Okay, I'm just wondering what is the opinion of vegans in this kind of situation... You have your own cow or goat, you provide it with food, shelter and care when it gets injured or sick. In return you get milk from it.

For myself I'd see this as more living in balance with the life around me and wouldn't have a problem with it.

What is the opinion of others around here?

I think that's totally perfectly fine. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get milk from an animal without either breeding it or giving it artificial hormones.

I definitely plan to have pet chickens someday and eat their eggs.

I hear that if after they've given birth you keep milking them, they'll keep producing milk.

Anyone know if that's correct?

i'm fine with people using things (milk, eggs, wool, whatever) from well-cared-for animals, but i wouldn't consider a social animal to be treated well if it were deprived of companions.

I don't suppose there would be anything too wrong about it.

I don't drink my own heifer's milk because A.) unpasturized full milk tastes like crap and B.) I'd be stealing milk from Precious and Alfie (her children/my other cows) and she's got enough trouble feeding those two let alone me aswell.

On the morality "scale," it rates higher than factory farming, but I have no desire to keep any animal for my own benefit. If an animal is a rescue, for instance an egg-laying hen, then I would probably offer any random eggs to people I know who are hard-pressed to skip eggs altogether but are concerned about the treatment of battery caged-hens. So hypothetical a question that this answer is inadequate and probably too specific, but it's one way to go that I wouldn't feel awful about.