A few days ago we told you about the 2nd Annual Illinois Harvest Dinner that my husband and I were honored to be invited to. One of the organizers of this great event, Mary Mackinson Faber invited my family up to her family's dairy farm in Pontiac, IL to see what it is like on a working farm and we were happy to accept. While we ourselves live in a rural community, we have never really seen what goes on at a farm and were excited to see where some of what we consume comes from.
The Mackinson Dairy Farm is a fifth generation farm and has been in their family for 150 years. The farm is 2,000 acres. They have just over 300 cows currently on the farm; 160 they are milking and about that many in young stock.
Our first stop was to see the youngest cows on their farm. The baby calves are kept in a separate building until they are about 2 1/2 months old. This building can be used year round because the openings on the side can be closed during winter and bad weather. The calves need to be kept dry and have good ventilation. They are fed grain and water at 6 AM and 5 PM.
Their diet also includes this instant calf milk replacer which is like baby formula. We were there for feeding time and we watched the farmhand put several scoops of this into a bucket and add water and the calves drank it up quickly.
On the farm they have 4 types of cows; Brown Swiss, Ayrshire, Holstein and Milking Short Horns. Each cow will eat about 100 pounds per day and drink the equivalent of about a bathtub of water each day as well. We learned that each cow has its own personality. We also noticed that some of the cows had collars with a small box around their necks and we learned that those are pedometers. The Mackinsons like to track the activity of their cows. We also saw that the cows are grouped by age.
We watched the cows burrow for their food and saw that they pick through the feed to get what they want. Mary explained that the food is mixed on site and they even have a nutritionist come by a few times each month to check on the cows. They send in samples of the manure to make sure the cows are getting what they need to thrive and if adjustments are needed they make them. In addition to the nutritionist, the Mackinsons also have a veterinarian come every three weeks. They use preventative medicine to ensure their cows are as healthy as possible.
This is a sample of what they eat. As you can see there is a lot put in there including corn. They have a big supply of mixed food at the farm and they cover it with tarps and pack it down with tires which help it to ferment faster. With as many cows as they have you can imagine how fast they go through food.
What we noticed while we there are, is that there always seems to be a lot of activity and work going on. Farming is definitely a 365 day job. The tractors were running pretty much nonstop while we were there and we saw the workers cleaning the barns, herding the cows towards the milking barn and then milking them.
Here is something we had not expected to see and quite honestly had never heard of, but after seeing it in use, it is very smart. This is an automatic scratcher. We watched this one cow use the scratcher for several minutes as it rubbed and cleaned its backside as well as its side. It is on a timer system and the brush stopped for a few seconds but this cow obviously was aware of how it worked because he just stood there and after a brief wait it started spinning again.
As I mentioned earlier, the cows are grouped by age. They also have a separate maternity pen. They have gone high tech and installed cameras to monitor the birthing process and the cameras can be viewed on a smartphone so when a cow goes into labor, Mary's brother can be right there making sure everything is going well. In the days before the cameras, she said he had to be around for longer and more often to check on the expecting mothers, but the cameras have made things much more efficient and a time saver.
Milking is done at 4 AM and 4 PM every single day. The cows are brought in 12 at a time to be milked. When we were there watching there was a crew of 3 people taking care of this process. The cows file in are so well trained they step into the next available stall and the milking apparatus is hooked up to them. Each cow should give between 5-8 gallons of milk each time. We learned that the milk comes out of the cow at 101 degrees and must be chilled to 34 degrees within 2 hours. After each cow finishes being milked, the milk for that stall is sent to a bigger collection container and then sent to the large storage container where it is kept until picked up by Prairie Farms which happens every other day. The milk is never touched by human hands. Mary explained that the milk can go from cow to store shelf within 48 hours.
I think my family and I came away from our tour of the Mackinson Dairy Farm with a much better understanding about how a farm works day in and day out but also a great appreciation for how much work goes into getting the milk and crops from the farm to our table.
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