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

http://fofarms.com/en/home

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