Everyday work: the breeds
Milking, grazing, carting and the daily life of a herd.
Most of the life of cattle is ordinary work: milking at dawn and dusk, walking out to graze, carting, ploughing, gathering dung for fuel and plaster, and walking home. In India most dairy cattle are kept in small herds of one to a few animals by village families, and milk is collected through cooperatives. In the Alps a herd may spend the summer on a mountain pasture with one herder. In South Sudan a boy may grow up in a cattle camp, and in Texas a rancher may check cattle on horseback.
The village herd in India
In an Indian village, cattle are usually kept at the house, tied in a shed or under a tree, and fed on crop leftovers, cut grass and some bought feed. Women do much of the daily work of feeding and milking. Milk is sold to a village collection centre, often run by a cooperative. Operation Flood, from 1970 to 1996, built the cooperative system from the model of the dairy cooperatives of Anand in Gujarat, and India is now the world's largest milk producer.
Dung, carts and fuel
Cow dung is mixed with straw and dried in cakes for fuel in much of rural India, plastered on floors and walls of mud houses, and spread on fields as manure. In many homes, dung is also used in ritual: a fresh dung wash on the floor for festival mornings, and small dung figures for Govardhan Puja. Bullock carts, though fewer than before, still carry harvests, water and goods on village roads in South Asia.
The milking day
On most dairy farms, cows are milked twice a day, morning and evening, though some herds are milked three times a day or by robotic systems that let the cow choose. Calves are fed, water is checked, and the herd is moved between paddocks or fed in the shed. In the Alps, milk from summer pasture is made into cheese the same day. Dairy farming is one of the few kinds of farming with no days off.
Herding and ranching
In pastoral societies, children often begin herding young, taking calves and small stock out near the camp. Among the Mundari and Dinka of South Sudan, cattle camps are home for much of the dry season, with dung fires burning through the night. On a ranch in the Americas or Australia, the working day may mean checking water, fences and grass over thousands of hectares, on horseback, by vehicle or from the air.
Worth knowing
- Operation Flood: India's dairy cooperative programme
- Village milk cooperatives: The Anand model of Gujarat
- Bullock cart: Still a working vehicle in rural South Asia
- Dung cakes: Fuel and plaster in rural India
- Cattle camps: Dry-season homes of the Mundari and Dinka
- Alpine dairy huts: Summer cheese-making on the alp
Sources and further reading
Original text by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Everyday work on EveryCow
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