Wednesday, April 30, 2014

DAIRY TIME




You get to visit a lot of dairy farms when you hang around 4-H’ers.  Most of the barns I’ve visited (accompanying Carly and Audrey who are participating again this year) are pretty dim places despite overhead lights.   Milking is a dirty business.  Barn floors are often wood or dirt, the dirt churned into mud by the cows in season.   Hoses filled with pure clean milk wind past floors that can have varieties of mud, hay, manure and/or cow pee.   Everyone wears muck boots.  On a cold day a barn may feel colder inside than out. 

The dirt floor turns into mud in season







The first farm we went to one chilly day in March is run by Farmer Dan, the same farmer who mows our field, and his brother.  It’s his brother who mostly handles the dairy cow operation whereas Dan’s income comes mostly (or in part?) from repairing farm machinery and engines.  Dairy farming was in the family, their father before them a dairyman, and maybe it goes back further than that.  His brother is less presentable than Dan:  a few missing teeth right up front, a big belly, and much less of a conversationalist.  The cows they have are boarded from one place or another.  They don’t actually own any of them.  This is not an unusual arrangement.


Dan's brother (right) with Audra, cow expert and 4-H leader


Another farm, and another chill and dimly lit barn, wooden floor.  A newborn calf (days old) stood shivering in its stall.  This seemed to be a matter of small importance to the farmer.  After all, cows can be outdoors in all kinds of weather, while calves are almost always indoors, sheltered from wind at least.  Yet one can’t help thinking that if the world were different, this calf would have been sheltered by its mother, and would have been taking its mother’s milk.  But that is absurd on a dairy farm.  Calves are separated from their mothers almost immediately after birth.  Mothers need to keep producing milk and get pregnant all over again.  Holsteins are the preferred milk cow because they are big and produce a lot of milk.  One can’t forget this is a business.



Something different:  a bright cheerful-looking calf barn


A barn we visited in April had a different look.  We were led around (“we” being half a dozen 4-H’ers, me, and two other adults) this 1,000-cow operation by the chief herdsman.  (How many people have you ever known with the job title herdsman?)   He was a fairly hip looking guy, the telltales of his work the confetti of hay on his hoodie.  A single light-filled structure–more Quonset hut than barn–was filled with calves of various ages. The bright clean space conveys a sense of well cared for calves.


(In reality all cows are cared for matter-of-factly, to my eye.  They are a commodity, they have value, and they are someone’s livelihood.  Cows are big, and they are dumb, and they have to be pushed around sometimes.  I see a cow stumble when it's been shoved, and I say "Oh!"  But I'm being soft.  Me before you, cow!  Let's not get emotional.)


These calves’ metal cages were filled with fresh straw and each cage had a pair of clean white buckets with grains and water.  One larger corral held half a dozen calves that were ready to be weaned.  A row of rubber nipples were arrayed on one side attached to hoses that led to a barrel of substitute milk so the calves could suckle whenever they wanted. Younger non-weaned calves get their substitute milk via individual bottles. 


Chief herdsman, in profile

The cows in this 1,000 size herd (a “closed herd,” no cows boarded from anywhere else, all cows owned by the farm) are housed inside full-time, their milk marketed as Monument Dairy, a completely local operation.   Along with “local” we like to think “natural,” where natural in this case would suggest cows munching the grass in the scenic outdoors.  That’s the image.  And there are many cows in the fields in Addison County, plenty of them right on our street.  But pasturing or not, it’s a personal decision, depending on the kind of dairying you want to or are able to do.  Because it’s a business, these are business decisions.  Pasturing is cheaper.  However, it’s harder to keep track of or monitor cows that are out to pasture.  They have to be rounded up to be milked.  Or maybe there’s not enough pasture for all the cows.  Or the pasture isn’t right for these particular cows.  One has to weigh issues of soil quality and type, the amount, type and quality of forage (vegetation) to determine how many cows can feed on how much acreage.  Dairy cows, because they are lactating, need more forage and better quality forage than beef cattle.   An agricultural service elaborates on how soils can vary: 

Soils in "herd pastures" that serve as lounging areas for cattle often are very high in phosphorus and potassium. However, soils from an adjacent field where harvested forage is grown may be low in these nutrients.

I like thinking about lounging cattle.


Management info at the calf barn


Dairy has been a major farming business in Vermont for a very long time.  I remember hearing some years ago how Vermont’s population was described as consisting of “more cows than people.”  If this was ever true, it isn’t anymore.  On the other hand, Vermont has the largest number of cows in the country per capita, that is, the ratio of cows to people.  According to the University of Vermont, with a population of about 626,000 people, we currently have about 150,000 milk cows that produce some three billion pounds of milk (one gallon of milk = approximately 8 pounds; figure it out!)  per year.



At right, an early (primitive) milk pan and skimmer; at center (quite unrelated!) a boot dryer



Any businessman, farmer or not, wants to decrease the workload and increase efficiency.  Hence the large number of inventions related to the dairy business.  We heard a talk about Vermont inventions a while back from a former engineer who collects these objects.  Many of them have to do with the prime issue of separating the cream.  The most primitive form of this was letting the milk sit until the cream rose to the top, then skimming it off.

 
A pair of butter printers (you stamped on the name of the producer and/or a design)


The very latest thing in dairy management was recently in the news in the New York Times.  A dairy operation in upstate New York has entirely automated the milking process.  With a transponder around her neck, a cow walks into a milking cubicle (seeded with specially tempting grains) whenever it feels a need to be milked.  There a laser guides the milking nozzles to the udder.  There’s hardly a limit to the kind of data about the cow and the milk that can be collected automatically.  This farm also has a robot that functions much like a Roomba vacuum that sweeps the cows’ feed neatly along the floor for the cows to eat.   A smooth concrete floor is needed for that.


Lot of acreage, but the cows stay in the barn
(In the distance, the ubiquitous used tires covering manure that will become compost)


Probably in a few years milking robotics will come to this area.  Maybe it’s already here, somewhere.  Maybe the floors of all barns will be concrete instead of dirt or wood, and milking will be automated.  Maybe only beef cows will feed in pastures.  Maybe (hey, why not?) milk will be made chemically instead of taken from cows.  Maybe male cows will have a brighter future beyond veal, somehow.  In a more perfect world of course.

All things considered, I would rather farm plants.




*”With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When its Milking Time,” The New York Times, April 22, 2014.