A house cow is a cow kept to provide milk for a home kitchen.[1] This differentiates them from dairy cows, which are farmed commercially. They can also provide manure, for use as a garden fertilizer,[2] and their offspring can be a source of meat.[3]
House cows are used in locations, usually rural, without convenient access to a supply of commercial dairy products.[4] They can also be kept for household self-sufficiency,[1] and a preference for organically farmed food.[2]
In England, during the 18th century, families would take their house cow, and other livestock, to graze on the local common land.[5] In the 1770s, before common land began to be enclosed as private land, it was estimated that even a 'poor' house cow, 'providing a gallon of milk per day' was worth, in the milking season, 'half the equivalent of a labourer's annual wage' to a family.[5]
Writing for an American audience in 1905, Kate Saint Maur asserted:
In 1910, during the United States' Presidency of William Howard Taft, Senator Isaac Stephenson had a house cow called 'Pauline Wayne', a Holstein Friesian,[6] sent from his Wisconsin farm to the White House to provide fresh milk for the first family.[7] After arrival she 'grazed contentedly upon the White House lot, oblivious to the general fuss being made'.[7]
In Australia, house cows were still common enough for the New South Wales government to issue a free booklet on their management and care in 1953.[8]
In the 19th century, Breton cattle, from Brittany, France, were imported into England and promoted as an ideal house cow breed because of their docile nature and small size.[9]
Shetland cattle, from the Shetland Isles, off the north coast of Scotland, are a small, hardy cattle breed, which, until recent times, were traditionally milked three times a day—morning, twall (midday) and night—to produce the maximum amount of milk, which could be more than three gallons.[10]
The Dexter cattle breed, which originated in southwestern Ireland, is small, easy-to-keep and suited for milk and meat, is known as 'the poor man's house cow'.[11]