Saturday, November 19, 2011

Got Milk?

Today we visited the Fair Oaks Dairy in Fair Oaks, Indiana.  It's an interesting place with a museum, a bus tour through the barns and milking parlor, a birthing barn and a dairy processing plant where you can buy fresh dairy products.  Here are a few pictures of our time there.

Perhaps not the greatest video but it's all I got
This barn was about 1/2 mile long if I remember correctly.  There are three of them on this particular site - all full of cows!

The milking parlor
The cows get on the "carousel."  By the time they get all the way around (in about 8 minutes or so I think), they are done and ready to head back to the barn.  It's quite an operation!

Dairy exhibit inside the museum

Our "teacher" in one of the exhibits

A brand new baby bull

He finally makes it up!

Getting his first colostrum feeding

A few fun facts:

  • At Fair Oaks Dairy, about 30,000 cows are milked three times a day, and about 80 new calves are born daily.
  • Each cow eats about 100 pounds of food and drinks about 30 gallons of water a day; that water weighs 240 pounds.
  • Each cow produces about 10 gallons (86 pounds) of milk daily.  That's about 3,050 gallons (26,230 pounds) per milking year!
Fair Oak Farms

It's worth checking out if you're ever in the area.

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