In Reply to: Re: beestons posted by winnie nyland on October 09, 2008 at 13:34:34:

A bit of a coincidence. A few days ago I was with another Irishman and a Canadian, both of whom grew up on farms. I asked them, what did you call the milk of the cow who had just calved. They didn't know and didn't recognise the word when I told them, beastings. We always kept a cow or two and calving (and taking the cow to the bull at McDonald's out on the Westport Road at the expense of playing a game for the Davitts)were fairly common occurrences. The beastings was very thick and yellow and I could not imagine any of us drinking it. It was fed to the calf (sometimes the calf didn't want to suck, but more often a contrary cow wouldn't let him). I don't think we did anything else with it. My mother or my older brothers would know but they have gone to their reward.