Interesting article but surprised that she didn't mention the enormous amount of concentrate fed to cows to get them to produce the volumes of milk they do. Do dairy farmers really only feed grass during the summer? I didn't think so but have never worked on one so really don't know....
OK, there are some glaring mistakes, like the assumption about pasture feeding and vaccination that don't seem to have been researched at all. Reference 38 is just stupid - 3 days for unhomogenised milk and 11 for pasteurised must have been written by someone selling homogenisation equipment as I've just taken a swig from a bottle of unhomogenised bought 9 days ago which had a use by date of 11th April on whilst the bottle next to it was homogenised and had a 8th April date on it. I think perhaps the author has got the reference the wrong way around, but unfortunately the ref is no longer available online.
As an article it seems to have been a waste of time & I would advise anyone to ignore it and skip straight to the references, if you're interested.
ETA - although the references all seem to have expired, better to read some of the author's of the references work.
I must admit, whilst not knowing much about the dairy industry, I was struggling to believe that you could get away with feeding highly bred Holsteins on just grass and get the performance required from them. Given that was the case, I tended to assume that if she didn't know what she was talking about in that instance, it was entirely possible that she didn't actually really know all that much about anything. I am a whole hearted advocate of raw milk and it's a pity to have such badly researched articles published. If I had time, I'd write to the editor.
I've read about somebody grassfeeding holsteins and he is 'making it work' after 10 years, but there was a lot of pain involved and basically, he was trying to make a square peg fit a round hole IMO - he's ended up with holsteins that are more like other breeds and could have saved himself 10yrs if he'd just switched breeds.
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