I recently had the opportunity to visit a large dairy operation, boy how things have changed since I used to gather the cows up and bring them in to be milked from the wild pasture land at my aunt and uncle's farm 60 plus years ago. This is the Larson farm in Southern Wisconsin. They were currently milking about 2500 cows. The number changes daily as more cows freshen and some are dried up on a daily basis. Our tour guide was a good friend of mine who is the manager of the farms nursery, so we got a very complete tour. Here's a picture as we entered the property.
Our first stop was one of the two milking parlors. The one we visited was the newest one. If I remember correctly, it accommodated 50 cows at a time, and 2 people were in charge of the milking operation. The cows enter the parlor, are put into position and their teats are washed first by hand, and then with a special mechanical device. Then the inflations (the milking machine that is put on the teats) are manually placed on each cow. When the cow has finished giving her milk, the they are removed via a robotic mechanism. Cows are milked 3 times a day, and the parlor and milking units are cleaned before the next shift begins milking. The operation runs 24/7. Here's a couple pics from the parlor.
These are cows heading to the milking palor.
These are the cows being milked.
Here is where all the work is being done. One woman and one man are doing all of the milking. These people work a 12 hour shift, 6 days a week. Every third week they get a two day weekend. They are all Hispanic, When I asked if they ever hire any non-Hispanic people, they said they try to every once in a while, but most of them last from 1 hour to 5 days, and then they give it up.
When the cows are not being milked they are housed in a temperature controlled building. Here's a pic of the cooling system on the side of one of the barns.
Here are the cows in their free stalls which are bedded with sand to lay on.
Food is made available around the clock, people are loading and hauling food to the cattle non stop.
Here's the stockpile of silage which will have grain and vitamin supplements added to it.
As you might guess there is a lot of manure to deal with. While the cows are out of their barn getting milked, the stalls are cleaned. The floors are slatted so that manure mostly falls through to a conveyer that transports it to this area.
This machine separates the sand from the manure and cleans the sand, the manure is transported via conveyers to this building.
The liquid waste is sent to a lagoon that is sealed with cement and emptied a few times a year. This lagoon cost over a million dollars.
The cows move from their barn areas to the parlors via an undergrown tunnel.
As they pass through the tunnel any animals that are needing any special treatment, i.e. to be bred, or to be treated for anything, their ear tag is scanned and they are separated out automatically as they pass trough the single file area on their return to their barns.
We visited the calf delivery area, and just missed the birth of a calf. He's not dry yet.
Once they are dried off they are taken to the nursery barns.
There are 4 of these building. The calves come here and are moved each week to a new area as the get larger. They are feed milk 3 times a day. The milk is pasteurized in a large pasteurizer.
As they get older they begin to eat more solid food, they are moved to larger areas and are not needing milk any more.
They have a laser light that scans the feed boxes 24/7 to chase away the pigeons. I thought that was cool.
After the calves are 5 months old they are taken to another farm to grow up to be replacement cows.
Larson farms buys and sells many animals from all over the world. Embryos are sold and shipped around the world. The next calf was recently purchased at the world dairy expo for $23.000.
Here's a picture from our tour wagon.
It was an interesting day for me and I'm sure the rest of the people on the tour.
Here's a link to their website in case you're interested.
https://larsonacres.com/
