We went to the middle of nowhere Indiana to visit Fair Oaks Farm and hopefully see a cow being born.
It was a big chilly out. We needed jackets to get though the day.
I love my little brother!
HAY! This is just PART of the hay that they had lined up for the animals.
All these cows produce a LOT of manure. The farm has a processing plant to break down the manure into usable parts. They generate enough power to power 750 homes! WOW!
I was not pleased with how they treat the boy cows. The calves are all separated from the moms as soon as they are born. The boys and girls get shipped off for 2 years until the girls are old enough to have babies. The boys, well…. That is the part I didn’t like. Some are used for sperm harvesting while others fate they would not discuss. I assumed that they meant that the boys were turned into hamburgers after 2 years.
The milking carousel was HUGE! Some cows were stubborn and took extended rides.
I had fun in the “String Cheese Maze”.
I was a demon on the tractor races.
The pillow for jumping was super fun but a bit hot on the feet in the sun.
I was completely in awe with the birthing barn. I had no idea what was actually going to happen.
I was frozen like a statue watching the cow have her calf.
The hooves were really neat. We all learned that calves are born hoof first. You can even see the amniotic sac hanging down. I thought it was odd that the cow kept licking at what dribbled out of the sac.
This is the other cow that we were watching and her new baby calf. The calf will be bottle fed and never drink from the mama. In fact, as soon as it leaves the holding pen 30 minutes later it will never see her again. Well, it may if it is a girl and comes back to the dairy farm in 2 years. This was a boy, so bye bye mama! I was very sad at this fact.
They had a jumping machine out back.
We went on the pillow a few more times.
I climbed the rock wall (milk bottle) without incident!
We had yummy farm milk.
We checked back in on the calf a few hours later. He was all cleaned up and looked really comfy. They had just fed him his bottle. He was 84lbs!!! HUGE baby!
The two calves we saw today.
I took a shot at milking a plastic cow. I didn’t like the vacuum machine so decided milking wasn’t for me.
What an awesome memorable day!