Rosemary asked me to start a thread on managing a house cow. As she says, there's not much information out there, so it's good to share our experiences.
Please bear in mind that I'm new to this game, so things that seem to work for me to date may well turn out to have hidden snags downstream! (Not that we're new to cattle, BH has farmed cattle all his life, but in terms of managing a house cow it's all new.)
I wanted a Jersey to hand-milk and was advised to start as young as possible, certainly not expecting to re-train an older cow used to being milked by a machine in a dairy herd. Being impatient I bought an in-calf heifer.
I didn't want to become a slave to the milk, and only want to take what I need for the house, so we decided to buy a second calf to suckle the cow in addition to allowing her to rear her own.
So far it's working well. From about 7 weeks in I have had to keep the calves away from mum for a few hours to let her build up enough for me to get what I want for the house. In a few weeks I expect to need milk for pet lambs, so will then wean the bought-in calf - she's three months old now and is eating several pounds of cake a day, so is ready to be weaned when I need that milk.
I really could go on at enormous length about this; it's been a long-held ambition and I am absolutely revelling in it. But I've answered the question I was asked so will stop - for now!