Category Archives: Dairy Cows

Sale! We’re Having an Independence Day Sale!

Let’s celebrate Independence Day with a sale worthy of fireworks!

We’re proud of our American made products. Made in the USA, they keep our dollars in not just our country but in our communities. That’s cause for celebration!

We’ll start our sale with a store-wide $10 coupon on purchases over $99. Enter code USA4th in the box at checkout. The code is good starting today through Sunday, July 6th, 2014.

The following items are marked at their sale price on the website and the prices are set until the end of July.

One Sale! The Ultimate Cheese Press

The Ultimate Cheese Press

The Ultimate Cheese Press is made for home cheese makers, designed and manufactured by the owner of Homesteaders Supply right here in the USA!  Made from a beautiful grained hard maple, with a lighter basic color with various shades of darker marbling. Each press is as unique as the wood its made from.  $165, the lowest price we’ve been able to offer in a long time.

Our new video by Wardeh Harmon, founder of GNOWFGLINS, is in and features a press treated with organic coconut oil.

Italian Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit

On Sale! Italian Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit

Italian Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit

This Italian Mozzarella Cheesemaking kit is for making real Italian Mozzarella and is exclusively from Homesteader’s Supply!  Most mozzarella recipes call for using citric acid, vinegar or lemon.. making your cheese in about 30 minutes, an easy way to get what you want fast.  But, if you would like to try an old fashioned way to make the best mozzarella you have ever tasted, try our kit where the recipe uses a special Italian culture instead of citric acid, that adds a very unique old-world flavor to this cheese. And of course, the extra time involved making this cheese also enhances the great flavor.  $53.50

Squeezo Strainer and Sauce Maker – Delux

On Sale! Squeezo Strainer and Sauce Maker - Delux

Squeezo Strainer and Sauce Maker – Delux

Free Shipping on the Squeezo Strainer and Sauce Maker – Delux

Making homemade tomato sauce, applesauce and preserves is no longer a chore when you use the All Metal Squeezo Strainer and Sauce Maker, now with Stainless Steel Screens! The Squeezo Strainer made by Best Products today is the same as the old Garden Way Squeezo Strainer later made by Lemra Products. Made the same as it was 25-30 years ago and still made in the USA.

Cherry Pitter Deluxe

On Sale! Cherry Pitter Delux

Cherry Pitter Delux

Delux Cherry Pitter. Made in the USA! Now on sale at $199.00 AND we give you free shipping!

New and improved Cherry Pitter that will easily remove the pits of five cherries at a time, even the largest diameter cherries. It is USA Made and is all stainless steel. The design easily removes the pits without losing the cherries’ juice. With a quick pull of the handle the stones are discarded and the cherries drop into a container below.

Stainless Steel Milking Pail with Chime

On Sale! Stainless Steel Milking Pail with Chime

Stainless Steel Milking Pail with Chime

Stainless Steel Milking Pail with Chime – 13 QT.  Made in the USA!  This is the best pail!  Made in USA. It’s seamless and has no welds! Our sale price is $84.50, a savings of 14%!

Top Outside Diameter: 12-1/4″, Height: 9-1/2″, Bottom Diameter: 8-3/8″, Pail Thickness: Bottom and top rim are .105 (12 gauge) and sides are drawn (flowformed) to between .012 and .015 (28 to 30 gauge).

Porta Milker Milking Machine

On Sale! Porta Milker Milking Machine

Porta Milker Milking Machine

We need to talk!  Give us a call to receive $100 off the Porta Milker Milking Machine. (928) 583-0254

Complete set up:  2 Wheel Porta-Milker Base Unit with Electric Motor, 65# Stainless Steel Bucket & Lid Assembly, and Milking Cluster Assembly to milk One Cow!

We give you personalized service, with added instructions for cleaning the natural, organic way, and we are available to help you with any questions you have about the set up and use of our product.  We don’t just say that we give you good customer service…we actually do it!

When A Bull Comes to Visit…

We had to dry Cookie cow off for the move from Arizona to Wisconsin and now that we’re here… we are all going through milk withdrawal! Cookie has had over four months to acclimate and is doing very well. We decided it was time for her to have a friend come and visit. The man we bought hay from has a nice size herd of beef cattle and said he had a few too many bulls now that everyone has bred their cows. He offered to bring a young one over for a few months to visit Cookie in hopes that we’d keep him all winter.
As bulls go… he’s as sweet as can be! That being said… HE IS STILL A BULL! We are very mindful of where he is when we are feeding, mucking stalls and scooping poop in the pasture. We have two paddocks and a cross fence between the arena and the big pasture. If we are doing anything that requires focus… we lock up the bull first.

I wasn’t always so aware of bull behavior. About four years ago I had a bull come to visit the girls and one day when I let them in for milking, he darted in right with them. In the confusion of two hungry cows full of milk and a feisty bull, I was pinned up against a metal gate and couldn’t move out of the way. The bull had stepped on the toe of my boot and I was unable to move my foot at all, let alone get away from his head. Luckily he was naturally polled so he didn’t have the horns with which to skewer me, but he did pound me into that gate a few times before I was able to get a hold of a shovel and thump him in the head to back off! It took some time to heal my lower back from that pounding and I’m thankful it wasn’t a more serious injury. Bulls are necessary for those who choose not to go the artificial insemination route and an ounce of knowledge is worth it’s weight in gold!!!!
When it’s time to breed the cow, don’t be afraid of having a bull come to visit. Instead, I’d urge you to plan ahead. Have pens available to lock the bull into so you can spend time with your cow and clean up without having to have a ‘look out’. Being safe and planning ahead will make the process a fond experience. Now, it’s time for me to go and lock up our visiting bull and clean up some poop!!! Wishing you all a great Sunday.

Happy Homesteading !!!!

Homesteader’s Supply Featured in Podcast with GNOWFGLINS!

The folks here at Homesteader’s Supply enjoy Wardeh’s work at GNOWFGLINS very much. She does an amazing job on her e-courses and podcast which help other homesteader’s learn the lost traditions of food preservation, cheese making and all things homesteading! Wardeh recently invited both Jerri and myself (Nance) to be a part of her teaching endeavor!

I was featured a couple of weeks ago in a Podcast on raw milk and keeping a family cow. Wardeh and I had a great conversation about our move from Arizona to Wisconsin and how all of us, including Cookie cow, handled the move. We talked about cheese making a bit, but more about how to keep a cow healthy and why we put all that work into milking a cow twice a day! You can hear the podcast by clicking on this link or on any of the photos of me below.
Jerri was also featured this week on Wardeh’s podcast discussing cheese making and the “Ultimate Cheese Press” manufactured by Homesteader’s Supply. They talked about why make your own cheese? How to get started with some easier recipes and how to troubleshoot when thing go wrong. Listen to Jerri from her home in Arizona talking with Wardeh on this Podcast.
We hope you enjoy the podcasts and welcome any feedback you have! 
Happy Homesteading!!!!!!

Udder Care Kit! Works for cows, goats, sheep!

This kit provides 3 necessary items for caring for your animals udders/teats. And you get enough to last quite a while! I swear by each and every one of these products… Cookie cow tested and Cookie cow approved. We went the entire year without any mastitis issues!!!!!

1 gallon Foam-N-Dip™ is a ready-to-use iodine teat dip that contains foaming agents, glycerine and lanolin. Foam provides superior coverage with less dip by extending the time of contact with the teat and by reducing waste and drippage. Foam-N-Dip™ may be applied with the Ambic Foaming Dip Cup. Contains .6% Iodine.

4 MultiFoamer Dip Cups, 4 different colors so you know which one belongs to which animal. Set comes with one green, one blue, one orange, and one yellow. Foam dipping can cut chemical usage up to 50%. New MultiFoamer makes a thick clinging foam which stays in contact with the teat for a longer time. MultiFoamer features more consistent foam generation, easier cleaning, built-in valve protection, and suitability for various types of foaming chemicals including Coburn Foam-N-Dip Foaming Iodine Dip. All Ambic Dip Cups are made of tough, durable, chemical resistant materials and have a soft squeezable bottle with wide mouth for easy filling.

1 Complete CMT Mastitis Test Kit The California Mastitis Test is an easy, accurate and inexpensive cow side mastitis test. Simply collect milk from each quarter into the four cups of the paddle and squirt in the reagent for an immediate positive or negative reaction. Complete kit consists of 4-cup test paddle, squeeze bottle reagent dispenser, directions, and 16 oz. bottle of CMT concentrate, enough for 1 gallon of reagent.

I add to this routine a stainless steel bucket filled with warm water and two terry cloth towels, one with a bit of soap… she gets washed and rinsed before each milking!!! What do you do to keep your cow or goat free from mastitis and maintain healthy milk????

Cookie has COOTIES!!!! ok… Lice… or Mites….

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged… time seems to skip a few beats when spring is arriving and so much needs done on the farm. One of those things gave me the idea for this blog… Cookie has COOTIES!!!! Actually, she has small bald dots on her face. I noticed it one day about a week ago and thought she was rubbing her cheek on the fence… she does that when she’s shedding really bad and it itches her. Then I noticed some bare patches behind her ear, though I thought still it could be scratching. Yesterday was when I began to suspect bugs… not because I saw bugs or saw eggs… but because she developed small bald dots where bald dots would be hard to get from scratching on a fence…. between her ribs! So, off to the feed store I went in search of Ivomec Eprinex pour on. Yes… we do carry it on the site, but we were waiting on stock to arrive and my girl had BUGS!!! So, I go to Olsen’s and they are out too!!! I know D.E. is the organic way to go… and I have a fifty pound bag… and I get that if applied every day for ten days that it should take care of the little critters… but COOKIE HAD BUGS!!!! (I’m not a big fan of eight legged critters that suck on blood) Needless to say, the lady at the store offers me Ivomec injection which I quickly point out to her explicitly states NOT TO USE ON DAIRY COWS! So I dug through the shelf until I found a powder that was safe for dairy cows and had zero milk withdrawal… main ingredient is D.E.! LOL (D.E. is diatomaceous earth which is a long way of saying ground up coral which is so fine it injures the bugs when ingested.) So, Cookie has been dusted and will be treated with the Ivomec Eprinex when it comes in next week. I’ll take new pictures once I figure out that the bugs are gone and the hair is growing back. Here’s to a less buggy spring!!! Keep your fingers crossed that the bugs are doomed!!

Happy Homesteading!!!

Drinking at the Milking Bar!

Milking bars are one of those inventions that really make a difference for dairy farmers – both big operations or just a couple of cows. Often times calves are pulled from momma once the colostrum is consumed, especially in dairies… and rather than using the hand held bottles to feed each calf, milk bars were created to feed many calves at once. I decided to share the wonders of milk bars tonight because we import these items from New Zealand (no, we could not find a USA made milk bar) and the prices are due to go up… apparently because of a weakening US dollar. If you have any interest in purchasing a milk bar for your calves, lambs or goats… now would be a good time before prices increase!