Reply from Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund: “In our view, cowshares are legal in South Dakota, no license required. The South Dakota Department of Agriculture might have a different opinion but I have not heard of them taking an action against a shareholder dairy. Unless someone gets sick, health departments don’t usually go after one-cow dairies. Email FTCLDF directly at info@farmtoconsumer.org.” Hope this helps.

Are you posting a comment on the WAPF site? Comments are mostly for discussion among readers and WAPF staff rarely answers them (they simply don’t have the staff to respond to the hundreds of comments the website gets) but they do answer emails directly to info@westonaprice.org. I do my best to respond to comments here because there are far fewer of them but I get behind.

Are you asking FTCLDF by comments on the website or emails via a contact page/form?

I’m not questioning paying the farmer for his time, I’m questioning whether he would need some special license to keep one extra cow, especially if no one even knew about it?? I’ve tried asking FTCLDF and it’s like sending an email into cyberspace. No one ever answers, sorta like when you post a question at WAPF. You get nada. I’ll have to try to find out from someone within my own State, I suppose.

My understanding is that there is plenty of legal precedent (centuries) for one person to pay another to take care of their livestock. It’s called an agistment legally, but you see the terms herdshare, cowshare, goatshare, farmshare, milkshare…it doesn’t matter if it is one animal or many, and one owner or many. But please contact the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (farmtoconsumer.org) for actual legal advice about it. I am just giving my understanding based on my reading.

I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that this would be in the State of South Dakota.

This would be if one party bought a milk cow and the rancher pastured it in the months possible to do so, and then fed it whatever the cow owner provided (like hay grass or alfalfa, mineral and salt licks, etc) otherwise? Also the cowshare owner would be picking up the milk himself right at the ranch; it would not be delivered by the rancher to another location.

The rancher would not be bottling the milk in his jars; the cowshare owner would provide personally cleaned jars and lids, etc., and the rancher would simply fill them and cool them as quickly as possible, so would this type of agreement constitute a cowshare and require a license?