Jersey vs Brown Swiss milk

[coffee joe]

In a commercial dairy, the calves are removed from the cow at birth. This has many reasons, most of all ease of management. Some cows, especially first birth heifers, can take a stronger than normal attachment to the calf and "hide" milk. Some can even go as far as to not allow milking without the presence of the calf. 
Here, we bottle feed Colostrum for 5 days then train the calves to drink milk, 2X/day, from a small bucket. This way we know exactly how much milk the calf is getting. We start our calves on pellet feed at 5 days and wean as soon as they are consuming 2 lb/day and 1 lb of hay, normaly 60-70 days.
In cases where the cow won't let milk down, rare with European breeds, 1/2ml of oxytocin fixes the problem. Talk to your vet. Retained milk can cause udder problems, excess milk for the calf can cause diarrhea. 

[Homestead]

Personally I would not give the oxy, she is not having a problem letting the milk down, she is holding back on purpose and you would have to give it each milking which is not cost effective and also not good long term.  Oxy is great if you have a stressed first time heifer or something along this line that needs physical help/training to relax the teat canal.  Your problem is very normal with all cows that have had the calf left on them.  Once done you can try different methods of milking her to find what will work the best for her and the calf.  I would try to separate them until you milk, then bring the calf in next to her but don't put the calf on her.  With the calf so close that should stimulate her to release  the milk (this doesn't always work though, they are very smart).  Milk her out completely then put them together until night if you milk in the morning visa versa.  So you are seperating them for about 12 hours before you milk.   Also, if that is not an option, just massaging the udder and rubbing with warm water and peppermint oil will also stimulate her to let it down.  You could pull the calf now and try to teach the calf to be bottle fed but this is very hard this late in the game.   

[darius]

Info posted here has been very enlightening, many thanks.

I've been buying 100% Jersey milk, albeit homogenized, from a new local dairy. I have assumed higher fat because it's Jerseys. Foolish me. Today when I bought some, I looked at the label to see what the fat% is. Now I'm really annoyed, because it is just 3.3%. Obviously they skim a LOT of the cream off. I knew they sold excess cream to another local dairy for ice cream, but I assumed that was what came from their skim and non-fat milk.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Store bought whole milk is not straight out of the cow that has been pasteurized. They skim like crazy and standardize the fat content. So from a fat content perspective, there is not much difference between breeds of cows. The larger milk producers bring in milk from hundreds of farmers and blend it together anyway.

The whole homogenization thing was a marketing ploy from the beginning so the dairies could skim as much cream off as they wanted. Since the cream no longer floated to the top, nobody could see what they were/are missing. They spun the PR to convince everyone that homogenization was a good thing.

[susanky]

  So you are seperating them for about 12 hours before you milk.   Also, if that is not an option, just massaging the udder and rubbing with warm water and peppermint oil will also stimulate her to let it down.  You could pull the calf now and try to teach the calf to be bottle fed but this is very hard this late in the game.

Farmer told me he got 7 gallons (2 cows) last night so I was optimistic.  But darn if they wouldn't let their milk down.  We got less than 3 gallons from both.  So we got the babies out and parked them by momma.  (Massaging did not help).  Got another gallon and a half.  They are holding out on me!  Moms are away from babies all day until milking then with them all night.  Another farmer told me his cows will always let their milk down when they hear country music.  Has to be country.  I don't know.  That's what he says.  At this point may be worth a try.

Darius... sounds like someone is holding out on you too! 
Susan

[Homestead]

How funny with the music!  Most cows get used to their routine and when you change things up on them it makes them very uncomfortable...which makes them stressed which changes their hormones which then makes the teat canal tighten.  This is referred to as "parlor stress".  Keeping them comfortable (country music :)and so on will help with that.  That is why oxytocin was brought up.  To me it's not a good fix though.  It will be hard for you to change anything at this point other than reversing the set up, depending on the age of the calf each calf will consume about 3 or so gallons a day.  So you can see that if she milks out about three gallons for you then she is probably producing about 6 a day which is normal.  If she was my cow that I just got with the calf on her, I would pull the calf if the calf was young enough.  It would be a hard day or so, but it doesn't take much time for everyone to adjust.  If however the calf is older, it is next to impossible to do this.  We never put the babies on the moms although I know a lot of people do.  Dairy cows have been bred up so much that they produce far more than they originally produced.  In the 1700 dairy cows produced about 3 gallons a day.  There for the calf could completely empty the udder and the cow would have a very healthy udder.  With how much they produce now, the calf can no way empty the udder  they will nurse one quarter out then mess around with the others and you will end up with a low producing cow with irregular teats and issues with congestion and mastitis.  So, to have a maximum yeild, an even udder and teats and a healthy calf it really is best to pull the calf.  But like I said it can be done to leave them on...it's just a lot of work to make sure the udder gets milked out completely and so on....as you can see.  Sorry if this isn't a quick fix.  Let me know how things go!   Good Luck!