Dairy Farm Visit

On Tuesday morning, we went to a local dairy farm outside of Elizabethtown, PA. This is a family owned and operated farm, and one of the sons has attened Papa's church. A few years ago, when my sister and her family were visiting, Papa took them to visit this same farm and meet Farmer Jason. This left a big impression upon cousin Isaac, and I thought that Trevor would equally get a kick out of visiting a "real" farm.

The farm was very picturesque and clean. They had huge silos and many barns. Jason told us they have about 1200 dairy cows, and were milking 700. We learned that cows are only milked 10 months a year, and then they go dry. Each cow makes 11 gallons of milk per day! That is a lot of milk!

They also breed the cows, and have babies year round. We visited the new born pens first, and saw a heifer that was less than 24 hours old. Baby cows are bigger than I expected! In the dairy business, it is good to be a girl. The baby boy cows are sold off, and tend to end up as veal.

Trevor and Farmer Jason off to see babies.


the babies were pretty friendly; notice behind Trevor

that one is sucking on Jason's finger

looking back towards the house;

calf pens and silos

After oohing and ahhing over the babies, we headed over to the big barns to see the milking cows. These barns are built on a downward slant for the purpose of removing cow #2. They have an innovative system of using water and sand to flush out the barns. This mixture is then deposited into holding ponds where the sand and water is filtered and reused.

lots of cows!

Trevor was very brave and not intimated by the cows;

here he was talking to this cow. It was so cute!

Pedicure time = hoof trimming!

After walking through the large barns, Jason took us to the milking parlor. Here they have a "double 16 herringbone" layout. In other words, they could milk 32 cows in a diagnoal pattern. The cows knew exactly how to walk in and get positioned! We watched the workers clean the system prior to attaching the milkers, and get each cow sanitized prior to putting on the milkers. Once the milkers were attached, it took only about 3-5 minutes for the milking to be finished per cow. Overall, Jason said it takes about 20 minutes from once the cows enter to when they leave. Each cow has a digital necklace and information is kept on how much each cow is producing. These digital monitors can also help them sort the cows.

in position and waiting!

milker with milk flowing

I am so glad that we had the opportunity to visit this farm. It was an amazing farm, process and business. Trevor was talking yesterday when we were doing his farm puzzle that "milk comes from cow's utters!"

We had a really fun visit to PA, and did a lot in just a few days. Thanks for having us Memaw and Papa! We made a lot of great memories!