Nothing gets in the way of Jessa Laws’ love of cows — not even a wedding.
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Four years ago, Jessa experienced 15 minutes of fame when she interrupted her wedding with Ben to help deliver a calf.
Photos of Jessa in a muddied wedding dress went viral, not only across Australian media and social media but around the world. A BBC interview about the disrupted wedding has had more than 34,000 views on YouTube.
But Jessa has no regrets about giving priority to a cow in distress, and she’d happily do it all over again.
“I have zero regrets,” she said.
“The calf grew into a beautiful healthy cow that is being milked by my friend in Warragul and is a very valued herd member.
“The memories are amazing — my friends and I still laugh about it and how it went viral. I still get recognised from it, which is quite amusing.”
Being around animals is nothing new for Jessa.
“I was a horse person as a kid but I’ve always loved animals and being outside. I was always the kid in a mud puddle when I was growing up, as you can tell by my wedding photos — biggest day of my life, in the mud, don’t care.”
Her commitment to cows continues today. “Yesterday morning I was up at 5am to milk the house cow and to check on a sick heifer before I did a 12-hour shift at the Portland Smelter,” she said.
“It’s what I do.”
Jessa started in the dairy industry around 2008 when she met her first husband and they farmed at Gorae West. Their partnership came to an end in 2018 with the sale of stud Holsteins.
As part of the settlement, Jessa kept 17 cows she had bred.
Jessa and Ben bought a small organic apple farm near Portland in 2020 but with only 25 hectares, there wasn’t enough land to milk a commercial herd.
“We still had seven cows in milk so we milked them once a day with a bucket milker and reared the calves while working full-time off farm,” she said.
As numbers grew, they sent the milking cows to be housed with friends in Warragul.
“My friends needed numbers, we knew the cows could produce well and we still wanted to build our herd so it was a win for both of us,” she said.
“The cows are still very much a huge passion for me and they herd test and have a rotary dairy with collars so we get all the information.”
All up they have about 75 cows, mostly Holsteins, around 15 Normandes, crosses and a few Brown Swiss.
Jessa is secretary of the newly formed Australian Normande Cattle Association, which aims to educate people about the breed’s dual purpose for beef and dairy, and drive-up local numbers.
“We think they will excel in three-way crosses, cross-breeding herds or hobby farms,” she says.
“They have a high carcass yield for beef but you’re not sacrificing dairy to use them - they are still a good dairy producing cow with a beautiful quality of solids, high fertility, low cell count, and they’re really hardy with low health issues.”
While her dairy cows are at Warragul, Jessa and Ben are branching into paddock-to-plate Normandes, raising them as beef cows and rearing their calves on their small farm near Portland.
They also milk a house cow, though with legislation around raw milk they can’t go into sales.
“We’d be too small to be a viable dairy enterprise but we plan to breed the Normandes,” Jessa said. “Anything that is a good milker or who has the high-end genetics from the imported embryos from France will be sent to the commercial dairy in Warragul and then we will have a beef Normande herd for paddock-to-plate beef for the local area.”
They still have apples on the farm, though on a smaller scale, with Jessa and Ben both working close to full-time off farm.
They have no plans to go to full-time dairy farming. “I’ve been there and done that,” Jessa said.
“The volatility of the milk market is something that doesn’t interest me. It was an incredibly stressful time when we went through the milk price wars and horrific seasons on farm.
“I love the cows and being out on the farm but it was just too stressful. Personally, I would never commercially milk again.”
But Jessa likes having a toe in each pond.
“I’m in an incredibly lucky position where I’ve got milking cows at a friend’s place. They do all the work and the milking but I still benefit from that,” she said.
“I can sell a good cow or embryos, and at the same time bring the beef calves home and set that up. I’ve spent a lot of money on cows and semen but it pays for itself.”
Ben, Jessa and their two young daughters love to live off the land.
“I love the sustainability of the cows,” she said. “I can have my house cow, rear her calf and I’ve also got fresh milk for cream and butter. Then we’re growing vegetables and we’ve got fresh beef and we know where our food is coming from.”
Jessa is still in the genetics game and has sold Holstein embryos to Western Australia and South Australia in recent years
One of her cows shown at International Dairy Week this year won her class and she’s the photo cow for the number one Holstein bull in Australia.
“They’re using a cow that was born on this farm that I raised in the apple orchard on the ABS Australia semen catalogue,” Jessa said.
“That’s pretty cool.”