Milk, Dutch Belt Cows - Using In Making Cheese

[swcosta]

Anyone have experience making cheese from Dutch Belted cows?  We have a small herd of them where we pasteurize and bottle their milk to sell and are now also interested in making cheese to sell?  What are the best kinds of cheese to make from their special milk qualities?  They have a naturally homogenized milk with a 3.5 to 4 % butterfat.  Any info or help would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

[tnsven]

I'm guessing you can make any type of cheese with your special cows milk!  Why not start w/ some fresh cheeses?

[linuxboy]

What are the protein levels?

[ArnaudForestier]

Interested in this - just attended a very interesting evening put on by Wisconsin Cheese Originals, and had a post-evening talk with Blair Johnson, artisan cheesemaker for Cedar Grove Cheese here in WI.  He turned me on to It's Not You, it's Brie - specifically, an article on heritage breeds.  (I had asked the French researcher, the guest lecturer, on how her research touched on breed selection among the respondents of her study, relative to the talk's overall subject of raw milk and "terroir" in WI cheeses).

I was piqued from the article to see that Sr. Noella Marcellino's ("The Cheese Nun") convent, where she makes St. Nectaire, uses Dutch Belted.  FYI.

[Oude Kaas]

Paul, Try to get the documentary about Sister Marcellino, really entertaining and interesting. It's available on Netflix.http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2231950

And perhaps read the following article. It is the paper she et all wrote about her geotrichum research. A must read.
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/58/11/3448

I make cheese from Jersey, Ayrshire and Holstein milk. There's a real difference.

[smilingcalico]

Thanks for the link Oude, I recently saw the show, definitely interested to read the material.

[ArnaudForestier]

Paul, Try to get the documentary about Sister Marcellino, really entertaining and interesting. It's available on Netflix.http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2231950

And perhaps read the following article. It is the paper she et all wrote about her geotrichum research. A must read.
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/58/11/3448

I make cheese from Jersey, Ayrshire and Holstein milk. There's a real difference.

Thanks, Jos.  Yep, I love the DVD, and I've got the article - really fascinating stuff. 

Late in reply, as I just got back from a multi-day grazing conference.  Met a genetics guy from Normandy (sells Normandy and Montbelliard embryos, also tarentaise semen and a ton of others for x-breeding), asked a ton of questions on cattle breeds along with a wealth of information on dairying, and grass-based farming in general...so much to digest, an incredible experience.  Once I've had a chance to breathe it in a bit, will be posting some of what I've gone through over the last week (that would include an evening with a French researcher, who studied WI raw milk cheeses in terms of the concept of terroir...