Coopers Hilltop Dairy Farm.
October 13, 2008
We had been learning in class all different things about milk. By going to the farm, we saw how the everyday process works. Cows are milked twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. On the farm, they use electricty to milk the cows because it is more efficient. They also use electricity to run the freezers and refrigerators, can the milk, wash the milk bottles, wash the cows, electric fencing, etc. The cows are in very close quarters in a barn where they are fed a mixture of corn and grains. After milk is collected from the cows, it is heated to get out any unwanted bacteria in the milk and then is sent through a small tube that is very cold, which cools the milk. After the milk is all bottled up and ready to go, a truck picks up the milk from the back end of the freezer outside of the farm. This milk is transferred to places that may not have milk or need milk. Orange juice from Florida is shipped up to the dairy farm also. Cows only have bottom teeth, and since they don’t always chew their food the best the first time, they need to regurgitate it. They chew their food, swallow it, and then do the process over with that same food to make sure it is chewed well. Cows also produce milk from what they eat. They have two stomachs to do so. At the farm they do not let the cows outside a lot because most of the cows will eat and eat the grass and not stop, which would make them very sick. Once there is a disease upon the cows, that one cow that has the disease is removed and isolated hoping not to spread to other cows. They also don’t use a ton of antibiotics at the farm, they like to keep it at a minimum. On the farm, the ideal is one inch of a rain a week and the rest sunshine. They also breed cows depending on weaknesses between the cows. If a mother cow is weak they will breed her with a strong male cow to make up for her weakness. The goal is to keep making better cows to produce milk. Every cow has a baby about every year. After one is born they start the process over.
