Colostrum - It's Not Just for Baby Calves

Luna, our new baby calf, has discovered where the milk comes from and needs no more help from us. She hits her head on Daisy's bag, making the milk drop and then she moves from teat to teat, drinking vigorously until she's full.  Luna can't drink the quantity of milk that Daisy produces, even though Daisy's milk hasn't fully come in yet.  There is still a bit of colostrum in the milk.  Once Luna shows us that she's bored, we know that she's got enough colostrum/milk in her belly.  At that point we gently move her out of the way, clean up Daisy's teats with a soapy rag, and then milk her completely out.

Colstrum/Milk mixture

When Daisy's milk comes in, we'll definitely get more than this, and it won't have the bright yellow tint of the contents of these jars.  On the second day after the calf is born, we like to milk out the colostrum and freeze it as a sort of insurance policy if we should ever need to thaw it and give it to a calf in the future.

Understanding that cow colostrum has health benefits for humans, we tried to drink straight colostrum as well, but I'll be honest, I don't like the taste or the consistency.  It has a thickness to it that fools you into thinking that it would be like drinking melted ice cream - except it is not sweet and is kind of "oily".

Colostrum for us

The colostrum is thicker than milk, like cream and rises to the top.  After a couple of days, Daisy is producing enough milk so that the colostrum in it can just be shaken up and consumed without really noticing, and that's just what we do.    

THIS ARTICLE gives a lot of good information on the health benefits of drinking colostrum.  It goes into great detail, but here is a quick summary of what colostrum does for you:

It builds, repairs, strengthens and restores:
~the hormonal system back to levels associated with youth
~the immune system to it's top fighting form
~the digestive system to it's optimal function
~and it even provides you with every basic essential nutrient known

The article goes on to say, interestingly, that when the Australian Olympic swim team won a bunch of gold medals in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, they attributed part of their success to using colostrum supplements.  While we won't be swimming in the Olympics anytime soon, we are drinking colostrum in hopes of benefiting from some of the healing properties mentioned above.