Dairy Farm (fast post)
Two weeks ago we went to a Dairy Farm, they had around 200 female calves at the moment. When a female calf is born, she is immediately separate from her mom and put in a calf hutch where she will be until she is three months old.
Male calves don’t have any value, so they are sold as soon as possible. The girls are taken care of, at 14 months old they need to have a 2.9 condition.
For older cows, the farm has around 2000 dairy cows, they have food all day. A cow in reproduction has between 10-15 meals a day, each one lasting around 15-20 minutes.
The farm has a rotary milking parlor, where cows are eager to enter. The process last six hours in the morning and six hours in the afternoon. Because they want the cows to stress the less possible, they play classic music for the cows to listen and in the end. They collect around 45,000 lts. of milk at the end of the day.
(I’m the girl in purple scrubs, we slept like half an hour in the milking room, some people had a handover…)
Nice weather in that room! XD
