Dairy Adventure

Monday, September 16, 2019

Bill Koch, retired pastor and now NOMAD, brought our morning message. What does it mean when a preacher looks at his watch? Absolutely nothing.

It was another beautiful day in Illinois out here among the corn and soy bean fields. We start every day with a Bible study, a morning social time, some singing and a devotion. Today we also had our friend from Midwest Mission Distribution Center come talk to the membership about their mission work. Chantel the Executive director did a great job sharing MMDC’s story and mission.

MMDC trailer — The director of MMDC brought supplies to make feeding kits.

The rest of the day there were several options such as a tour of a dairy, work to get ready for the auction tomorrow, pack food bags for MMDC or a few other things. We spent part of the day going to Fair Oaks Farm‘s “Dairy Adventure”, then returned to do some work. The dairy was of interest to us since Max worked at the family dairy growing up and we thought some of the family back home would be interested in seeing the pictures. This was a huge operation, milking 350,000 gallons of milk per day. In the barn we visited they milked approx 2800 cows three times a day and they have 11 barns. The milking parlor used a 78 cow carousel taking 6 minutes to milk each cow. Amazing to those of us who grew up on farms.

The Fair Oaks Farms climbing tower and birthing barn.

Inside the birthing barn. There was one newborn calf in the barn while we were there.

This facility produces methane from the cow manure. The methane is then used to produce enough electricity to run the entire facility as well as the Fair Oaks Farms tourist attraction across the road.

Silage is stored on a concrete pad covered in plastic. Tire sidewalls tied together hold the plastic down.

Young calves are kept in these calf pens.

When not being milked the cows are housed in a free stall barn. They can choose their own stall and come and go at will.

Each cow stays on the 78 stall milking carousel for about 6 minutes. There are four techs working around the carousel. The cows are trained to walk on when an empty stall comes by and then back off after they have been around once.

Each cow’s milk production is tracked by computer that reads a transponder in her ear tag.

About one percent of the milk is used by the farm to produce ice cream, butter and cheese.

Tonight we had a chili contest. We didn’t enter our chili which was a good thing because Max was asked to be one of the judges. It was a fun night with lots of good food followed by a concert by a quartet that is part of the “Country Theater Workshop Group.” They were very good and everyone seemed to really enjoy the evening. Another busy, fun day.

One thought on “Dairy Adventure”