How Now, Multi-Colored Cows?

After reading the blog post about our Bull Point hike on July 7th, Silvia Lange reminded Dick that an article in the Marin Agricultural Land Trust's newsletter explained why we have some many different colored cows in West Marin. Here's that article:

THE COLOR OF COWS

How now, brown cow—but why so few of them in Marin County? The answer involves economics, environment and, to a degree, successful marketing.

The cattle dotting our rolling hills are mostly black-and-white Holstein-Friesians, the chief dairy animal in California. There are many Black Angus, too, raised for beef and cross-breeding. You’ll spot brown-and-white Herefords, also raised for beef, and every once in a while someone experiments with an exotic breed—Texas Longhorn, Brahman, Charolais, or Limousin. What we seldom see in Marin are the “classic” picture-book dairy breeds of Guernsey and Jersey. There’s a reason for that.

Holstein-Friesian is a Dutch breed, large and rugged and sturdy. A market-weight cow will be as much as 1,250 pounds, and a full-grown bull weighs nearly a ton. These typically docile animals (though the bulls can be fierce; don’t tease them) are ideally suited for grazing on Marin’s grassy hills, as they have large middles and will consume large amounts of forage. Significantly for California dairy farmers, the fat content of Holstein milk is the lowest of any major dairy breed.

“With all the grass we have in West Marin, the English breeds like Hereford and Angus do really well because they were originally bred to thrive on English pastures,” points out rancher and current malt Board chair Sam Dolcini. “Holsteins are the workhorses of dairy breeds with a big engine designed to produce lots of milk. Jerseys are more like sports cars, with smaller and higher-revving engines that deliver more performance in the form of protein and fat.”

The dairying counties of New England are where you’ll see fawn-colored Guernseys and Jerseys. The dairy industry there produces high-fat-content milk for butter, cheese, and ice cream. The natural fat content of Guernsey milk is about five percent; Jerseys produce milk with even more fat, about 5.3 percent. Both breeds are smaller than Holstein-Friesians, and graze successfully on the rocky New England pastures.

In contrast, dairying in California since World War II has been chiefly a commodity industry structured to produce low-cost milk for drinking rather than high-fat milk for processing into cheese and other dairy products. That’s why Holstein-Friesian dominates here. While Marin cheese production has lately blossomed, this development is too recent and not yet large enough
to impact the choice of cattle. Elsewhere in California, commodity milk production is the primary feature of the dairy industry, which means Holstein-Friesians are always readily available to California dairy farmers, including farmers in Marin.

Everyone knows that Black Angus produce flavorful, tender beef. We know this because of a highly effective marketing campaign carried out by the Certified Angus Beef organization. “They’ve done such a good job that now a lot of the black cattle you see aren’t Angus at all,” says Sam. “There are black Limousin and Gelbviehs too. Black is perceived by a lot of people to be a color of quality, and breeders are responding to that.” Angus are good breeders, and they’re used as crossbreeders not just to impart color but to improve milk quality and breed out horns. They carry the dominant gene for natural “polling,” or hornlessness. Horns can cause bruises and other wounds in a riled-up herd.

The Hereford steer, with rusty brown on the sides and back and white on the belly, face, and tail switch, is one of the primary beef animals in the United States. It’s a very old breed, originating from English cattle raised in Herefordshire that were cross-bred with Flemish cattle. They were originally used as draft animals on English farms due to their enormous strength and size of up to 3,000 pounds.

“Every once in a while someone tries something new out here,” says Sam. “There are a few Shorthorns, which is another English breed, in West Marin too. There have been a few Longhorns on occasion, and there are even a few Brahma cattle with the big humpy
backs out near Nicasio right now. If you find out what those cattle are doing out there, let me know!”
—(By Steve Bjerklie)