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Seedless cows

The BBC reports in this article about a new strain of cow isolated in New Zealand that makes milk that is low in saturated fats. The suggestion is that this could open up a whole new area of milk production, with cows making "skim milk" directly. One upshot there is that you no longer have to separate out so much fat yourself, and you're not stuck holding a bunch of fat you can't use.

The odd bit that clicked for me, but which wasn't mentioned in the article, is that surely dairy cattle with "low fat" milk can't properly feed their own young. After all, whole milk is pretty much exactly what a growing calf needs. Functionally, I'd expect these cattle to be like seedless fruit, requiring special outside assistance to get each new generation to grow.

Of course, I know so little about dairy production, I may be missing the fact that it's already done this way...

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on May 29, 2007 08:15 AM.

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