Livestock

Is my milk safe?

Cleanliness and safety is something that we think about before we even think about milking the cows. Cleanliness starts with the cow beds andalso by keeping our cows healthy . We wash our milk pipelines three times a day once between every milking shift, the milk tank is washed once a day after it has been emptied and the milk pumped out and onto the tanker truck. Food safety is something paid close attention to on a dairy farm here are few pictures showing what we do to produce healthy refreshing milk!

This tank cools the milk and stores it at a chilly 39 degrees. This is a brand new 5000 gallon milk tank we installed a few months ago.

Inside these stainless steel tubes the milk is filtered before ending up in the milk tank. Fresh new filters are installed before each milking shift.

This is a plate cooler that uses water to help cool the milk by nearly 20 degrees before the milk enters the milk tank.

This chart tracks the temperature of the milk and is changed every 48 hours. If you notice the two spikes in temperature they are when the tank is washed daily after the milk is pumped into the milk truck to be taken to the milk plant.

This sink is where the cleaning agents are m ixed with water to wash the pipelines the milk flows through. It is like a big dishwasher for pipes and is used after each milking shift.

the cows teats are dipped with an 1% iodine and lanolin solution to keep them soft and clean.

Although hard to see because it is a clear gold color this is a peroxide based teat sanitizer we use before the cow is milked. It also has lanolin in it to keep the teats soft..

The cleaning agents are automatically added to the wash sink for employee safety.

We even take safety as far as protecting our water supply from being contaminated with cleaning agents or milk.

The milking machines are washed in between every milking shift

Cow Bling!

New calves showing off their bling!

On our farm we use eartags to give each animal an unique identifier that allows us to keep important health records for each animal. Here are a few pictures that show the tags up close.

This is used to apply the tags similar to how ears are pierced for earrings

The tags are applied in a similar fashion to earrings through a soft portion of the ear. Each tag is self contained and is clean and sterile.

Each tag has 2 parts this is the male part

Cow bling has a lot of information about the animal

The information of the tags includes our farm brand (starting at the very top of the biggest tag), next is the unique “840” number assigned to only this animal in the United States, followed by the unique number for our farm, in this case 2129. The small white tag has the same numbers and also id an EID tag that contains an RFID information. We currently do not utilize the RFID tag outside of visual use however are we will be implementing the electronic reading in the future to help with efficiency and to eliminate human error.

Curious about the camera, and showing the bling!

Lazy Summer Morning

Here is a cow picture for Wordless Wednesday.

A few of our cows enjoying the cool morning before a hot summer day here in Central California.

These cows were just moved into this pasture yesterday and are relaxing in the grass. With all the late rains we had here in the Central Valley and now the heat the grass is growing very quickly in the pasture. these cows need to get up and get to work eating it down!

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Making the Cow Beds

Here is a look into what goes into providing the cows on our farm clean soft comfortable beds to lie in. The pictures are from start to finish and show how we take solid manure sterilize and dry it, with a process similar to composting, the finished product is essentially soil we then use for bedding. On our farm we use 95% of the solid manure from the cows as bedding as an effort to recycle all we can and leave a minimal environmental footprint.

With use the cows tend to mess up their beds, we keep trying to get them to make their beds but to no avail.

The first thing we do is put down Hydrated Lime to dry out any wet spots, yes cows do occasionally wet the bed.

Next we mix the Lime in with what we call the Freestall Groomer, we use this piece of equipment 3 times a week to re groom the beds.

Here is what the beds look like after being groomed.

The next piece of equipment adds more bedding to the stalls.

This is the finished product a clean soft bed for the cows to lie in.

We use a process similar to composting to dry and sterilize the bedding prior to it's use.

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Farmers who care about animals.

Here is a compilation of blogs I have seen in response to the Mercy For Animals video of calf abuse from Texas. Coming from those farmers who care greatly for their animals the common themes all the posts have is outrage, anger and disappointment towards those committing the cruelty.

(If I have missed any responses please leave a comment with the link and I will add them)

Ray-Lin Dairy Is going Vegan the Answer to Animal Abuse?

Haley Farms No Mercy For Animal Abuse

Agriculture Proud  Quality Food Begins With Quality Animal Care

Agriculture Proud Video – Ranchers Care About Animal Welfare

Cause Matters The Tears I’ve Shed…. Animal Abuse

Crystal Cattle Animal Abuse in Agriculture

Dairy Innovation Animal abuse: Still a Big No No!

Zweber Farms  Video:Calf Care on Zweber Farms December 2010

Zweber Family Farm News  Calf and Animal Care is our Number One!

Orange Patch Dairy Too mad to go to bed!

killrocfarms Animal abuse: Never acceptable

Pinke Post Link Up Wordless/Wordful Wednesday: Despite Animal Abuse Headlines

Life as an Iowa Farmwife Animal Abuse, Undercover Videos, and Doing the Right Thing

From the Tractor Seat Animal Abuse

The Ole Cowmilkers Random Thoughts Animal Care

Buzzard’s Beat No Excuse

ag – a colorful adventure Hold People to A Higher Standard

Reflections from a Country Boy We Care For Our Livestock!

Loos Tales Interview with the owner of E6 Ranch

Slow Money Farm – Life, Farm, Food Double Standards and Bad Days

Around the Farm Blog Fighting moral fire with moral fire

My View Quality Animal Care

Maricle Minute: Family, Food, & Farm Atrocious!

Jersey [Cow] Girl And So It Goes

Dairy Devotion Why am I doing this?

Pearl Snap’s Ponderings Animal Abuse Unacceptable

Topwinds Dairy Animal Care is Priority

Purple Poke Animal Abuse – Simply Unacceptable

Food For Thought – The Blog  Enraged: Animal Abuse Video

Beef Daily Blog A Rancher’s Letter To You About Animal Abuse

Wag’N Tales Safe at home

A Farm Girl’s Perspective Do those shooting animal abuse videos really have mercy for the animals?

FarmersWife30 Heartbreak and Anger

Loos Tales Nathan Runkle founder Mercy for Animals on E6 Ranch

The Frolicking Farmgirl  No Excuse for Animal Abuse

Haley Farms Why Animal Abuse?

Cow Spots and Tales 100% NOT okay

Northview Dairy And the Badly Ugly

A Dairy Goddess’ Blog Spring, Harvest, Calves And Cheese: A Few Of Dairy Goddesses Favorite Things

Related Articles

• Is going Vegan the answer to animal abuse? (raylindairy.wordpress.com)
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• Shocking Video Shows Dairy Calves Bludgeoned with Pick Axe (Video) (treehugger.com)
• Hidden Camera Shows Abuse at Texas Cattle Farm (newser.com)

What do cows eat?

The cattle on our dairy farm eat diets that are made specifically for them by a ruminant nutritionist. Here on the dairy we mix together individual ingredients to make a ration that is then fed to the cattle. In addition we do have some pasture to supplement the rations.

The ingredients are:

Dried Distillers Grain – this is the grain left from brewing and distilling spirits and is a good source of fat and protein.

Dried Distillers Grain

Almond Hulls – Outer protective skin when the Almond grows on the tree

Almond Hulls

Cotton Seed – the inner part of the cotton boll that is left after the cotton fiber is removed

Cotton Seed

Various silages – made from Corn Plants, and various small grain plants

Silage Bags

Alfalfa Hay

Alfalfa Hay

Various minerals and vitamins

Rumen Buffer

We also include steamed flaked corn, water and some concentrated energy additives to make the ration.

Cow Food

To learn more about technical information on cattle rations please visit the blog of my great friend Jeff Fowle he is currently doing a series of posts on cattle nutrition.

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