Many farmers, including me, easily forget that fewer and fewer of our neighbours have a close connection to a farm.
When I was a kid, a very long time ago, almost everyone had a dad, brother, or a cousin who farmed. Seventy years later, there are less than one and one half per cent of the Canadian population farming and only about half of those who farm full time.
When we see a nice peaceful picture of a few beef cattle in a field, a little girl playing with a new calf or little baby pig, we get a very skewed look at today’s farm.
A couple years ago, a couple bus loads of high school children and their teachers visited our dairy farm. Unlike the average dairy farm of 70 years ago where 15 or 20 cows were milked, the average Canadian dairy farm in 2021 milks about 100 cows. The students and teachers spent a couple hours at the farm and were surprised to learn that the rations of the animals were generated and updated on a computer.
Unlike grandpa’s cows that went to pasture every day and night except in winter, most milk cows today are housed year around in a barn that has open walls, a high ceiling and giant fans to keep the cattle cool even on a hot day. Cold water misters are timed according to temperature, to spray cool water on the cow’s backs as they eat at the manger. The milk cow ration that grandpa fed consisted of pasture and a little grain in the summer and in winter a couple feeds of dry hay, a wheelbarrow load of corn silage, a scoop of grain and a handful of salt-mineral mix every day. Today’s milk cows get a total mixed ration of corn silage that is rolled and shredded to break up the small pieces of cob, roll the corn kernels and scuff the waxy covering on the pieces of corn stalk, haylage that is made from hay that is cut before it blossoms to assure higher protein and faster digestibility, corn meal that is ground fine so it will digest as fast as the early cut haylage, a protein source that is mostly soybean meal which is a leftover from crushing the oil out of soybeans, a mineral-vitamin-salt-bicarbonate mix that is computer blended to meet the requirements of the milk cow eating that ration and enough water to bring the TMR up to 50 percent moisture. The amount of water added changes daily as the moisture in the corn silage and haylage changes and depends on whether it rained the day before bringing up the moisture in the silages which are stored outside in bunk silos.
Seventy years ago grandpa and grandma milked the cows by hand, but now they are milked in an elevated milking parlor where they get their teats disinfected, washed, dried and milked with a milking machine which is also disinfected and washed. Each cow is automatically identified by an electronic ear tag which is read as the cow walks into the milking stall. Her milk is weighed as she is being milked and the amount recorded on a computer in the farm office. The milker is removed automatically when she is finished milking and another disinfectant is applied to her udder before she is sent back to the free stall barn.
The milk is chilled with a cold water plate cooler as it is pumped from the parlour to the bulk tank. The cold water used to chill the milk is warmed by the warm milk on the other side of the plate cooler and this warmed water flows to the water troughs in the free stall barn so it is not so cold on the cow’s teeth.
Most days, there is a new calf being born because it takes about 200 cows to calve each year to maintain an even milk supply every day to meet the milk quota that the farm agreed to produce.
When a cow began to deliver her new calf in the calving pen; the entire two busloads of students and teachers surrounded the pen and Scott was there to make sure the calf was pointed the right way for a successful delivery. He was quite surprised to learn that the entire class and the teachers had never watched an animal being born before. This is a miracle of life that all animal farmers take for granted.
When the calf arrives it immediately has its airway cleared of any mucus, gets its naval disinfected and is licked clean by its mother, which stimulates the entire calf by a massage from the cows rough tongue. Everyone was amazed by the calf getting on its feet in only a few minutes and getting its first drink of milk a minute after that. After a time of bonding with its mother; the calf was moved a safe distance from the mother cow in case she accidentally stepped on or lay on the calf possibly breaking its leg or smothering it.
Farmers are proud to take time to explain to our consumers basic things that are taken for granted, but everyone should be taught.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
