Monday, June 30, 2014

How to buy the house cow ebook

My house cow eBook "Our Experience with House Cows" is available for purchase on Scribd.  Its only US$4.99, and it includes lots of information about keeping a house cow in Australia. 

If you don't want to go through all the Scribd/paypal effort, just send me an email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com and I can arrange to email it to you instead, with either a bank transfer or I can send a paypal invoice.

If you would like  see it on another site, just let me know where you like to download ebooks and I'll investigate.

photo shoot with Molly cow


this is how you buy from Scribd

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

How to tell if your house cow is on heat

If you want your cow to continue producing milk, at some stage she’s going to need to have another calf.  Essentially you have two options, either artificial insemination (AI) or a bull. We have tried both. If you’re going to use artificial insemination, talk to your vet a few weeks in advance and arrange with them to have the appropriate semen ready. You will need to call them again on the day your cow is in “standing heat” (explained below) and arrange for a house call. In total this only cost us $100, but we are only 10 km from town, a vet may charge considerably more if they have to travel further. There is no guarantee that artificial insemination will work the first time and you may need several visits to get the timing perfect. When the vet came, he just asked us to lead Bella to her bales, he didn’t need to restrain her any more than we do for milking. I was surprised how good Bella was, considering how much she kicks us when we are trying to milk her, she didn't seem to mind having the vet's hand up her rear end at all!  Read the rest of this article here on Eight Acres - the blog.

You might also be interested in:

Here's the full story about Bella and AI.

And keeping a bull on a small farm.

If you want to find out more about keep a house cow in Australian conditions, buy my house cow eBook here.



Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Our Experience with House Cows is now available

Our Experience With House Cows, by Elizabeth Beavis
Available from Scribd here for only $4.99 in .pdf format.

Have you ever thought about owning a house cow but don’t know where to start?  Do you dream of unlimited raw milk, manure and beef to complement your small farm activities?  “Our experience with House Cows” is an eBook written by a house cow owner to help other small farmers get started with a cow of their own.  The eBook is written for Australian conditions, particularly sub-tropical Queensland, but much of the information is applicable to cows and cow owners all over the world.  This eBook covers the basics of getting a cow, getting her in calf, milking her and caring for her calf, all using natural methods.  The final sections explain how to use all that milk to create delicious dairy products!  The eBook references several other cow, cattle and dairy books which are useful to the new cow owner and explain some aspects in more detail.  Go ahead, learn how to realise your house cow dream today!