Cows milk advice for my son

[cormacsmum]

Wondering what advice other mums have had from health visitors about when to move baby from formula to cows milk. Which milk is best? Is fat level important? How much does my baby need to drink to get the level of vitamins/nutrition he needs? Any advice greatly appreciated

How old is your DC? FWIW, the general advice is to move them to cow's milk at 1 yr old. I have done this with both of mine. Full fat for drinking though you, i do believe, can use semi-skimmed in for cooking (custards, sauces etc.). I don't know the exact measure of how much they are supposed to have but i do know that DD (20m) still haas about 16 oz a day (afternoon nap and bedtime) plus some on her cereal. She does love her milk though and i suspect she doesn't need quite this much. HTH.

Cow's milk as main drink after 1 year, though you can use it in cooking before then. About a pint at a year, but they don't have to drink it all - some of it can be made up by cheese, yoghurt etc.

Should be full fat up until 2 years old.

Thanks for your message, am new to mumsnet so great to get a response. Son has just turned one, I'd heard blue top milk was best is this due to the fat level?

Does anyone have any idea what the fat level is and how is differnt to green milk

Blue top whole milk is 4% fat, green top semi-skimmed is 2% fat.

Also - was wondering, does anybody give their DC's gold top milk? I was wondering this for DS and he's really skinny but it seems to have a lot of saturated fat in it.

Yep, blue top is usually full fat - ie it has not had any fat taken out. Green top is usually semi-skimmed - halfway between skimmed and whole milk.

Look for the label that says "Whole Milk" because different supermarkets sometimes use different colours to represent the different kinds.

I think whole milk (it used to be called full fat hence the confusion!) is about 4% fat, semi-skimmed (used to be called half-fat) is about 2% and skimmed milk (usually red top) is less than 1% fat. Some supermarkets do purple top which is around 1%.

I guess they changed the name because "fat" is seen as negative now, so "whole milk" sounds nicer than "full fat".

HTH

Is the fat level important then? Must a child have about 4% fat milk until they are 2 years old? Who has decided this? Once they have turned two can you switch to some of the lower fat options?

It's just that they need more fat when they are young for growing etc. They should be having full fat versions of other dairy products like yoghurts etc. If you think about it, breastmilk wouldn't be skimmed and "in the wild" children would be breastfed alongside eating food until they stopped naturally at about 4-7 years old.

The fats are important for brain development. I think you can reduce the fat level after 2 or so. But you can still get full fat cheese and yogurt, ice cream, etc. You might consider using the whole milk in other foods, cereal, etc. to get the DS used to the taste before introducing it as a drink because he might decide it's not 'sweet' enough after the formula.