THE BATTLE OF THE MILK

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In THE BATTLE OF THE STEW, beef stew comfortably won, with gumbo, chili con carne and paella coming next in the poll.

It's now the turn of milk to do battle. Strictly speaking, milk is produced from the mammary glands of mammals. Traditionally humans have consumed milk from the mammary glands of domesticated animals like cows, sheep, goats, buffalos, camels, yaks, reindeer and llamas. And of course human babies have long suckled from their mothers breasts. As far as I'm aware, humans are the only animals that regularly drink milk, both during and after infancy, of other mammals.

But in recent times, because of the rise of vegetarianism and veganism, substitute milks have been made from nuts and plants.

My father was a dairy farmer. He had a herd of about 120 cows that he milked twice a day to sell milk to a local dairy. My brother, who took over my Dad's farm, is still a dairy farmer but he sells his milk at a slight premium to a large German yogurt company, Müller.

I learnt a lot, especially about sex, on my Dad's dairy farm. At first, up to my teens, it seemed blissful. I would fetch the cows up to be milked while walking the dog. Cows were always keen to be milked because they were fed with a special meal while being milked. But it dawned on me that dairy farming was about primarily about cows and not bulls. My Dad always kept a bull to impregnate his cows though he often used artificial insemination. It was known as AI, so it's not the AI that's in the news now.

I soon realised that the cow's offspring were taken away from her so she could be milked and her milk was then to be used for human consumption. Female calves were raised on powdered milk substitute, and after being impregnated and giving birth, they would join the herd. Male calves would be fattened and sold for beef.

Most meat we eat is male meat. Females, whether cattle, sheep or chickens, are kept back from the abattoir or slaughterhouse. Their role is to reproduce and produce milk or eggs. Females only get sent to the abattoir when they can no longer reproduce and go dry (or are too doddery to walk quickly to the milking parlour). Dairy farming is quite a brutal and sexist world.

But dairy farming taught me a lot about sex. I'd often see a bull humping a heifer (a virgin cow) or a cow. And then there'd be a birth. I also realised that there's less need for males than females. One bull can service a lot of cows. The other bulls can be eaten! When I organised sex parties for couples, it became clear that females were more important than males.

My favourite types of milk are coconut milk, condensed milk (especially Carnation evaporated milk), cow milk, cream, and flavoured milk, with milk powder (all my mugs of coffee are made with Coffee-Mate) being the 'milk' I most like. I've found over time that I don't really like milk, but Coffee-Mate always tickles my coffee spot.

Coffee-Mate:

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I haven't tried any of the nut-based or plant-based milks, though I hear oat milk is good. And I haven't drunk animal milk unless from a cow, and I'm not tempted to. I don't like drinking animal milk neat, though it's okay in coffee or tea or with a cereal. My least favourite type of milk is long life milk. Things are getting desperate when I have to resort to long life milk.

What are your most and least favourite types of milk?
If you drink cow or another animal's milk, do you like whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed milk?
Were you breast-fed as a baby? And, if you are a mother, did you breast-feed your babies?

I tend to drink semi-skimmed or even whole milk. I'm not a big fan of skimmed milk as, in my book, milk needs a bit of cream in it. Back in the 1970s, when semi-skimmed and skimmed milk weren't the rage, dairy farmers here got paid more if their milk had a high cream content. This meant my Dad added cows like Jersey and Guernsey cows, which produce creamy milk, to his herd. The problem was these creamy cows aren't high-yielding milkers unlike the Holstein Friesian cows he had as the mainstay of his herd. For him, it was a balance between creamy quality and milk quantity.

Because my Dad was paid more for his milk with a high cream content, he would do cream raids on a Sunday, the days when the local dairy was least likely to send its milk tanker lorry around to collect his milk. A Sunday cream raid always meant we were going to be served with creamy desserts made by my Mum for that week!

I do not know whether I was breast-fed or not. It's one of those questions that I never got round to asking my mother before she died. However, I did tell her I loved her before she died. That, on her death bed, seemed more important than whether I was breast-fed or not.

Below is a poll where you can anonymously select your most favourite type of milk. Unfortunately only one pick is allowed in the poll.

A poll on this site can only have a maximum of 20 answer options. Unfortunately there was no room in the poll for: A2 milk, alpaca milk, antelope milk, banana milk, Beefalo milk, buttermilk, camel milk, caribou milk, condensed milk, deer milk, donkey milk, elephant milk, elk milk, fermented milk, filtered/ultrafiltered milk, flaxseed milk, giraffe milk, homogenised milk, horse milk, human milk, kangaroo milk, llama milk, macadamia nut milk, moose milk, pea milk, peanut milk, pigeon milk, pig milk, pistachio milk, quinoa milk, rabbit milk, rat milk, reindeer milk, rhinoceros milk, seal milk, wallaby milk, walnut milk, walrus milk, wildebeest milk and yak milk.

I think cow milk will win the poll with flavoured milk coming next. But almond milk coconut milk, cream, oat milk and soy/soya milk may attract a few votes in the battle.

Please see the first comment below to see what has won each battle of the food and drinks so far.

A rotary milking parlour:

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