I’m not sure if you’ve picked up on this yet or not, but I am a big believer that everything on the homestead should be performing more than one function. From plants, to people, to livestock if you’re only providing for one function on the farm, well then you’re just 
slacking. Everyone must pull their weight! This brings to mind the traditional role of cattle on the farm. A family cow is just one of those iconic images that spring immediately to mind when I think of a traditional homestead. Every farm had a cow, and for good reason. Traditionally the family cow would provide for dairy, beef, and labor on the farm. The family farm cow was expected to pull their weight! Enter the American Milking Devon. She is a true throwback to that homestead helper of old.
The American Milking Devon (or AMD for short), is a living museum piece. She has been preserved through the hard work of enthusiasts (mainly on the east coast), and remains true to type of the old tri-purpose breeds of yesteryear. The typical AMD is of a type that performs well on a grass/forage based diet. No expensive inputs required to finish for meat or provide top quality dairy products. This is the cow that made Devon Cream famous! Sadly you will not find traditional Devon cattle in their homeland on the British Isles. All of those cattle have been selected for and “improved” to produce beef…not so the Milking Devon! She is a true multitasker in every sense of the word. Here at the Traditional Catholic Homestead we are developing our burgeoning AMD herd as the cornerstone for grass based dairying. The Milking Devon is said to produce Jersey quality milk (rich creamy milk high in butterfat) on a purely grass/forage diet, just not quite so much of it. Typically the AMD will yield 2-3 gallons per day instead of the 6 gallons plus you get from breeds selected for dairy only. This seems to be a little more on scale for what a homestead could reasonably use on a daily basis, couple that
with the lack of required high energy (i.e. grain) feed required for that higher dairy production and the AMD is a winner in the homestead dairy category! The beef from American Milking Devon cattle is said to marble easily on a grass based diet as well. Expect good yields of tender, high quality meat from your AMD. The animal will finish out in a reasonable time frame (typically 24 months or so). In that regard they tend to yield beef much sooner than most dairy animals and require less expensive inputs to finish than many beef breeds. Find out more about the American Milking Devon here (http://milkingdevons.org/). You’ll find our contact information on the Breeders page (we’re the only ones in Idaho and one of the few on the west coast!)
We chose this old breed with an eye towards the future. Being thrifty, hardy, and highly productive, we’re making the American Milking Devon the cornerstone of our homestead dairy and beef production. That being said we do keep a Jersey cow for dairy right now, and we have several head of Red Devon (cousin of AMD selected for beef production) cattle for beef. We keep a Milking Devon bull though, so we hope to breed a little versatility, and hardiness along with ease of keeping into the herd! Couple the American Milking Devon’s moderate size, versatility, ease of keeping, hardiness, and ability to thrive on a forage based diet and it’s easy to see why we think the AMD is going to be the perfect homestead cow!
keep fire safety in your designs a well…
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2012/07/how-to-prepare-your-homestead-for-wildfire.html
Have you had a chance to start milking your devons yet?
When we first got the devons we had one in milk, but didn’t have a good place to milk her at. I got her one time out in the pasture but nothing more. Since then we haven’t had one lactating so we got the jersey and built our portable stanchion. We should be calving anytime now and hopefully we can do a side by side comparison of the milking devon vs. The jersey milk!
Hi, David,
We clicked on your name/picture at the regenerative grazing group because your name is the same as a friend of Shawn’s from childhood (which is neither here nor there), but were delighted by the serendipity of finding your homestead in such a random way (we have a few things in common). I started reading this post hoping you were going to finally be the farmer from whom I could get a good answer about how long an AMD will tend to lactate. I love my Jerseys, and by now I feel like my genetic line is pretty well adapted to our grass/climate/methods, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Devons, and a couple of years ago I contacted a bunch of AMD breeders with the question “how does their lactation hold out over ten months?” and without exception every farmer told me they dry off of themselves by January or so. I didn’t know whether the animals really ‘dried off’ or if the farmer simply didn’t want to keep milking for the amount he was getting. We are on grass pasture year-round, no supplements except some hay when there’s ice on snow, and take what we get — a Jersey on stockpile in Feb might only give us eight pounds or so a day for a few weeks, but when it warms up and we get greenup, she’ll bounce right back up to the high teens or low twenties. This is important for us, because we stagger calvings over the summer, and wouldn’t ever want all the cows dry simultaneously. So, we’ll be watching to see how your Devons do for you. Good luck with your farming — sounds like your philosophy is well-founded —
Shawn and Beth Dougherty
That’s pretty awesomely random that you found us! As far as length of lactation I think there will be quite a bit of variability within the breed. If you can get your hands on a copy of M.Francis Guenon’s Treatise on Milch Cows he goes into pretty good detail on how to determine the quantity, quality, and length of lactation by examining the escutcheon of cows. Different hair patterns say a lot! It’s some old school knowledge from the mid 1800’s before there was such a thing as “animal science”!
As a living history interpreter, I can’t agree with this more. I love dual and triple purpose animal breeds and am glad that they are growing in popularity with the new “old-fashioned” farming movements.
I’ve had the privilege to learn to milk on two AMD/Shorthorn cross cows – the sweetest and easiest girls to milk by far in my experience (a night and day difference between them and the flighty Holsteins I later milked!). Their calves were also gentle (for bull calves, that is….). They did pretty well on the pastures, but the farmers always fed them a ration of hay and grain to keep them in top condition (they were on a public museum site, so it was quite important to keep them healthy).
If I ever convince my mother to get a cow, I do hope that it will be either an AMD or a Shorthorn. I miss milking them a lot!
Catherine Hawthorn
frugallyfancyfarmlass.blogspot.com
Thanks, Dave, I’ll look for Guenon —