Don't believe the pastoral, benevolent ads of the dairy industry...

http://www.alternet.org/story/145378/got_milk_a_disturbing_look_at_the_dairy_industry

It's only a matter money and suffering...

I've always wanted a dairy cow. I love goats - goats are wonderful pets, smart, resourceful, and all around sweet animals. Their milk is secondary to me - I just love to have them around. Their milk is naturally homogenized, and I'm told that goat butter, if you can wait for the cream to separate, is sublime.

The down side to goats are the baby bucks. They grow up smart, resourceful and maybe not so sweet, have some really disgusting behaviors which are natural, and they will smell - oh - will they stink! Unless you have them debudded at an early age which also destroys the scent gland, neighbors in a mile or more radius, that you have a billy.

But to keep your family in milk and possibly (I can't do this), meat from the bucklings, the does have to be bred.

But back to cows. I've always wanted a soft-eyed Jersey in the yard. I love milking goats. But I'd love to have a cow. Just one.

The cute ads the California Dairy Council puts out with the talking Holsteins, are fun to watch and make you believe that all cows have emerald green pastures and live well into old age comfortably, by beneficent farmers who are their caring custodians until they are found dead of old age in their pasture, under a tree.

Not so.

You read something like this and you want to rescue a cow. I remember a truckload of dairy cows from a local farmer in Oregon who once stopped at a store and we started talking. Beautiful Holsteins were going to a feedlot. Iwanted to keep every one of them. I do not dare go to a livestock auction. Ever.

So maybe, for the people who want them, goats or cows should be allowed in most communities, gated or not, and the city fathers relax zoning for small stock. If you want to feed your families "good stuff", then you should be allowed to do so. Sell the composted manure to friends with gardens.

You shouldn't have to fearful of what goes into the food that you eat, even (rather, especially) if it's milk.