Behind the scenes at a Prairie Farms dairy farm together with how the cows are raised, how they’re milked and the way they guarantee that the milk is protected for customers!
You already know I really like dairy merchandise from Prairie Farms. Their ice cream is superior in these Chocolate Dipped Ice Cream Cones and their milk is nice on this Cauliflower Mac and Cheese. I lately was invited to go to a Prairie Farms farm in Hastings, MI the place I discovered all about how the cows are raised, how they milk them and the way they guarantee that the milk is protected for customers. I will share all of it with you!
We received to fulfill with an excellent good household farmer named Jolene Griffin from Valley Grove Dairy. Her mother, dad and brother have been all actively engaged on the farm once we visited which was so cool. It actually is a household enterprise! There was even a cow in labor whereas we have been there! We received to see the new child cows, the newborn cows, the “teenage cows” and the pregnant cows. Cows of all types! Lily is absolutely into farm animal books so she was tremendous excited to see cows and inform them “moo”.
Listed here are some issues that I discovered on the dairy farm:
-There are 9 Prairie Farms cooperative farms in Michigan and the Prairie Farms plant is in Battle Creek, MI.
-The milk is so recent! It goes from the farm that we toured to the milk plant in Battle Creek and onto the shop cabinets inside 48 hours! Wow.
-Prairie Farms has no synthetic progress hormones of their milk.
-The cows are milked twice a day. They really need to be milked and if the milkers are even a couple of minutes late, the cows will line up on the door. If you’re a mother who has ever breastfed, you already know it’s not comfy to skip a feeding so I fully get why the cows would need to be milked.
-A cow is pregnant for 9 months earlier than giving beginning to a calf.
-We received to see an enormous milk truck come and pickup the milk and take a look at it for antibiotics. The truck was large carrying 13,000 gallons of milk. The milk is examined for micro organism, fats content material and extra and the value that the farmer will get paid for the milk really is determined by this data which I discovered to be very fascinating.
-The milk comes out at 101 levels which is the temperature of the cow’s physique after which the milk goes by a system to shortly cool it to 38-40 levels.
-The farmers purchase their milk from the shop identical to you and I! They will not drink milk earlier than it’s pasteurized.
-Every cow produces 85-90 kilos of milk every day- wow!
-The cows eat a wide range of meals together with corn and sorghum.
My children beloved the farm and working round seeing the animals. My husband was obsessive about taking photos of the cows and petting them- haha! It was an awesome journey and after the journey, it actually gave us a sense that producing milk is a household operation that the farmers actually care about.
This submit is sponsored by Prairie Farms. All opinions are my very own.
