keep milking her.

Production drops off—you get less milk in the second year than you did in your first—but for a small household, it would probably be about right. 

So we’d have an excess of milk in Year 1, and then it’s probably be about the right amount in Year 2. In Year 3, I’d need to think about getting her pregnant again (which is yet another thing that I’m not quite going to ponder or research at this stage, but I reckon I could find an artificial insemination tech to come out).

Processing

Drinking raw milk is possible, and our small herd size tends to mean our cattle are healthy. But particularly in a world with a strain of pathogenic bird flu roaming around, it’s probably better to be thinking about pasteurisation. This is heating the milk to 71.5ºC for 15 seconds, and it kills the microorganisms which may be lurking in the milk.

Once it is pasteurised, it can be bottled and/or processed into other products. I’d also have the option to freeze it to use at a later time.

To get butter, I’d have to separate the cream from the milk, and then whip that cream until I get butter. This is fine and achievable with my blender.

I imagine our yoghurt intake would increase, as that’s a fairly straight-forward process too.

But cheese is harder. While soft cheeses are relatively simple to make at home, a block of edam is going to be more of a challenge—and a whole new set of skills to learn, not to mention equipment to buy.

I haven’t even begun the research on that, but it’s clear this will be the biggest part of the commitment. All of this probably requires a much larger freezer and refrigerator, as well as a full-sized kitchen.

The real cost of a house cow

Financially, I think it works out. Within 2-3 years our upfront spend would be paid back. But that’s before we account for the processing cost. Regular pasteurisation is definitely going to hit the energy bill, before we even start thinking about my new collection of cheesemaking accessories and whiteware.

Weighing it up, I think it’s fair to say it’s going to cost at least 700 hours of work (at least in the first year, I might be able to find efficiencies in time) in milking and processing.

The real cost of a house cow is time. My time.

700 hours multiplied by the (incoming) minimum wage of $23.50 is $16,450. That’s a lot of opportunity cost in the rest of my life. It’s time I could be applying to more pressing needs, or income-generating activity.

If I do this, I’m doing it to save money, rather than to get paid for my milk and cheeses. It’s not a new business (which would come with a whole other layer of food safety considerations and expenses), it’s just replacing the work I currently pay Fonterra to do for me.

At best, my neighbours might be willing to take the excess either for themselves, or their livestock (pigs love old milk). If I’m lucky, they might pay me in cash; but more likely it would be paid in kind.

Yet if I spent one year working 14 hours per week in a minimum wage job, I could pay for over a decade of our dairy consumption with my after-tax earnings.

When it comes to my time, the numbers do not come close to stacking up.

The learning curve

Long-term, once I have everything set up, a routine, and all the equipment, it would probably be fine. I’m sure it would be fine, and I would adjust, and my milk and cheeses would be freaking delicious. There would almost certainly be a massive improvement in quality.

But there’s a huge learning curve before we reach that point. I will absolutely screw up in ways I can’t even imagine right now. And it’s so easy to get distracted by side-quests.

Heck, this whole thing is a side-quest!

A house cow sounds really cool. There’s no physical or financial reason we couldn’t do it. It would probably save us money in the long term. But in the meantime I’d be distracted from more pressing needs—such as building an actual house with a kitchen big enough to do all of this.

So for now, I think the house-cow will remain hypothetical. The best course of action for me right now is to continue being curious: find someone to teach me how to milk a cow, perhaps take a cheesemaking class.

But it’s sitting in the back of my brain as a possibility, and maybe one day, I’ll decide this is how I do want to spend my time, and she won’t be hypothetical at all.