From Amsterdam to Animal Science: Shorter Dairy: Visit 1

I feel like the dairy world is one that is very shut off to the rest of the world. If you are involved in dairy, or your family is, you know it like the back of your hand. If you are outside of the dairy world, stepping into a milking parlor is a very alien experience.

By this time in the year, I had learned the basic procedures of milking in my Animal Science 1000 class. But learning and doing, I have come to find, are two very different things.

A group of three of us made the trip out to the Shorter Dairy, to get experience with the daily task of milking. We arrived just as the Jersey herd was being loaded into the milking parlor. We were told that the Jersey’s are milked first due to their high butterfat content; the milk sinks to the bottom on the tank.

We were immediately thrown into milking, and learned basically by mimicking what the other workers were doing. The cows are loaded on either side of the milking parlor into individual stalls and restrained by a brisket bar, which limits their movement. Each cow must have their teats dipped in an iodine solution, which is wiped off to clean the teats. Then the teats are “stripped out”, this involves manually pulling milk from each teat. Once these steps have been completed, I pressed the green button to release the automatic milker, which is powered by suction. I placed one tube on each teat, and the milking begins.

Each cow has an I.D. collar, and when they step into the parlor, and individual computer at each station brings up the information on that particular cow. As my cow was being milked I was able to compare her production to yesterday’s production, see if she was pregnant, and monitor her rate of production. The automated milkers release when the cows production declines past a certain level. Some cows will give a lot quickly, while others are more reluctant to let down their milk as fast. The speed in which the cows give milk also determines what group they are placed in. Dairy cows are grouped by nutritional needs. The bigger producers are grouped together and given more feed, where as cows that produce less are given less feed. As the milker pulls off, “post-dip” is applied to the teats in order to provide a barrier from bacteria while the sphincters are still open.

This process continued for a solid 3 hours, as we milked the entire Jersey herd and then the Holstein herd. The work pace is fast, but the milking parlor has a rhythm to it, and once you find that rhythm, the work becomes much easier.

After milking was completed, we got the ultimate reward, feeding the calves. Dairy calves are just about the cutest thing you will ever encounter. They are separated from their mothers just after they receive the colostrum from the first milk, and relocated to an area full of “calf-hutches".

These look like miniature dog houses, with a chain and collar placed around the calf to restrain it. The calf-hutches provide the calf with protection from the weather, but also protection from disease and injury.

The calves we fed were only about a week old and were receiving bottled milk. They were so precious, and we were lucky enough the get to stay outside and interact with them a little longer than usual. I discovered that the will suckle on anything and love to touch and nuzzle up to anything around, which at the time, happened to be us.