Today was another day at a local farm!! But this time, it was a dairy farm and not a produce farm. Therefore guess what we saw.....Cows! And tons of them. The farm tour we went on was at the Holter Holstein Farm and it was hosted by American Dairy Association. It correlated with our last speaker (Karen Bakey) of the American Diary Association, in that dairy farmers pay $0.15 for every $100 pounds of milk produced but are given money for ever so much milk produced and bonuses added for other milk characteristics. The farm is family owned and operated, therefore the family does much of the monitoring and evaluating of the farm. However, the American Dairy Association does do check ups and routines to make sure the milk is safe and the dairy farm is abiding by rules and regulations.
I was very interested in how time consuming owning a dairy farm was. You would think that it would be as simple as mating, milking and feeding a cow. Jeesh was I wrong. The farmer is run on a tight schedule in order to produce as much milk as possible. Who knew that even mating a cow was so complicated? I think the actual milking process was more simple than anything else. But I did enjoy my time there. I would suggest that if you get a chance, you should visit a dairy farm. It's cool to see where the milk that you drink comes from :)
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