Free Milk by Anne Mendelson Page B

latter-day American relative might be between nine hundred and one thousand pounds.
    Beecher Arlinda Ellen, a black and white behemoth who at maturity weighed 1,750 pounds, cannot ever have reminded anyone of an antelope. She and Bessy were poles apart on any scale of dairy-cow values. But both exemplify a talent that breeders have been exploiting and amplifying for the last two centuries: the gift of converting more of what they eat and drink into milk than other cows. At one glance cows of advanced dairy type, whether tiny or enormous,are easy to tell from beefy counterparts who put more food energy into gaining weight than lactating. They are not exactly gaunt, but their pelvic bones jut starkly from hollow, angular flanks and their ribs are either plainly or almost visible under a very thin layer of flesh. Their entire system is concentrated on making milk, not infrequently to the point of endangering life and limb.
    But what are we calling milk? The Bessies of the dairy world direct a phenomenal amount of caloric energy from their food into manufacturing a rich, concentrated source of nutrients, chiefly milk proteins and milkfat but also important amounts of lactose and minerals. The Ellens also channel just about everything they ingest into milk—extraordinary volumes of milk so diluted that it can almost be said to have been watered inside the cow. (The average milkfat percentage from Ellen’s famous 1975 lactation—2.9—was far below the mingy federal minimum standard of 3.25 percent for whole milk.) Genetic propensities to give richer milk and more milk tend not to go together. It’s possible to manage both, but not easy. The first is economically advantageous if the milk is intended for purposes likebutter- or cheesemaking. The second became the be-all and end-all for many or most dairy farmers when golden opportunities opened up in the fluid-milk market.
    A “COW OF THE FIRST CLASS,” CIRCA 1860
    Early nineteenth-century Englishbreeders tackling the quantity-quality equation produced the progenitors of four major breeds that later were adopted and revamped by American dairymen: the Channel Islands cattle (Jerseys andGuernseys), the somewhat larger, lyre-horned red and whiteAyrshires, and a branch of the beefyDurham, or Shorthorn, race specially engineered for milk. Later in the century American breeders began experimenting with a strapping, strong-framed Alpine cow that would become the AmericanBrown Swiss. They also became interested in a large black and white (sometimes red and white) kind from the northern Netherlands that was first called “Dutch” or “Friesian.” In most countries its descendants still have the name “Friesian,” but American breeders unaccountably preferred “Holstein-Friesian” or just “Holstein.”
    Literally dozens of other breeds have their adherents on the American dairy scene, but the ones we hear about most in popular reporting are Jerseys and Holstein-Friesians. Cows like Ellen—you probably don’t need to be told that she was a Holstein-Friesian—are what food writers generally associate withthe latter. It’s a wrong stereotype, for there are many Holstein-Friesian dairy herds managed at least as much for quality as quantity of milk. To farmers who grew up understanding flavor, quality means rich percentages of both milkfat and “SNF,” or “solids nonfat,” which includes everything else except water. Nonetheless, the real reason that Holstein-Friesians now make up more than 90 percent of today’s U.S. dairy-cow population has to be volume, both in its own right and in relation to milk-production costs per cow. The average yield per year ofJersey cows is now about 16,000 pounds of milk, compared to 21,500 pounds for Holstein-Friesians.
    The picture really isn’t all that simple. Because manybreeds can have particular virtues, dairy herds with “grade” stock (purebred or close to it, but not officially registered), mixed stock, or deliberate crosses of