Virtual Tour of My Farm
 

I didn't want to hijack the Forks and Knives Thread (and honestly I should just stay out of there) and a few questions came up.... So I figured I would take FOFC on a virtual tour of a real live working dairy farm.

View from the Road.

This is where all the milking gets done. It's called a milking parlor. There are ten units on each side (20 total). 450 cows come through here three times a day.


Cow being milked.


Cows waiting to be milked. The fat white one is happy because she was found to be pregnant today.


This is where our milk ends up. We fill one every 30 hours, which is over 5000 gallons.


Newest baby calves, less than a week old.


After the calves are off to a good start at about a week old they move into one of these hutches where they will stay until about two months old. They stay in groups of 5.


This tank contains what will eventually be hundreds of cows. We artificially inseminate our cows and store straws of bull semen in this tank which is filled with liquid nitrogen.

A used straw of bull semen.


Silos that are filled with corn.

We put alfalfa into these bags so they can ferment. The reason we ferment is so we can store and feed cows over winter.

Thank you to everybody that drinks beer. This stuff is a byproduct of the brewing process and our cows absolutely LOVE to eat it.

A mixture of corn, minerals, soy products that we make daily.

The finished product. This is what my cows eat and turn into milk.

No significant amount of rain since May. Our corn is looking pretty bad. We have some irrigated so we aren't completely screwed.

Alfalfa field. Was harvested last week. We usually get four harvests of alfalfa per year. The first two harvests were pretty decent but the one last week was next to nothing. If we get some rain soon, we may be able to get a fifth harvest. Alfalfa is the staple of the cows' diet on our farm.

I built this barn last summer. It was made especially for cows with special needs. They might be sick, they might have a sore foot, or their milk might not be the quality I want to sell. Instead of discarding the cow, I'll put them in here and try to fix them.

The inside of the above barn. I also have a chute where I can work on cow's feet if they get sore.

It's kind of hard to see, but we have sprinklers that spray water on the cows to keep them more comfortable when it's hot out.

You can see it better here. It's only in the 80s today but cows become stressed from the heat when it's 70 degrees out. So these sprinklers pretty much run throughout the summer.

It's only about a 100 yard walk for the cows to get milked but it's important that we have water for them on their walk back to their pen.

Enjoying a meal before they get milked.

1033, the oldest cow on my farm. She is 11 years old and has produced almost 300,000 lbs of milk in her lifetime, which is almost 35,000 gallons.

These cows here will all be having a calf within the next few weeks. Notice the empty stalls. Overcrowding this pen is like shooting myself in the foot.

Very happy to get this cow through last week's scorching heat alive and in one piece. She's had a lot of things go wrong with her, but she's still standing.

All the oldest cows are in this pen. There are 70 cows in this pen and most are older than five years old, with the oldest being the aforementioned 11 year old.

This is the cow's bed. A lot of work has been done finding the ideal size and surface for a cow to lay on and be economical at the same time. This stall is pretty much the gold standard these days. Sand is extremely important. We groom and clean every single stall three times per day. A cow needs to be laying down 12-14 hours per day for her to be happy.

These ladies are on a 60 day paid vacation. When a cow becomes pregnant, we pull her out of the milking string 60 days before she has a calf to allow her mammary tissue to regenerate.

Public perception says that cows need to be outside. Yet when given the choice, this pasture is empty today. That's because my cooling systems (sprinklers, fans) inside are more comfortable than being outside. They love coming out here in the middle of the night though.

My control center. Don't tell anybody FOFC is in the open window.

What is a farm without a few dogs?

Heh. Completely and totally awesome.

That is pretty awesome, IMO.

Thanks for sharing.

Awesome!!

Forks n Knives blah. I could never live without my cheese, or my yogurt.

That was cool. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the tour which I have to admit is very cool. I have been meaning to take a field trip to a dairy farm for our three home schooled kids so they can get an idea where milk and other dairy products come from.

Fantastic thread, lungs. Really neat pictures.

That was great. Thanks for sharing! It's obvious you care about your animals and take great pride in your job.

Very cool, lungs. May have to find a local farm to take the kids to one day. A good field trip for a day with dad.

You can really tell from this pictures that you love your cows and have put a lot of thought into this. I love that you have a barn for the sick and otherwise "messed up" ones to work on them, and I love seeing the sprinklers and fans.

Is 1033 still productive? Is there an age when productivity in general starts to drop and they "retire?"

If "retired" from milking - you don't sell them on to become beef do you?

The financial stuff is really fascinating too - how much of that can you go into (without getting into any private info, of course). Do you own the farm? Do you sell surplus crops? What are the expenses like? HOW EXPENSIVE IS BULL SEMEN?

These ARE scratch-n-sniff pics, right? 'Cause it's not working for me.

Epic.

She's still one of the best on the farm for production. Mature cows are the highest producers, though they might taper off some as they get around 10 years old. 1033 hasn't. 4-8 years old are the prime production years.

Retired from milking usually does mean beef. But also when they get to a certain age their bodies start to go and it's almost cruel to keep them alive if they can't get around. I had a 12 year old last summer whose hips were giving out on her, so there really wasn't much of a choice as keeping her alive to be in pain just didn't make sense.

Thanks for sharing Lungs! Can my family please just drink YOUR cow's milk so I know where it's coming from?? ;)

This.

I think lungs has said that most of his is going to make swiss cheese these days though.

lungs - what are your feelings on raw milk?

Great read. Thanks for posting.

Very cool lungs!

I'm curious - to what extent do you get "attached" to them, versus just seeing them as producers/$$-signs?

The farm is organized as a corporation. I own 20% and my father owns 80%. This fall I will be buying 30% for $125,000 (dad is undervaluing to help me out). The 20% I currently own has been part of my salary the past few years. None of that includes the actual land. That's where the REAL big money is going to come in. The corporation owns the cows and some equipment.

We don't have enough land for surplus crops, so all of our crops go into the cows. Especially this year.

Expenses are very close to what we get paid for the milk :) Labor, feed we don't/can't grow, improvements, etc.... Making huge profits is never in the cards but cash flowing and building the value of the farm itself is the goal. I'm paid a reasonable salary to manage the farm. With my skillsets, I could probably go out and work for somebody else and get $80K+ per year but I also wouldn't be building any equity. I don't have any family to take care of, and don't live an extravagant lifestyle so I'm fine with a modest salary now where the payoff will be bigger when I'm ready to hang it up.

edit: bull semen can range anywhere from $3 to $1000 per straw for something rare. I usually pay in the $20-25 range per straw since I'm enamored with imported European genetics.

Honestly, I'm not that much different than a lot of farms. I've been on some of these 10,000+ cow dairies that operate in the same manner that I do just on a much larger scale.


Correct, we just signed another contract so my milk will continue to be made into Swiss cheese.

I'm for legal sales of raw milk but would not consume it myself. I like my 1% (blasphemy, I know). I don't necessarily believe in the benefits and there are some real risks that I demonstrated in this thread.


There is a line that needs to be drawn. I have my pet cows that you could consider myself attached to. Economics still need to play a role though. A farm that makes decisions completely based on emotion is not going to be in business for very long. I try to find middle ground between economics and having a connection with my animals.

Dude thanks for this!!Awesome post!

Thanks for sharing lungs. Always enjoy reading about your farming and good to have a chance to see your farm.

What is the typical pregnancy rate?

I'm only a few hours away. Send me cheese. :)

Really cool, lungs. May have to do something like this with the winery thread just to show some of the areas that people may or may not see on a daily basis. Quite an operation you have there. My grandfathers would have both loved those photos. They both ran cow and horse farms for many years.

We're running 41% right now, which is a big improvement for me. We were at 25% a few years ago. Some can get upwards of 70%. Higher producing cows won't get pregnant as easy. That's why some of the rhetoric that we force cows to get pregnant every year is confusing to me. A cow's body won't allow her to get pregnant if it's not ready. High producing cows not getting pregnant makes sense no? If she's producing loads of milk, her body thinks she's taking care of a calf and she won't get pregnant.

I imagine it'd be hard to track, but do you know where your cheese is sold? It'd be neat to get some around my area of WI and say I know where it came from :)

That hutch (and the group of 5 mention) looks bigger than what I'm accustomed to seeing at the operations I regularly drive past/have driven past.

Is that more likely a matter of faulty perception on my part (i.e. yours are pretty much normal/standard) or are yours uncommonly large? And if so, what's behind your preference for the cattle condo size versus the one bedroom bachelor pads that I think I usually see?

Drive over to Stockton and get it :) That's where my milk get processed.


The company that processes my milk makes Swiss cheese and then resells it to other companies to package. So it's hard to definitively say. But if you've had any amount of Swiss cheese in the past few years, there's a good chance it came from my processor as they are the largest in the United States for Swiss cheese.

lungs - if you do (or if you start to) sell any of your milk to any artisinal-type cheesemakers, let me know. Would love to get my hands on some, and I imagine that that's the likelest way of getting my hands on some that is relatively "pure" to your farm (to some degree) rather than a big commingled vat of milk that the big cheesemakers use.

You're right, mine are bigger. Most only put one calf in a hutch for reasons of spreading disease. I take the opposite approach and put 5 in a bigger hutch. Feeding them is more efficient and the fact is cows are social animals and I feel it benefits them to socialize from day 1. I've got an awesome lady that takes care of my calves so the whole disease thing isn't an issue, demonstrated by the fact that we only lose 1% of our calves.

Does Mexican bath tub cheese count? :)

Best thread I've seen all day. Thanks for sharing...

It's a WITCH! Kill it (and cook it).

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. It is nice to see the effort you put into taking care of your Cows.

I have to admit, I would not do good in this business though, I get way too attached to animals. :)

cows that shoot lasers

happy cows! good stuff lungs.

That's good stuff there. I have a farm behind my house that I buy my beef from (well until the prices went crazy this year), and they are pretty much free range. Cool to see a bit of what goes into the dairy side of it. Great work and effort lungs.

So cool that you shared these pictures!

Way cool, lungs. Thanks for sharing. I haven't been to the old roommate's farm yet (it's out around Ironton MO if I'm not mistaken), but I hope it's as nice as yours!

This is really great. You should be very proud of what you've got going on.

Very awesome thread.

Thanks for sharing!

Awesome thread!

I really enjoyed that. Thanks for posting, lungs.

Great thread, Lungs!

Great stuff, lungs. Some of the pictures of landscape and sky make me miss being in Wisconsin in the summertime.

Harsh.

Very cool! And the cows seem to be treated superbly. Thanks for sharing!

Very cool. Just don't let lungs bring the straws if we have an FOFC get together.