Well folks, it has been two months since I've written a post. For all of my followers, (let me pretend I have some) I am very sorry! Life got away from me, as it does with all of us at some point.
While I was away dealing with life, I had the opportunity to work at the Minnesota Farm Bureau building at the State Fair. One of the best experiences of my life. I talked with hundreds of fair goers which also happen to be consumers. Strange huh?
So, thank those folks for this wonderful blog post because all of them were fascinated by the detail and care that goes into producing their milk, even old farmers that don't want to learn anything new because they did it for 60 years and there is nothing they don't know....
The milk truck comes to our house every other day to pick up our milk. Before he puts it in the tank, he takes a sample. This sample tells us and the milk plant:
Fat % in the milk
Protein % in the milk
White blood cell count in the milk
Freezing temperature of the milk (so they know we are producing milk and not water:)
Other solid levels (the other essential nutrients in milk!)
To ensure no antibiotics are in the milk (If the test comes back positive for antibiotics, the whole truck load is dumped down the drain.)
This sample is taken every other day on our farm, before it even gets on the truck.
Tests are also taken when it gets to the milk plant before it is unloaded off of the truck, because our milk is combined with many other farm's.
We (dairy farmers) hire someone to come and test our milk every month for each individual cow. Each cow has a lifelong record of, well, anything that happens to them. Kind of like your medical record when you go to the doc. When we look at these tests we can see how productive the cow is, how healthy she is in general and if she has any metabolic issues going on.
Each cow gets a little sample bottle all to their self :)
These are the meters that tell us how much each cow is producing.
So much is deposited into the meter for every pound the cow produces..it's math stuff.
They are pretty nifty and accurate!
And...I hate testing days because it takes longer to switch out each meter for each cow. It also means a triple check on our on the farm record keeping.
On the plus side, the lady that brings the meters and returns the samples for testing brings cookie dough for me :)
