DAIRY FARMS

Dairy farms are farms where cows are raised to make milk and milk products like cheese, ice cream, butter and whipping cream Starting work at 4 - 4:30 a.m. [7 days a week]. It's even dark then! Cleaning and sanitizing [getting rid of germs] of the hoses, connections, and pipes that the milk flows through. Feeding the cows Milking the cows. Once the machines are turned on, the milk goes through tubes until it reaches a big milk jar. It is checked to be sure the milk is good and then it goes into the bulk tank where it waits for the milk truck to come and haul it away. The milk truck will take the milk to a dairy, where it will be pasteurized and homogenized for health safety.

The big bottle is checked all the time to make sure that the milk doesn't have anything bad in it. It goes into a big tank [dark picture] where a tube of milk is taken out by the milk hauler so that they can test it when they get to the dairy. Taking the cows out to the exercise yard in warmer weather and then cleaning their stalls. In colder months, the cows stay in and they have to clean the stalls around the cows. Taking care of the animals: checking bruises, wounds, hooves--just seeing that the cow is healthy. Feeding and taking care of the young calves.


[Bottle feeding for the new ones, a bucket of milk for the older ones.] Taking care of the crops when the weather is warmer. [Sowing, growing, harvesting]. Checking out the feed that is stored in silos and grain bins; doing maintenance on equipment. To lower food costs, the dairy farmer grows part of the food for the cows Sanitizing the hoses, connections, and pipes again.
Checking milk to be sure that the butterfat content is right and that there isn't anything wrong with the milk so that the hauler can come to get itFeeding cows. The farm has 210 cows and 3 bulls. The main home farm is 180 acres but they actually farm 700 acres when you count the outlying fields. As you can see, the picture that we had of farmers taking it easy in the winter, was definitely not true. Even though the job is seven, long days a week it was obvious that there was a lot of work involved during all times of the year