Dairy farmers work hard every day to bring you fresh, great tasting, wholesome milk products. Learn about the day-to-day operations of a modern dairy farm through the Dairy Diary written by Marilyn Hershey, who farms with her family in southeastern Pennsylvania.

For a virtual farm tour, visit www.dairyfarmingtoday.org.

March 12, 2010

Exercise seems to be on everyone’s mind this time of year. Coming off of the holidays and heading into the summer, a lot of people are thinking about losing weight.

I am no exception to that bandwagon. Last year, I took up running and reached my goal of getting back to a certain weight and running a 5K.

Since the snow season started, running took a back seat and I lost all that tone and endurance. This week, I decided it’s time to start thinking about exercise again.

I was really excited when I was reading through the most recent issue of Runner’s World magazine (April 2010), which included an article highlighting certain foods that are important while working through an exercise program.

Milk was on that list of most important foods. The article said that milk is an important part of our diet when exercising because it reduces the risk of stress fractures and adds vitamins to our bodies. Sometimes, when we are involved in an intense exercise program, we deprive our body of the vitamins and minerals we need to keep us going.

The article also talked about the importance of yogurt and how it gives our bodies the digestible fat that we need to break down those bad fat cells.

Growing up in the dairy industry, I already knew about milk’s health benefits, but I was thrilled to see that good knowledge getting out into the exercising public. I was so excited that I decided to pass that information on to you – just in case you’re thinking like I am and decide to start an exercise program.

March 1, 2010

Duane and I enjoyed the past few days in Pittsburgh at the Pennsylvania Holstein Convention.

My non-farm friends laugh at me: “You mean you have COW conventions?”

Yes, we have cow conventions and they are a blast. We have meetings about what’s happening on the national level and business reports from the state office. We have a lot of fun with friends that we only see a few times a year.

There are also banquets, awards, farm tours and entertainment. This year, the farm tours were cancelled because of the snowstorm, so we spent most of the day hanging out with friends.

That was special.Spending the day visiting is not a pace that you typically see farmers enjoy, and it was good to change our pace and relax for the day.

A group of us decided to go out for lunch and then realized we were close to The Springhouse in Eighty Four, Pa. The Springhouse is a small dairy store and restaurant. Owners Sam and Bev Minor have a small dairy farm that supplies their own processed milk for the store. They also make all of their own desserts, salads and several hot food options.

Coming from a background in dairy, it is obvious the Minors care about the pure ingredients that go into their desserts, salads and sandwiches. It was also obvious when I tasted my tomato soup – the food was delicious!

It was a highlight of the week! Of course, it was much more fun because the time was spent with good friends.

I love going to cow conventions. I feel reenergized to go back to my farm, having learned new ideas to be a more efficient farmer and catching up with awesome friends.

February 19, 2010

I said in the last blog that I would explain how it is that we get the milk to the plant during snowstorms.

This past storm was the most challenging we have had in a long time. I remember years ago when Duane drove a tractor to town and the milk truck followed his tracks back through narrow and snow filled roads to our farm. But it has been many years since we had a storm of this magnitude that stopped milk trucks from getting to farms.

Duane called the dispatcher in the middle of the most recent storm and wanted to know if he could wait until the next day to deliver our truck load of milk. The dispatcher was very clear; they needed the milk at the plant. The milk plant needed to meet its quota for the day and was already behind schedule from the snowstorm a few days earlier. So our milk truck driver started out for the plant and to make sure he didn’t run into trouble, Duane followed behind him in our large SUV.

The trip to the plant usually takes 45 minutes, but with the storm, it took several hours. They left the farm at 10 a.m. and did not get back until 6 p.m.! They did have chains wrapped around the tires of the milk truck, which helped to keep it from sliding.

Duane was glad that he ventured out the day that he did. The snowfall was much greater than anticipated, and the roads were closed most of the following day. It would have been more difficult to get our milk to the plant.

When I was a child, I remember storms that stopped the milk truck from getting to the farm. Those were scary times for my dad. If the milk truck couldn’t get to the farm and it was time for the cows to be milked again, we had to dump the milk. That is a heart wrenching experience for dairy farmers. It is a lot of hard work and profit down the drain.

With larger equipment around our farm, such a scenario is very unlikely to happen to us today. We have a large pay loader that spends most minutes of the snowstorm scooping and moving snow from the roads.

In fact, we got a call the other day from a neighboring farmer who needed to get the milk truck back to his farm. The drifts were too high for his tractor and it was almost time for the next milking. There were several pay loaders working on the road, and they finally got the truck through.

February 17, 2010

Wow! Again I say WOW!

That’s a lot of snow. Some are saying we’ve had record snowfalls in our area. I don’t know if it broke a record for the century, but it broke a record for me. That was the deepest snow I have ever trudged through.

Some of the drifts were waist deep. The first morning was the worst because the path to the calf hutches wasn’t plowed and it was feeding time. We usually pull a wagon full of bottles to the calf hutches, but that morning we had to carry the bottles.

It took four trips with two of us carrying crates of bottles, but the calves were very happy to see us. We only had to carry bottles three more feedings and, thankfully, we are now back to using the wagon.

I thought about our calf feeding times, and I can honestly say that our calves have never missed a meal. There have been days when the pasteurizer was broke and feeding time was delayed for a few hours, but the calves were eventually taken care of.

Even during extreme temperatures our animals are well cared for. We just put on another layer of warm winter gear and head for the barn. Feeding our animals, making sure every animal has a warm and dry place to lie down, digging paths in the snow, and getting the milk truck to the plant are the most important jobs during snowstorms.

Getting the milk truck out to the main roads is a blog all its own. More on that later; it’s almost feeding time and the calves don’t like it when I am late!

February 5, 2010

For farmers, the winter months can be viewed as down time. Other than hauling manure when the weather allows, there isn’t much time spent in the fields.

During spring, summer and fall, the tractors are kept busy cultivating, planting and harvesting crops. But during the winter, the fields lay barren and the tractors are in the shed.

During these months, we spend a lot of time attending meetings, servicing equipment, and repairing buildings.

Farm meetings have changed over the past years. When I was a child, I remember my father attending farm meetings at the local fire hall or a nearby restaurant. He would go to the meeting and hear about new regulations, the latest and greatest equipment, and new technology that would help him farm more efficiently.

Farm meetings still have the same focus, but the way it is presented has come a long way.

Thanks to the Internet, we can now have meetings via Webinar, conference calls and Skype.

The Center for Dairy Excellence is an organization in Pennsylvania that focuses on helping farmers become more efficient in the industry. The Center has been an excellent avenue for dairy farmers this winter by providing several conference calls with outstanding dairy representatives from across the country.

In a few weeks, the Center will host a Webinar that will focus on budgeting. I don’t care what business you operate, after 2009, budgeting is at the top of everyone’s list. I won’t be missing this one.

I’m hopeful that more farming organizations will catch on to using this means of communication in the industry. We need to continue our education so that we remain efficient and become better farmers, just like we have for many years.

February 1, 2010

I was disheartened to see ABC TV’s recent news clip about the dairy industry. The video clips were graphic and uncommon for 99.9 percent of the dairy farmers in the country.

I have met people that consider our dairy a factory farm because we milk more than 500 cows. False accusations like that and undercover video clips like the one ABC portrayed on its “Nightline” broadcast infuriate me. How dare they make such accusations without finding out the truth?

That is not how we run our dairy farm. And that is not how other dairy farmers I know treat their animals.

Our cows are important to us. Each one at each age. I take great pride in how we care for our animals.

We have standards regarding proper animal care, and our employees need to understand how they are to treat animals and respect each other. If that doesn’t happen, they don’t fit on our farm.

The “Nightline” story also touched on tail docking and dehorning. We don’t do tail docking on our farm, so I can’t speak on that practice. However, I have always understood it to be done much the same as is done on certain breeds of dogs, like Dobermans and boxers.

However, we do dehorn on our farm. Cows use their heads to socialize. When cows are in large groups, you often see them push each other around using their heads. It’s their way to communicate with each other. If they were to have sharp horns, they would gore each other.

One of my favorite cows is named Feliz, and she likes it when I go up to her and scratch her head and neck. She loves the extra attention, but I wouldn’t be able to get near her if she had horns because she also loves to shove me around with her head. It is her way of giving attention back to me.

That is the reason why we dehorn our cattle – safety for the cows and safety for ourselves. But the practice itself can be lessoned. Local anesthesia can be injected so the site is numb, and the animals can be tied in a position so they are comfortable.

Those are common and humane practices that are used on most farms.

The ill treatment that ABC displayed is rare and wrong. We love our animals. They are our livelihood. Part of that livelihood is taking proper care of them with respect.

This whole experience makes me wonder about the freedom of speech, the lack of integrity, and the inaccuracy behind news clips that we see every day. If I have a question, I have vowed to find out the truth before believing the few clips I see.

January 27, 2010

January is the start of a new year, but not before we close out the previous year.

When it relates to the bookwork on the farm, it seems that I spend most of the first month calculating, tabulating and rechecking stuff that happened in the past year than focusing on the upcoming year.

We have approximately 15 employees and several people that we hire to do custom work. We don’t own the equipment that we need to plant the corn or harvest the forages, so we hire other businesses to do that work. Each one of our employees and each one of the custom operators needs their proper tax documents by the end of January.

There are lots of days I would rather be out in the barn, feeding the calves or taking care of newborns. However, this is an important and necessary part of the business, so I spend a lot of time in front of the computer during this month.

One nice part about office work is that I am on the inside looking out. On days when the weather is anything but sunny and pleasant, it is an advantage to be working on W-2 forms!

My saving grace is our accountant. If you have an accountant for your business, you are probably amazed at their expertise, like I am. Accountants love numbers and calculating like I love words and writing. Thankfully, we have an accountant that helps me understand what I am doing and keeps me on the straight and narrow year-end-path. And thankfully, February is around the corner!

January 8, 2010

A friend told me the other day that 2010 is the year of the cow. I have a good idea that theory was of her own making and nothing profound. But I found it amusing just the same.

I think she was saying that she is anxious to put 2009 behind us.

There’s something exciting about closing out a year and starting a new year fresh.

2009 was quite the year for dairy farmers, and we were no exception to the chaos. Like so many businesses, dairy farming took a nasty hit with the broken economy, and it seems we spent most of the year digging out of a huge financial hole.

Every farmer I know is excited to start the New Year.

One step in that process is to close out the file cabinet and get my file drawers ready for the New Year. By the end of December, my little file cabinet was stuffed so full of receipts and invoices that I could barely cram another paper in the folders.

On December 31, I spent the day exchanging files. It’s a good feeling to be finished with that year-end job. I took the 2009 files out of the file cabinet and placed them in file boxes, made new folders for the file drawers, and now the office is ready for 2010 to begin.

Starting January with a fresh set of empty folders is refreshing!

Let the year of the cow begin!

January 4, 2010

The blizzard that hit us in mid-December was amazing! It has been several years since we had that much snow accumulation on the farm. I was already on the schedule to work that snowy Saturday, which was good because our other calf-feeding employees were snowed in at their houses.

As beautiful as the snow is, it does cause quite a ruckus on the farm. For one thing, none of the chores are normal. They all take twice the time to complete because it takes so long to get to the calves and walk around the hutches. And pulling the wagon of milk is next to impossible.

Somehow, that snowy Saturday eventually came to an end. I was anxious for Sunday. A new day, hopefully more employees will get to work, and the chore load will be lightened.

As the sun rose over the snowy fields, my heart melted. The landscape was breathtaking. Glistening snow covered our farm like I haven’t seen in many years.

Evidently the calves were also taken with the change. As I made my way out to the hutches, I noticed that one was empty. At some time during the night, the calf escaped from the pen and found refuge in an empty hutch. It wasn’t hard to see how she got away, she just walked out of her hutch, up the snow bank and out over the fence.

And when her neighbor saw how easy it was, she decided to take a morning stroll through the snow, too.

Her stroll turned into a morning rodeo. She ran through the snow, kicking up her heels, tail straight up in the air, fluffy snow flying everywhere. Once she got a taste of running through the snow, there was no going back for that baby.

It didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried to coax her back into her hutch, she enjoyed her freedom.

I finally decided that she was fine running through the snow. I made sure she had access to an empty pen, let her roam, and got on with my chores.

As far as I know she’s stayed in her pen since the snow melted, but from what I understand there is more on the way. I’m sure she’ll be excited.

December 23, 2009

There’s something about this time of year that brings on a lot of “calvings.” This is just my own theory, but I think the cows know it’s Christmas, and they know it’s time for a baby to be born in a stable. So they just follow suit with the season and make a race for the delivery pen.

One Christmas that sticks out in my mind is the year we had five newborn calves on Christmas morning. FIVE! That means five more babies to feed, five more to vaccinate, and five more to move into hutches. And for our kids it meant a lot longer time before we opened presents.

We are just a few days away from Christmas, and already our cows are getting into the holiday spirit. Two weekends ago, we had nine babies born, and the other night we had six. SIX calves in one night. Aside from milking cows, the employees working at nighttime spent a lot of time feeding calves. And I’ve been spending a good bit of time each morning making sure each calf had an ear tag, a vaccination pill, and her fill of colostrum, or her mother’s milk.

Whew! One would think that at this rate, all the cows due in December might have calved until the 25th of the month. However, if this year is anything like past years, I have nothing to fear. On Christmas morning, there will be plenty of newborns in our stable ready to celebrate the season.

Merry Christmas to all!

December 18, 2009

One thing on our farm that we keep a close watch on is milk production. Each cow has a computer chip that she wears around her neck, and as she enters the parlor to be milked, her identification number is read. As she is being milked, the pounds of milk are being tabulated. At the end of milking time, the cow’s milk weight is downloaded onto our office computer.

Duane can go into the program and see how much milk each cow gives us each day. Last week, the entire herd dropped in milk production. The amount was significant enough that it was noticed. A quick drop like that could mean several potential problems: faulty equipment, employee issues, or a miscalculated feed ration.

Duane asked the employee that mixes the feed if he had noticed any changes in the forages and, luckily, the problem was found quickly.

One of the forages we were using in the cows diet is alfalfa, which we called haylage. Haylage is high in protein. Evidently, we ran out of haylage and the next forage in line was the triticale. Triticale is a type of grass that is a great forage, but it doesn’t have the same level of protein as the haylage.

Turns out, the level of the protein needed to be adjusted. After the nutritionist was called and the necessary changes were made to the feed, the cows started eating better and producing milk back to their potential.

Cows need a certain amount of protein, forages, corn, fiber, vitamins and minerals. If our formula is off calculation, the cows will be off in their milk production.

That night when I made supper, I had to chuckle. We have a nutritionist for the cows, measuring each ounce of feed going into their diet. I had just served my family good old mashed potatoes and meatloaf without much thought or calculation.

Maybe I should pay more attention to our protein intakes!

November 30, 2009

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a man named Rafi. He introduced himself as being from India and said he was interested in visiting our farm. My first reaction was defensive. Who was this guy? Could I trust him? Why did he want to visit our farm?

I hate to think that we have to be careful about such inquiries but, unfortunately, past experiences of other farmers have made us leery of strangers.

I decided to buy myself some time and asked Rafi to submit a request for a tour and, in that submission, list the reasons he wanted to visit our farm.

I felt better after reading Rafi’s e-mail. It turns out he found our farm by searching the Internet and coming upon our Web site, www.arjoyholsteins.com. He wanted to bring his brother, who is interested in setting up a dairy in India, out to the farm to get some ideas.

After talking it over with my husband, Duane, we decided this guy was legit and would give him a tour of our farm.

After several rainy weekends, Rafi was finally able to get his visit arranged. The time spent with him and his brother was beneficial for me, as well as for them. I had a great time taking them around the farm and telling them about the cows’ diet, showing them the free stall barn, taking them through the milking parlor and explaining the computer programs we use on the farm. They asked a lot of questions and took a lot of pictures.

I didn’t just tell them about our farm, they told me about farming in India, and I learned some interesting information. Did you know that they milk buffalo in India? There is a higher percentage of buffalo milk consumed in India than bovine (or cow’s milk). Also, Jerseys are the preferred breed of cows in the country because they can take the heat better than Holsteins.

Rafi said most families in his home country have 10 cows, but there are not many large dairies that produce milk as a business. That is something his brother is hoping to establish.

They loved learning about the computer program, the computer chips that are in each cow’s collar and the ability to upload milking information onto our computer and track each cow’s daily production. It took a large chunk of time out of my Saturday, but it was well worth the time.

My goal was to make sure they left our farm with a positive impression of our business. From their reaction, appreciation and questions, I think that was attained. Another bonus is that Duane and I also got an invitation to visit their farm in India once it is established.

November 25, 2009

I have such fond memories of holidays. My grandma’s (I called her Mama) pumpkin pie, baked corn and mashed potatoes were especially delicious at Thanksgiving.

The farm I grew up on was the same farm that my grandparents farmed, and after my parents took over the farm work, Mama and Papa moved to a house at the end of the long farm lane.

I still remember Mama walking down the farm lane carrying her little milk kettle. Because of the extra baking, she would make more trips than usual during Thanksgiving week. I would run out to meet her, fill her kettle with milk from our tank, and talk about what she was going to make with the milk I was getting for her.

Thankfully, my childhood memories keep Mama’s traditions fresh every Thanksgiving. Even though we are going to my in-laws this year, I am taking pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes.

This week, my daughter called. She wanted her grandmother’s special mashed potato recipe so she could make them for her roommates at college.

She has the same fond memories of holiday dinners, traditions and a grandmother that is a top-notch cook.

I’ll share the recipe with you, in case you are looking to start a new tradition this Thanksgiving. I am warning you, they are not low fat. But if you are interested in lower fat, just replace the regular cream cheese, sour cream, butter and milk with lowfat or non-fat dairy products.

Special Mashed Potatoes

12 large potatoes
8 oz. cream cheese
8 oz. sour cream
1 tsp. onion powder
1/4 cup melted butter

Peel potatoes, fill pan 1/2 full of water and add 2 tsp. salt. Boil potatoes until soft (30 minutes). Mash potatoes in mixer than add cream cheese, sour cream and onion powder. Whip and mash until fluffy.  Add a small amount of milk, if needed.

Spread in buttered 13’ x 9" pan. Refrigerate until needed or serve immediately.

When ready to use, drizzle melted butter over top and sprinkle with paprika.

If using another day bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving.

November 23, 2009

This month we have a “classifier” from the Holstein Association coming to our farm. It’s been several years since we scored our animals. In case you don’t understand this process, let me explain it to you.

Our cows are registered through the Holstein Association USA. Just like people register dogs through the American Kennel Club, we register our cows through this national organization.

When each heifer calf is born, as well as the bull calves we raise, they get a tag for their ear. Each tag has a specific number that is unlike any other number in the Holstein Association’s registry program. The number is entered into our dairy computer program, and before each calf is 3 months old, I enter the correct information for that calf and send it to the association. I then receive a registration paper that has the calf’s unique registration number, sire information (father), dam information (mother), grand dam and grand sire information and birth date. The paper stays in our files for as long as the animal is with us. If we ever sell her, we have to transfer her registration paper to the new owner.

Another process in the Holstein Association is the classification program. After the heifer grows into a cow and is in the milking herd, we have a specialist from the Holstein Association visit our farm and classify her, along with her herd mates. The classifier will give each cow a score based on how correct she is in her feet and legs, body condition, stature and udder. The higher the score, the stronger her pedigree and the more valuable she and her offspring become.

The scores are broken down into five categories: excellent, very good, good plus, good and fair. We have cows in each category, but obviously the goal is to have as many excellent cows in our herd as possible.

The whole process can be very complicated and cumbersome; however, it is beneficial to us knowing that we are raising high quality cows. This is just like the satisfaction attained by someone who is raising a high quality show dog.

Since it has been several years since we scored our herd of cows, we have 150 to show the classifier this month. Yes, that will be a really big day, but it will be fun to see how many new “excellent” cows we find in our barn.

November 18, 2009

Last weekend, Duane and I had a rare opportunity to take a vacation. We celebrated 25 years of marriage and decided that was worthy of some time away.

A few years ago, we started talking about what we were going to do to celebrate our big milestone. But when this year came around, taking a huge vacation just wasn’t feasible, so we decided to save that vacation for another year and keep this one closer to home.

I’m really glad we decided to do that as we had a lovely weekend in the Allegheny Mountains, which is about five hours from our farm.

We had beautiful weather for seeing the sights on Saturday. Farmers don’t like to sit still, even on vacation, so we drove to a few historical sites, took in a few wineries, and viewed the Elk herds in Pennsylvania.

The hardest part of the whole weekend was getting Duane to adjust to the slower pace. He is used to an intense schedule that doesn’t allow time for lingering or lollygagging, and to suddenly go to a couple of days with down time takes some adjusting.

I was amazed at how little his cell phone rang, and we actually had a peaceful weekend without worrying about the farm.

Getting away from the farm always means a couple of days of preparing employees with repair persons phone numbers, emergency contact numbers and a trouble shooting list if something goes wrong. We don’t anticipate bad things to happen when we leave, but inevidablly something will happen during those days just like it happens when we are home, and decisions need to be made to make sure our cows are well cared for while we are gone.

Everything went so well that we spent most of our return trip trying to come up with excuses to get us back to the mountains as soon as possible.

October 20, 2009

For the past month, we have been harvesting our corn. That’s almost 425 acres of corn that was chopped for our trench, which we use instead of a silo. The trench is two concrete walls on a huge concrete pad on which we pile, pile and pile our chopped corn. 

The chopped corn is called silage, and silage is the main ingredient in our cows’ diet. We feed more than 32,000 pounds of silage each day to our herd of 550 cows.

Usually when we are harvesting, I have little jobs like feeding lunch and supper to the truck drivers and taking care of daily chores around the farm. This year, I got roped into another job.  

My husband, Duane, was short-handed with his harvesting crew on the very last day we were chopping corn and asked if I would be willing to drive the “pack” tractor. Amazingly, I was able to hold off my other responsibilities and headed for the tractor.

Believe it or not, there is a science to packing the trench. As the corn is being chopped in the fields, we have trucks that haul it back to the farm. Once at the farm, the chopped corn is dumped on the concrete pad, and from there it is piled with a blade tractor and packed tight with a pack tractor. A pack tractor is any tractor that is huge and weighs as much as possible. This year, we rented a Steiger, which is the name of a very large and heavy tractor. 

My job was to drive the Steiger up and down the pile of silage, slowly moving over the fresh silage that the blade tractor added to the pile. That way the silage is packed down as tight as possible. This allows less air to get into the silage, and the less air that seeps into the forage means the less it spoils through the winter.

Packing a tight trench is critical to having quality feed for our cows. 

Packing is also a monotonous job because I was only going two directions – up the hill and down the hill.

My biggest challenge for the day was to learn to back up the hill using the mirrors on the tractor so my neck didn’t get stiff from turning around.

I am not good at backing up equipment and anytime I back vehicles or tractors, I like to turn around and physically see what direction the vehicle is heading. This time, I had to learn how to use the tractor mirrors and trust I was heading in the right direction.

Harvest season lasts through the month of October and into November, but the largest chunk of our harvest is finished! It was kind of nice knowing that I made a small contribution to our cow’s well-being through the next year. 

October 7, 2009

Wow! What a week! I am home from the All-American Dairy Show in Harrisburg, one of the largest national dairy shows in the country. Approximately 1,000 youth came out for the week’s various events, and nearly 1,100 adults brought out their best dairy animals for the open shows. That was an amazing turnout.

My job for the week was to take a photograph of the first-place winner of every class. Each breed represented had its own show, including Holsteins, Red and White Holsteins, Ayrshires, Guernseys, Brown Swiss, Milking Shorthorns and Jerseys. There were 30-plus classes in each show. It was a busy week!

If you’ve never been to a cow show, this is how it works. The animals are divided into classes by age. For the All-American Dairy Show, the youngest animals were born on March 1 of this year and the oldest was shown in the Aged Cow class. One cow that was shown this year was 13 years old!

As the animals walk into the show ring, the judge takes a good look at each one. After looking them over with a careful eye, he or she makes a decision and lines up the animals according to their place in the class. Even after making a decision, the judge will ask the handlers to walk the cows around the show ring one more time, just to make sure the right decision was made.

Sometimes I try to pick the animal that the judge will put into first place, to see if I can get close to his or her decision. But, mostly, I stick to taking photos.

Aside from picking a first-place winner of each age group, the judges also choose a Junior Champion of each breed, which is the champion of the heifers; a Senior Champion of each breed, which is the champion of the milking cows; and a Grand Champion overall of each breed. On the last day of the show, a special contest is held in which the Grand Champions from each breed are paraded around the show ring. The judges then decide which cow is the Supreme Champion of the All-American Dairy Show.

This year’s Supreme Champion was a Brown Swiss cow named Snickerdoodle. Snickerdoodle won Supreme Champion last year, plus she has won Supreme Champion at other national dairy shows. She is very popular.

Showing cows is hard work, and the kids who participate in the All-American spend countless hours during the summer getting their animals ready for the show. They wash their animals and make sure there is not a speck of dirt on them. They groom them and trim their hair with special trimmers. They walk them around with a halter, teaching them to lead right behind the showman. I can easily tell who spends a lot of time with their animals as the heifers walk around the ring. Those that are well trained just follow right behind the showman, barely making a wrong move.

There is one day of the All-American that is designated to youth, who are the only ones allowed to walk in the ring with their animals. That’s the best day to get some unique shots of kids and their cows.

Even though it is a ton of work, everyone seems to have a great time. They see some of the prettiest cows in the country and meet up with friends from far away. One little girl announced when she walked out the door that she “can’t wait for next year!”

For a look at the All-American Dairy Show, be sure to visit the Photo Gallery. …more

September 21, 2009

I am getting ready for one of my favorite weeks of the year. On Saturday, I headed up to Harrisburg (Pa.) for the All American Dairy Show. I have a once-a-year photography job of taking pictures of the 1st place winners at a National Dairy Show. It is a blast.

The week is packed full of wonderful cows – this is one of the largest national dairy shows in the country – and I enjoy meeting up with lots and lots of friends. During the week, I pack myself full of grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate milk shakes.

Sometimes I wonder why I enjoy the week so much as I usually end up with allergy problems from the dust, my feet are throbbing because I’ve been on them all day, and I am exhausted.

I think there are a lot of reasons why I really enjoy this event. Not only is it a change of pace from the daily chaos I usually deal with on the farm, but the week includes meeting up with so many friends that I only see during this time every year. There are also beautiful cows walking gracefully around the show ring day after day.

The All American Dairy Show is like a beauty pageant for cows. They are washed, clipped, and brushed to perfection. Not a spec of dirt is found under their hooves. Even the insides of their ears have been cleaned. Their owners (or showmen, as we call them) lead them around the ring single-file while a judge takes a good, long look at each cow.

There are several factors that go into choosing the first place winner: stature, the proper stance and positioning of her feet and legs, the correctness of her udder, and so on and so on. I don’t know much about judging – all the cows look beautiful to me. However, I like to see if the judge also selects my favorite cow in the ring.

The show will take place from Sunday, September 20, through Thursday, September 24. Seven different breeds of cows partake in the show, including Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Jersey, Guernsey, Holstein, Red and White Holstein, and Milking Shorthorn.

If you want to follow along with the show, check out the Web site at www.allamerican.state.pa.us.

If you see a bunch of photographs on the Web site that include beautiful cows and adorable kids, chances are good that I was behind the camera.

September 14, 2009

There is an economic crisis across the country, and dairy farmers are not exempt from the financial turmoil that our country is in.

In a nutshell, dairy farmers across the country are getting paid 47 percent less this year than we did in 2008. If our expenses had decreased the same amount, we would not be in such a desperate situation; however, they have gone up for us, just like they have increased for you.

The buzz among the farmers, though, is not just the low prices coming back to the farmer. It’s also about imports that come from other countries, exports that we ship less of, and the current price of milk in the stores that has remained nearly un-phased by the economy.

Today, I’m going to just focus on the last issue. Exports and imports are a blog all their own. As the price of milk paid to farmers, like us, began to dwindle, most of us assumed that the price in the store would also go down. But it didn’t. It remained close to the same price as last year.

It doesn’t look right when dairy processors and retailers are making money but the grass-roots section of the business is falling short. That’s when dairy farmers began asking questions. And making phone calls. And visiting Washington, D.C.

Typically, farmers are a quiet bunch that raise their crops and take care of their cows. However, many are feeling threatened right now and in jeopardy of losing their lifelong occupation.

At the end of July, there was a hearing in Washington, D.C., that was organized to help educate senators and congressmen about the dairy crisis and the current system that sets the price of milk for all dairy farmers. I had a previous commitment and could not attend, but people witnessed industry representatives fill the room, then moved the hearing to a larger room, and the hearing still overflowed into the hallway.

There are no easy solutions, answers or handouts. But relief can’t come fast enough for farmers across the country. Dairy farmers have been holding town meetings, sitting down with congressmen and senators, and educating as many people as possible.

My son asked me the other day if we are starting a revolt. I laughed at his comment, but then I thought about the truth in what he asked. We live in a country where we have the freedom to stand our ground. It is not easy and, yes, it might be a bit radical at times, but there are also times I am proud to be involved in a business that is learning to take a strong stand and fight for our livelihood.

And it has been working. Since the outcry across the states, there is a federal investigation being ordered by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. He is appointing 15 representatives of the dairy industry to investigate the dairy pricing system. Maybe there will be relief after all. All the farmers I know are hanging onto that hope.

September 4, 2009

My husband, Duane, got a call recently from the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.  The reporter was curious about antibiotics in milk and wanted to know the process we have in place to make sure our milk is pure.

Her curiosity was sparked when she noticed a disclaimer on a carton of milk that read, “milk processed in this container does not contain any antibiotics.”  She was wondering if there were certain milks sold that did have antibiotics.

Duane assured her that there are several safety checks to guarantee that milk is not sold with antibiotics.  For starters, we test every load before it leaves the farm.  The load is tested a second time when the milk gets to the plant.  Each truck that pulls into a milk plant is tested before the milk is unloaded and then again when the milk is in the plant. In fact, the milk is tested several times before it reaches the grocery store shelf to help ensure its quality.

It is very important for us to keep our milk free of antibiotics because if Duane tests a load of milk and it comes up positive, we have to dump that tank of milk. That is a huge loss for us.  It can amount to $10,000, and that is a loss we cannot endure right now, or at any time.

The reporter questioned that if it so important to keep antibiotics out of milk, “why are antibiotics used on the farm?” 

Duane explained to her that just like people, cows sometimes get sick.  He used the example of our “Fresh Cow Protocol.”  A fresh cow is the term we use for a cow that has just had a calf.  Each new mother on our farm is on a strict health check regime for two weeks after giving birth.  We monitor her temperature  to make sure she is not running a fever. 

The normal temperature for a cow is 101.5˚ Fahrenheit. If one of our cows has a temperature of 105˚, we know she is fighting a serious infection.  Most fresh cows that run high fevers are fighting a uterus infection.  Just like people need antibiotics to fight off infections, our cows need antibiotics to recover, as well.  If they don’t get antibiotics, they may not live.

When a cow is treated with antiobiotics, there  is a certain time period required to withhold the treated cow’s milk from the bulk tank. (The bulk tank is the large, refrigerated storage tank where milk is held before it is taken to the dairy processing plant.) That ensures that the milk stays pure, and we don’t risk any traces of antibiotics in our milk.

The reporter seemed pleased with her story, and Duane was happy to help someone understand the antibiotic policies we have in place on our farm.  I was just glad she asked those tough questions rather than assume that there is milk in the stores containing impurities. 

July 22, 2009

We received an interesting request recently. The local fire company called and asked us to bring our manure truck to a nearby Amish farm. The firemen were rescuing a mule from a manure storage pit and needed to get rid of manure quickly before attempting to get the animal out safely.

According to the Amish family, the unfortunate mule got through the safety gates and accidently fell into the slushy mess. Thankfully, this was not a job for me, but we sent one of our employees over with our truck and tanker. He was able to pump a significant amount of manure out of the pit so the crew could safely get close to the animal.

As they got close to the mule, they hooked him to wide straps that were attached to a crane on a tow truck. After he was snapped into place, the firemen gently lifted him out of the pit and onto solid ground.

I’m sure he was ready to see green grass again!

Having big equipment has advantages, and this particular day having an available manure truck and tanker was good for this mule. It made me chuckle, that even though we are technology decades apart from each other, we can still depend on the fellowship of being neighbors to cross that bridge of years.

It was a good feeling to work together with another farmer, the fire company and our community to be a part of the rescue team.

July 15, 2009

My heart was warmed the other day as I read through the ESPN magazine. There was an article about college football players who are finished with their football careers as defensive and offensive linemen and now are left to deal with the extra weight that used to be the force behind their career.

This pair of particular players decided to investigate nutrition further and gain control of their weight with the goal of getting down to a size that their bones and joints could handle.

The sentence that jumped out at me in the article was when the past football player talked about “drinking lots of milk to build up his muscles, bones, and joints.” He wasn’t paid to say that; he voluntarily offered the information. And guess what? He is right.

It was good for me to hear. My family has a history of osteoporosis. When my mother was 50, she was preparing for both of her hips to be replaced. I am not too far from that age, and I know I need to take extra precautions to keep my joints healthy.

I know that milk alone can’t heal my arthritis problems. Even though I am active around the farm, I need to exercise on a regular basis, drink plenty of water, and lay off of the caffeine.

Milk, yogurt and cottage cheese are just a few healthy choices that I can make to help my joints get stronger. Yogurt is one of my favorite choices. Not only does it have the vitamins, calcium and minerals I need, it also has lactobacilious, which helps my immune system.

All this talk about eating is making me hungry, so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to have a snack. How about some peach yogurt or a yogurt smoothie! Try one of my favorite recipes below:

Yogurt Smoothie

1 cup lowfat milk
1/2 cup fruit (strawberries and blueberries are in season right now)
1 container of yogurt (plain or flavored)
3 ice cubes

Place all ingredients in the blender and blend until smooth.

July 8, 2009

For the past four summers, we have hosted an intern on our farm. This summer, we have the privilege of entertaining a veterinarian student from the University of Pennsylvania.

It will be a great partnership. Allison is taking a fellowship this fall with a heifer raising organization and is in need of experience raising calves and heifers. We have been short-staffed in our calf care area and wholeheartedly welcome Allison.

For many years, my father was the main calf-care employee on our farm and was as reliable coming to work as the sun was rising in the morning. A number of weeks ago that changed; he is presently recovering from an automobile accident and major surgery.

A school-aged kid who worked for us took a summer internship in his vocational trade of heating and cooling. That took another calf employee off of the payroll.

Rest assured, though, that I am still here and feeding the calves! We quickly added our daughter, Kacie, to the list of capable calf-care employees, knowing full well that college is around the corner and her enlistment is temporary.

Needless to say, I was elated to hear that Allison would be coming to our farm. We will gladly teach her everything we know about raising calves. With her years of veterinarian school experience, I know she will be teaching us a few things, too.

Even though I know Allison and Kacie will be moving on to other things this fall, having them here is added refreshment in our employment force this summer.

June 12, 2009

My husband, Duane, is always looking for new ways to be more efficient with the land we farm. This year we tried something new – a tall grass called triticale.

The triticale was planted last fall on 250 acres of our land. It quickly grew a few inches out of the ground, but when the cold weather hit, it stopped growing. This spring when the ground thawed, the triticale started growing right where it left off, reaching nearly 3 feet in height.

Triticale is used as forage in our animal’s diet. Another forage we use is silage, or chopped corn. Silage is harvested in the fall.

Depending on the time of harvesting, triticale has a high level of protein. The weather has a lot to do with the quality of our forages. If we harvest the triticale when it gets old, the protein level goes down. If we harvest the grass too early, we have a smaller quantity of feed.

Duane’s goal was to harvest the triticale when the protein levels were high and the grass was thick enough to make the maximum amount of feed. We were hoping to get enough triticale in our storage area that we would be able to use it in our feed ration throughout the year.

And we accomplished our goal! We chopped a total of 2.5 bags of triticale. Each bag is 300 feet long and 12 feet high.

A great extra with triticale is that because it is harvested in early spring, we can “double crop” the land and plant corn a week or so after the grass is harvested.

By taking two crops off of our land rather than just one, we are able to provide more feed for our cows and heifers.

Cammie, our Pennsylvania Farm Show calf, will be glad for the triticale! The grass is like candy to her. It is also a great source of protein in her diet.

May 27, 2009

Every spring, we open up several pastures and let the cows enjoy the fresh grass and beautiful spring weather. They love roaming around the pasture and most days can be found grazing from daybreak to sunset.

On our farm, we raise a lot of our male calves to be used as breeding bulls, which we sell to other farmers when they are between 10 and 12 months old. As they become older, we need to keep them separated from our heifers, so we put them in a pasture that is designated the “bull’s pasture.”

The space is all their own, with a nice creek running through, shade when the sun gets hot and acres of grass. The group of bulls does well in their pasture, but only after the fence is fixed.

Most of the fence around our farm is electric. Electric fence is a tiny wire that has a small bit of current running through the wire, and when an animal touches the fence it gives them a small shock. This teaches them to stay on the right side. It works a lot like the underground fences that people put in for their dogs, only ours is on top of the ground and the cows (or bulls) don’t have to wear collars.

It seems that every spring we are so anxious to get the bulls into their new spring pasture that we decide to let them run before the fence is checked. And every year, the same thing happens – the bulls soon figure out there are no boundaries and they would much rather be outside the fence than in.

We live beside a back road, but there is still ample traffic that we don’t want our bulls out wandering the farm.

This year, after several days of chasing bulls off of the road and into the pasture, Duane decided to move them back to their winter housing until we can find time to get the fence fixed.

With a break in the weather and some rain in the forecast, we should have the bulls back in their pasture in no time. And that ain’t no bull!

May 26, 2009

Check out the new photos of Cammie the Calf!

May 15, 2009

Mother’s Day always seems to bring out the best in our cows. This year was no exception.

Last weekend when I was cooking supper, one of our employees came to the house to inform me a cow had given birth, or calved, in the pasture. Typically, our cows calve in the maternity area where we can take proper care of mother and baby, but every once in a while there is a cow that decides to have her calf early.

This particular cow decided to make life really difficult by giving birth far from the barn in the meadow.

Luckily for her and her little one, our employee spotted the calf before it was too late. He heard the new mother bawling in the pasture and noticed that several turkey buzzards were making their way closer and closer to the newborn. The mother was franticly trying to keep them away, but there were so many of them it was becoming difficult.

Our daughter, Kacie, and I jumped on the 4-wheeler and headed for the baby as quickly as we could, but after several days of rain it was more like a mud bog than a drive through the meadow.

The great part about this venture was seeing the reaction from all of the other mothers-in-waiting. There are nearly 60 cows in our pasture due to calve in a few months, and as the vultures were getting closer, the new mother’s bawling alerted the rest of the herd. When Kacie and I arrived at the scene, every cow in the meadow had come to the rescue and had surrounded the baby in a huge circle.

Now we had another problem – we had to convince the protective bovines to move aside so we could take the baby to the barn and get her into a nice bed of straw.

It turned our peaceful evening into quite the muddy adventure, but eventually the new baby girl and mother made it safely to the barn.

As much of a nuisance as it was, it was refreshing to see the cows’ maternal instincts shine on Mother’s Day weekend.

May 11, 2009

Finally, a week of rainy weather and we can catch our breath.

Spring is always a busy time, and each year I say: “This is the busiest spring we’ve ever had.” This year is no exception.

I guess there are too many directions to go – manure to haul, ground to cultivate, animals to send out to pasture, fences to fix, flower beds to weed – and the list goes on.

Last month, we had some quiet weeks in our calving pen. There were five cows that calved in a two-week time period. It has been years since we were that slow in our maternity area. After last weekend, I can honestly say that the quiet weeks are over. We just had eight calves born in two days!

Cleaning out my flower beds is next on my to-do list. After a week of rain, they are starting to rise above the shrubs. Lucky for me, our son, Robert, is home from college and wanting to earn some money. Unlucky for him, we have a lot of flower beds.

Cammie, our Pennsylvania Farm Show calf, is doing great. She moved to a larger pasture with more friends and lots of acres to roam. There is a spacious barn for the heifers to use when the weather is stormy, but otherwise Cammie will be found grazing to her stomach’s content.

She’ll stay at this farm until she is almost a year old, so she has many months of meadow to enjoy.

March 27, 2009

Spring is finally here and that means it is officially spring-cleaning time.

Spring-cleaning on a dairy farm means it is time to haul manure. Farmers have a window of time before the planting season to get fields ready for cultivating. The first step in that preparation is to make sure the fields have the proper amount of fertilizer. If the soil is balanced with the right amount of nutrients, our crops will grow to their potential and give us healthy forages for the cows in the fall.

We work closely with the Chester County Conservation District to make sure each field is not under – or over – fertilized.

Dairy farmers are fortunate in that we don’t need to purchase fertilizer. Our cows provide enough nutrients in their manure, and that is one expense we can cross off the list!

Spreading manure is not a favorite time of year for many of our neighbors, and we try to be sensitive to that. One of our custom manure haulers has a piece of equipment attached to the back of his manure tank that immediately works the manure into the ground. It helps to reduce odors and, in turn, keeps our neighbors happy. We also try to keep our hauler running during the day rather than driving the roads at night. Haulers are required to have large flashing lights on the top of the tractor and spreader, so you can imagine what it’s like to drive past houses at night. That’s why we try to make sure our manure is being hauled at a convenient time.

My grandmother used to tell me, “Spring-cleaning isn’t always fun, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you are done.”

That’s kind of how my husband, Duane, feels with hauling manure – it’s not the most pleasant job on the farm, but it’s a great feeling to have the manure pits emptied and the fields ready for planting.

March 18, 2009

Even our animals seem to anticipate springtime.

The first day of warm, sunny, spring-like weather, Cammie decided to go for a run. It would have been better had she and her friends stayed in their pen, but for some unknown reason, they decided to take a run with a more scenic route.

I was sitting at the dining room table when a black and white blur flashed past the window. Then another. And another. And another! I ran outside to find at least a dozen calves running around the yard, tails straight up, and heels kicking high.

My dad came around the corner and we quickly determined how they escaped and came up with a plan of action to get them back into the pen.

We gathered the employees, built a barricade, and started the rodeo. Chasing young heifers can be very frustrating because they never want to cooperate. They are curious enough to let you get close and then, suddenly, they bolt in the opposite direction.

It took us awhile, but we finally got Cammie and her friends safely back into the pen where they belong. And we raised the gate that they jumped over. We wanted to make sure that our heifer chasing distraction was finished!

It won’t be long before Cammie is moved to another barn for older heifers. She is growing up so quickly, and the next place she moves into will have a huge pasture for her to run through, kick up her heels, and graze to her heart’s content.

March 2, 2009

You’ve heard the expression for the month of March, “In like a lion and out like a lamb.” My grandmother always told me if the wind was strong and forceful at the beginning of March, the weather will be calm and pleasant at the end of the month.

I’ve decided to rename that ancient saying to be, “In like a polar bear and out like a calf.”

This past week, the wind has been brutal during calf feeding times. I understand it is cold during the winter, and typically I don’t complain about working outside in the crisp morning air, but putting up with several days of blustering wind biting through all my layers is taking a toll on my morale.

The calves don’t seem to mind. Their winter coats are ready for days like this, and as long as their pens are bedded with fluffy straw and they are fed on time, they certainly don’t complain.

During extreme cold weather, we will put blankets on our calves that snap around their bodies just like a horse blanket or a dog blanket. The blankets give them an extra layer to help keep them warm. Believe me, those blankets were used several times over the last week.

Cammie, our “Mookins Adoption Center” calf, is doing great during this weather, too. She moved to a bigger group pen, so she has lots of friends to hang out with.

Last week was her vaccination week. Just like we vaccinate children for diseases, we vaccinate our calves against certain illnesses so they can stay as healthy as possible. Calf vaccinations take place between the ages of 4 to 8 months, and Cammie just finished her first round of shots. In a month or two, she and her herdmates will get their second round, and then she will be ready to transition to our older calf facility.

It’s fun to watch them grow up to be healthy heifers.

February 20, 2009

The waiting is over Congratulations to Vicki Heisley of Marysville, Pa., for submitting the winning entry in the “Name the Calf” contest sponsored by Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association at the 2009 Pennsylvania Farm Show.

After reviewing the entries for the contest, I chose “Valentine” because of the heart shape on the calf’s head and the holiday that we celebrate in February.

I must say that I was very impressed with the names that were suggested, and one of the reasons that it took so long to choose a winner is because of the unique options that were given.

The most popular names recommended were Butterscotch and Carmel. Other popular names were Brownie, Buttercup, Baby Girl, Calie, Cutie, Emily, Daisy, Milkshake, Molly Moo and Sunshine.

If you don’t mind, I will take the list of name suggestions up to the barn office, and the next time I have a new heifer calf to name, I will find a name off of the list. Every calf that is born on our farm receives a name, and last week we had 12 new heifer calves born. I am always in need of new ideas, so if you suggested a name other than Valentine, there is a good chance that I will still be using your favorite calf name here at Ar-Joy Farm.

Valentine is now weaned off of milk and we are getting ready to move her to a new group pen. In a few weeks, she will be in a much bigger barn with a large pasture and a bunch of friends to hang out with. We’ll keep you updated with how she likes her new play area.

February 10, 2009

I hope you enjoyed the 2009 Pennsylvania Farm Show. I know we did, and so did our niece and two nephews who live in Arlington, Va. They were very excited to see all the different animals, sit on the big tractors, and watch the chicks hatch. They also signed up to adopt “Cammie the Calf” and brought their little Mookins toy cow home.

I had a surprise last week while talking to our son, Kelby, who is finishing his tour in Iraq. He called me one day from Baghdad to say that he heard the butter sculpture at the Pa. Farm Show featured a National Guardsman saying good-bye to his farm family. He wanted to know if we had a chance to see the amazing sculpture. It is nice for the service men and women to have technology keeping them connected to their home state activities.

We will be able to talk to Kelby face-to-face this coming weekend. He is flying into Texas after a 15-month tour with the Army. Even though it is difficult to leave the farm, we are making the trip to Texas to see him in. Our employees will keep things running until we get back.

I know Cammie will be well taken care of. My father takes care of the calves, and he does an outstanding job making sure every calf is fed, has clean bedding and stays healthy. Cammie is really growing! She has been weaned off of milk and is now on a diet of grain, hay and water. She also moved from an individual hutch into a group pen with other calves her age. Cammie seems to be enjoying the opportunity to socialize with her stall mates.

There have been several studies lately that show that calves need to socialize more than we ever realized. It is important for calves to be separated at a young age, from birth to 4 weeks, because of spreading illnesses (viruses spread from calf to calf just like our colds spread quickly between people). However, after the four-week time period, calves enjoy being together. They groom each other, run around the pen together, and help keep each other warm.

Cammie is doing fine during these cold weeks. Her hair is as thick as a winter coat, and as long as she has her friends, feed and water, she is content. As you can see from one of the "Cammie the Calf" photos, Cammie is looking forward to the upcoming spring training.

January 16, 2009

As I had hoped, I was able to travel to the Pennsylvania Farm Show this week to see this year’s agricultural extravaganza. I stopped by the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program booth and was surprised by what I saw there. Adoptions at the Mookins Center were booming!

Since last Saturday, more than 2,500 “adoptive parents” have promised to watch over Cammie the calf. Thank you to all who have stopped by to visit us and to learn more about dairy farming. In the next few weeks, I will give you an update on Cammie and the many activities on our farm.

I also want to thank the many dairy farmers – members of the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion board of directors – who took the time to visit with Farm Show visitors. They certainly had a great opportunity to share how they care for the calves and cows on their farms.

Click here to see more photographs in our photo gallery!

January 9, 2009

Holy cow! Did you know that the 2009 Butter Sculpture was unveiled yesterday? Jim Victor, the butter sculptor, used 900 pounds of butter to create this buttery masterpiece, which honors the Pa. National Guard and their families. The sculpture is amazing and to think that it is made with real butter makes this creation even more spectacular.

The butter sculpture is a favorite of mine at the Farm Show and every year it is a great mystery to see what venue of life the sculpture will highlight.

This year is even more special for me because Victor is honoring a branch of the Pa military and that holds a special place in my heart. Our son, Kelby is serving in the 4th Infantry in Iraq right now, which makes us more patriotic than we’ve ever been before. After a tour of 15 months in Baghdad, he is scheduled to come home in a month or so and we anticipate his safe arrival home.

But until he gets here, I will be grateful for the efforts of great people like Jim Victor and enjoy amazing art work like the butter sculpture.

It is a must see every year!

Also, don’t forget that the “Mookins Adoption Center” opens tomorrow at the 2009 Pennsylvania Farm Show, Booth #5261 in the Main Hall. I hope you will come visit us – Cammie and “Red” are really excited; and I am too!

January 7, 2009

Happy New Year! It’s 2009, and that can mean only one thing – the Pennsylvania Farm Show is just around the corner. The weeklong agricultural extravaganza will run from Saturday, January 10, through Saturday, January 17. Be sure to check out the Farm Show’s Web site, for a complete list of activities.

My husband, Duane, and I are planning to make the trip to Harrisburg at least one day next week, but we’ll have to wait until closer to the time to decide what day. Before we can take a day off from the farm, we need to make sure we have other employees in place to cover our jobs. But we enjoy a day at the Farm Show, and I know we’ll be there at least one day.

The staff at the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association is hard at work this week building the “Mookins Adoption Center.” You’ll want to check it out and sign up to adopt “Cammie,” a Holstein calf, so you can track her progress over the next few months.

I hope you will make the trip to Harrisburg to visit us at the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association exhibit booth. Cammie is looking forward to hearing about all of her adoptive parents, and “Red” is really looking forward to a new name.

Speaking of Red and Cammie, it is just about feeding time and they have no patience when it comes to waiting for their warm milk on a cold day.

Remember to visit us at the 2009 Pennsylvania Farm Show, Booth #5261 in the Main Hall, to adopt Cammie and to enter the “Name-the-Calf” contest.

December 23, 2008

It’s hard to believe that another year is rolling over and we soon will be flipping the calendars to January. Ever since I was a child, I have a special memory of going to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in early January. Going to the Farm Show was a highlight for me – I always had a stick of cotton candy, browsed through the cowboy and cowgirl souvenirs, and walked through the animal exhibits. The ducks sliding down the water slide and the exotic chickens were my favorite.

This year is the 93rd year for the Pennsylvania Farm Show, and although I don’t have bragging rights to attending every show, I can say I’ve been going for a long time and it is still a highlight for me.

I’m even more excited this year because of a unique opportunity I’m going to share with you. Two calves from our farm have been chosen to be the stars of the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program booth during the Farm Show!

I’d like introduce you to Cammie, a 2-month-old Holstein calf you will be able to “adopt” when you visit the “Mookins Adoption Center” at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Jan. 10 to 17, 2009. Cammie was named after Cameron Street in Harrisburg, where the Farm Show is located.

Cammie is a special calf because she will have many parents looking after her – parents just like you who will check back with me on a monthly basis to ensure she is growing up healthy and strong! As dairy farmers, we take extra good care of our calves so they grow up to be healthy, productive dairy cows. They are vaccinated, have regular veterinarian check-ups, and are fed a very special diet to make sure they grow properly.

Right now, Cammie is living in her own individual room with lots of fresh, soft straw to keep her cozy and warm. She drinks a big bottle of milk (2 quarts) twice a day, and nibbles on grain as a snack in-between meals. She also has fresh water at all times.

What do you think of Cammie?

Our other star calf needs your help! We’ve run out of names here at Ar Joy Farms, so we’re holding a contest to come up with the perfect name. Visit us at the 2009 Pennsylvania Farm Show, Booth #5261 in the Main Hall, to enter your suggestions. For now, we’ll call her ”Red,” but I know you can come up with a better name than that!

December 10, 2008

Career Day is a favorite day of the year for me. For the past five years, I’ve been invited to the Octorara Middle School Career Day to talk about dairy farming. I have 25 minutes with a classroom of 7th graders and tell them what it’s like to be a dairy farmer.

The first time I went in, I talked without props. The next year – and every year after that – I have taken a PowerPoint presentation with me. It takes about 15 minutes to go through the pictures, and for another 10 minutes I answer the students’ questions. And they always have a ton of questions. They want to know what time I get up in the morning, if I like my job, or any question about the cows. They are very interested in the animals.

During the PowerPoint presentation, I try to add information that will help them understand a cow’s life. For instance, I tell them that a cow drinks approximately 30 gallons of water a day (that equals a bathtub full of water). I also tell them that a cow eats nearly 100 pounds of feed a day, and compared to a McDonald’s hamburger, that would equal 400 hamburgers. They also like to hear that our milk tank holds 100,000 glasses of milk when it’s full.

This year, the students were interested in methane digesters. The 7th graders had just studied methane in science class, and we had great discussions about how farmers are turning cow manure into electricity and natural gas.

In closing, I always ask the students to help me name a calf. I explain to them that each of our calves is given a name and a registration paper and that it is difficult for me to come up with hundreds of names each year. The name choices that I go through are entertaining, but I use them throughout the year as I am registering calves.

Whether Career Day lights a spark for a child’s future or just shows them an interesting program, they leave school that day with a better understanding of how we work, which is valuable time spent.

November 26, 2008

Our cows normally don’t change their daily routine, but a couple of weeks ago one of our special cows had the opportunity to take a field trip to school.

Suzanne, one of our gentlest and calm cows, climbed into the cattle trailer, and we took her down the road to the local elementary school to meet nearly 150 anxious children.

Not every child in the school had the chance to meet Suzanne – only the students who met the summer reading requirements were allowed to participate in the “mooving” event.

Earlier in the year, Mrs. McNamara, the Octorara Elementary School principal, raised the reading bar for the kids and challenged them to read more books over the summer months. The students who met their goal were awarded by being introduced to our cow, Suzanne, as well as watching Mrs. McNamara milk a cow for the first time in her life.

The kids were ecstatic, and Mrs. McNamara did not disappoint them in the performance. Suzanne did not disappoint my husband, Duane, and me, either. It is not an easy task to take a cow into a new environment, surround her with 150 excited children, and introduce her to a new milker. But Suzanne stood still with Duane at the halter and me at the backend, giving Mrs. McNamara tips on how to get milk out of Suzanne’s udder.

Living in a rural area, I know a few of the children have seen a cow before, but I also know that for most of the children it was the first time they saw a cow that close. Their eyes were huge and they were very curious about Suzanne and how their principal would manage the humongous animal.

It was good for them to see the gentle side of a cow and be reminded that milk doesn’t start in the store container; rather milk starts with Suzanne and her cow mates.

After her milking session, Suzanne said good-bye to the children and climbed back into the trailer, happy to return to her normal routine again. Mrs. McNamara was glad to return to her normal routine, too, after trying her hand at dairy farming.

November 5, 2008

During the past few weeks, there has been a lot of attention on milk production in China. The news has not been positive, and hearing that milk produced in China has made children sick is disheartening.

Events like this make me appreciate the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations enforced by our government and the pride of integrity we have as dairy farmers here in America.

The FDA holds firm on several regulations that keep milk one of the purest foods on the market. Not only does the FDA have numerous tests to make sure there are no unwanted additives in milk, but there are other safety checks that are put in place before the milk even reaches the processing plant.

Typically, dairy farmers pay a milk hauling company to take their milk from the farm to the plant. However, we have a second business that we own with a neighboring dairy farmer; as such, we haul our own milk to the local processing plant. A couple of months ago, a nearby farmer found out how well the safety checks work. One of the truck drivers was new and forgot to attach a recommended safety tag. When the load of milk arrived at the plant, it was turned away.

Dumping milk is never a happy subject around the farm because it means we are literally flushing money down the drain. But the alternative isn’t safe, and I would rather have strict rules, regulations and requirements in place than raise the risks in marketing our milk. Our goal is to provide a safe and wholesome product for our family and yours.

October 3, 2008

In a perfect world, every cow would have her baby without complications. Unfortunately, as it is with humans, there are deliveries that run into trouble. Our employees are trained to handle complications; however, sometimes it doesn’t matter what measures are taken, things don’t end up the way we planned.

Recently, one of our first-calf heifers (that’s what we call a heifer that is getting ready to have her first baby) was delivering a huge bull calf, and the calving was not going well at all.

After a struggle, the big boy was born, but we soon noticed the mother wasn’t recuperating as normal. After a more extensive evaluation, we found out what was bothering her. The heifer had pinched a nerve in her leg as the calf was making his way into the world.

Nerve damage in a cow can range from a mild case (just needing time to recover) to an extreme case (do what we can to make the cow comfortable.) This new mother was an extreme case, so we called Leroy, who owns a cow-floating device.

The cow float is a stainless steel tank that Leroy drives from farm to farm, fills with water, and helps get animals back on their feet. This tank of water was our heifer’s lifesaver.

After getting the heifer into the tank, the tank was parked under a nice maple tree right beside the house. The tank was filled with water, and within minutes, the heifer was standing strong on her feet. The water made the heifer weightless, so standing wasn’t painful or difficult. This therapy allows blood to flow to the legs, allowing the muscles a chance to heal. Eventually, an animal can walk on its own.

The good news is that I could sit at my computer and keep an eye on her while I was working, since she was right outside my window. The bad news is that she could keep an eye on me while I was working on the computer. Every time I sat down to work, she would look in the window and start mooing. It’s not that she needed anything – she had her feed, hay and water right in front of her. She just wanted me to remember that she was out there.

After our young mother spent the recommended hours in the tank, we slowly drained the water out, giving her a chance to get used to her weight, and left her out in the yard to see how she healed. Well, she improved but not enough to let her go on her own, so we floated her the second time. And a third time.

As long as she made a bit of progress after each therapy session, there was enough hope to do it again. The floating sessions paid off, and I am happy to say that she is now happily grazing in the meadow by the house, getting up and down on her own, having healed quite nicely.

September 8, 2008

My husband, Duane, had to make a big decision last week. It was time to decide whether or not to chop our corn. There are a lot of factors that go into that decision. First of all, Duane walked into a couple fields and looked at the ears of corn. If the kernels of corn on the ear are slightly dented, that means the moisture in the corn is starting to dry out.

Duane was surprised how quickly the corn had dried down. Because our corn was planted late in the spring, he was expecting that our corn chopping would also be later this fall. However, with a dry and less humid August, the corn dried faster than we anticipated.

Moisture is a key determination when deciding if it is time to begin the chopping process, so the next step for Duane was testing some corn to find out the exact moisture rate. The rate was 62 percent moisture, which is just about right to put chopped corn into the trench.

Some farmers put their chopped corn silage into a silo, the tall tube-like structures that you often see standing beside a barn. Since we feed 500-plus cows, we store our silage in a trench, which is a large concrete pad that we can dump truck loads of chopped corn for larger storage.

As the silage is coming in from the field and then dumped onto the trench floor, our blade tractor carefully pushes the silage onto the large pile. The pack tractor (usually a very heavy piece of equipment) drives back and forth over the pile to pack the chopped corn as tight as possible.

Packing the silage into a tight mound is important because silage goes through a fermentation and curing process – the tighter the silage is packed, the better the curing process. Our goal is to give our cows the highest quality feed possible. The last phase of chopping is to cover the trench. To make sure that rain, birds and rodents don’t ruin the nice pile of feed, it is covered with large strips of plastic. We also put tire halves over the cover to keep the plastic from blowing away.

It’s always a nice feeling to start the chopping process and knowing that we are tucking food away for the cows during the winter months.

August 22, 2008

Our animals are catching the Olympic spirit and coming up with games of their own.

One of our cows decided to have her calf early, and we weren’t yet expecting the new baby. Typically, the cows-in-waiting deliver in their own pen of fresh straw, but this time the cow calved in the open pen of straw bedding, with all the other cows watching.

The delivery went as planned, with very little assistance needed. Our normal protocol is to allow a short time for the mother to lick the new baby clean, so we moved the other nosey cows out of the way to give them a little private space.

After giving the new mother and calf a few minutes, I realized that milking time was just about to end, so I quickly took the mother to the barn to be milked. I knew the new baby would be looking for some milk soon, and I wanted to make sure to have fresh milk before the milking machines were turned off for the day.

I thought the newborn was safe to lie in the straw for the short time I would be gone. However, when I came back, she was nowhere to be found. The barn was empty.

This calf was 20 minutes old and nowhere to be found. My first reaction was to panic, but I tried to be logical about what happened and started looking for the missing baby.

It took me but a few minutes to find her, and when I did, my reaction went from panic to confusion. The calf had walked out of the barn, down into the feedlot, and was standing among all the other waiting mothers looking for milk. That was about a 50-yard walk.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but you need to realize that when a calf is born, she doesn’t automatically jump up and start walking. There’s a process that calves go through right after they’re born. Usually for the first 45 minutes of their new life, they try to get up, fall down, try to get up again, fall again and eventually begin to gingerly wobble on their legs.

In all my years of raising calves, I never remember having a calf trucking around the barnyard in that short amount of time.

The challenge I had was getting the baby back up the barnyard and into the calf pen where she belonged so I could feed her the milk she was looking for. The first feeding for every newborn is critical, and it is recommended that we feed one gallon of the mother’s first milk, which is called colostrum, within the first four hours of birth.

Sometimes it’s hard to convince a calf to drink one bottle, let alone two. But let me tell you, this little baby drank milk at the same pace she walked, and in minutes’ time she had downed the first two bottles and was looking for more.

Name the Calf: I decided that this special calf deserves a special name, and that’s where you come in. I would like to hear your suggestions on what to name this calf. I have one requirement – the name needs to have something to do with the 2008 Olympics. Please e-mail your suggestions to dairyspot@milk4u.org by September 8, 2008. I’ll choose the name, and the lucky winner will receive a “got milk?” gift pack. Please be sure to include your name and phone number in your e-mail.

August 13, 2008

There’s a trend hitting the dairy industry that is creating quite a buzz among Pennsylvania farmers. Raw milk is not a new way for dairy producers to market milk, but there a number of farmers across the state who have decided to add raw milk sales to their way of doing business.

For those who don’t understand the difference between raw milk and processed milk, raw milk is milk that is sold before it has been pasteurized and homogenized. The milk you buy in your typical grocery store is pasteurized and homogenized.

Pasteurization has been around since 1862 when Louis Pasteur developed the process as a way to kill microorganisms that were causing diseases such as tuberculosis, bacteria campylobacter, escherichia, listeria, salmonella, yersinia and brucella.

Arguments supporting the sales of raw milk center on the claims of a “purer product” that reduces allergies and increases the taste in milk. Proponents of raw milk also stand behind the belief that many other improved refrigeration factors keep these diseases in check.

I grew up drinking raw milk, and for many years I fed our family milk directly from the refrigerated milk tank in our dairy barn. When our son, Robert, was diagnosed with an immune suppressing disease, we were encouraged to purchase pasteurized milk to keep him free from microorganisms that can potentially grow in raw milk.

After Robert finished his treatments and was considered free from relapse, we had a decision to make – do we go back to raw milk or do we continue to buy our milk?

Our veterinary service helped us through that decision by giving us scientific and written information about raw milk for people who are not immune to the farm environment. In other words, we were strongly encouraged to continue buying our milk at the local store, like the majority of the public, because our friends and our children’s friends who visit our farm and drink our unpasteurized milk will not have natural immunities that keep diseases from surfacing.

We decided to keep buying milk.

Before milk is processed at the manufacturing plant, it is tested for bacteria and antibiotics. Milk is tested up to 19 times before it reaches grocery store shelves, making it one of the purest and safest foods people can buy. Our milk is consistently low in bacteria counts, which means it is pure and safe and that we would be a low risk and a good farm to sell raw milk. However, there is a reason for Pasteur’s invention, and I can’t ignore the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations that consumers drink milk that has been pasteurized.

This is a difficult issue, because the truth is I am all for independent farming and the “buying fresh and local theme.” Recently, I stopped at a local produce stand and bought some delicious vegetables in season. However, I strongly believe that selling milk before it is pasteurized needs attention.

The bottom line on this blog is: Drink milk! Just do your homework and research before you decide to jump on board the raw milk trend. Here’s a link for more information.

August 5, 2008

Well, my annual summer tradition happened recently. I was walking through the calf pen, yelling instructions to my nephew, Tyler, when I turned my head just quick enough to swallow a fly. Every summer I swallow a fly during the worst of the fly season. The first time I unwittingly did such a disgusting thing, I reacted by doing everything short of calling poison control. It’s happened so many years since then, that now I just drink a shot of vinegar for my own satisfaction and wash it down with a glass of water.

One of the biggest summer challenges I face as calf manager is fly control. Flies must think that the farm is the best vacation spot in the world. They love wet places to lay their eggs; add the heat from our summer temperatures and, if we are not on fly alert, they are laying eggs faster than we can keep up.

I started the month of June with all my anti-fly ammunition and by mid-July, when the heat was really setting into the farm, I declared a full-fledged war against the determined pests.

Over the years we’ve tried everything to stay ahead of the flies – pest control companies, egg-laying pellets and strong spray. But through all those experiments, I found that what keeps me ahead of the flies more than any other product are the rolls of sticky tape.

I buy cases of that sticky tape and string it anywhere around the calves that I can. The tape needs to be out of the calves reach so their curious tongues don’t lick off the bait but low enough to the pen to draw the flies.

That stuff is amazing. We put up a fresh string of tape in the morning, and within a few hours there are thousands of flies stuck and out of the way of my calves. Besides the fact that they are one of the world’s most annoying creatures, flies are known to carry disease and are especially dangerous for sick calves. So I have a good reason to be on a fly-destroying mission. I like the tape so much, I’m trying to see how it could fit in the décor of my house.

As for my calves, as long as I am consistent with putting up fresh tape and a small amount of bait around the wet areas of the calf barn every day, the flies are manageable.

That means fewer pests around the farm, and the less flies I have around the farm, the less likely I am to swallow another one.

July 1, 2008

My brother-in-law lives in Arlington, Va., and works as a public relations advisor. Public relations, or PR, is an accepted and anticipated part of the successful business world, but I bet you didn’t realize how important it has become for the agricultural community. Farmers have an image of working long hours in the fields, tending to their animals, and staying to themselves. Although some of that is true, farmers in this era are learning the importance of communicating their business to neighbors, consumers and the general public.

Communicating isn’t a natural trait for most farmers. Farmers are used to waking in the morning, starting into the day’s jobs, and finishing with the sunset. But like most businesses, farming is changing, and one of the biggest changes for farming is consumer awareness.

Consumers across the country are more aware today of where their food comes from, and quite frankly I think it’s been one of the best changes for farmers. It’s good to be accountable for our actions, and public awareness helps farmers know that people care about their food source. It also helps consumers understand that growing food takes a ton of effort and energy.

Reaching out into the community sometimes takes us out of our comfort zone, but every time we have put forth the effort, the rewards are invaluable. My husband, Duane, has served on our local school board for the past 11 years. This has been a great way to be a voice for local agriculture, and it’s been eye-opening to us to learn how much our next-door neighbors don’t understand about the agricultural industry.

A few years back, we were asked by the local school district to participate in Career Day. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take the time out of my busy day to visit a classroom of kids that might not want to be there. The day ended up being a valuable time of education for both the kids and me. The next year I attended Career Day I was more prepared. I had a PowerPoint presentation of the farm and a homework assignment for the students. Before they left the class, they had to give me a list of names that I could use when registering our calves.

A neighboring farmer takes his PR seriously by sending out a quarterly newsletter to surrounding neighbors, hosting numerous on-farm tours, and visiting each Kindergarten class in the nearby school.

This year, the Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Program (PDPP) approached us about a unique form of promotion for our farm and family. PDPP designed placemats to be used at Hoss’s Steak and Sea House restaurants across the state. The placemats feature interesting information about the agricultural industry, games and trivia, and a photograph of our family. Two of our four children are in the picture with Duane and me, along with a bunch of inquisitive cows in the background. This has been a fun way to promote our farm and business, especially when friends from across Pennsylvania call us to say, “We saw your family at Hoss’s.”

As technology, communication and awareness become increasingly important in our fast-paced world, we (farmers) will work to keep up with the pace and keep our communication lines open. And maybe you can take some time to check us out at your local Hoss’s Restaurant.

Marilyn Hershey looks forward to sharing her stories about life on the farm.

June 17, 2008

We have a saying in the farming community that has been around for centuries. If we’re going to have a good crop of corn it has to be “knee high by the fourth of July.”

A couple of weeks ago when I told you about our corn planting, I have to admit I was a bit nervous. Because of the rain, we were weeks late getting the corn in the ground. Aside from the fact that farmers love to own bragging rights on who is finished first, it is important that the corn is planted in a timely manner.

Just like there are several kinds of sweet corn to from choose in the seed store, there are also many varieties of corn available to plant, and each variety has a certain number of days to grow to maturity. Most of the varieties are between 90 to 120 days to maturity. Our goal is to be chopping corn from mid-August to early September. All that said, we were running out of days and it was time to get the seeds in the ground.

After the corn was planted, I had convinced myself that it was OK that the corn would mature later than our neighbor’s corn crop. But I soon found out that I had nothing to worry about.

The month of May was so cold and rainy that everyone’s corn seeds were slow to germinate and sprout from the ground. Who can blame them? It was a colder than usual month. All that changed, as I’m sure you noticed. Talk about extremes; we went from a chilly month to a record-chasing heat wave. The heat advisory was on and everything was sweltering on the farm, including the soil.

Unlike me, the seeds of corn loved every minute of the heat. And just to show us how much the crop was satisfied, the kernels seemed to jump out of the ground and grow inches overnight. Our corn is not behind after all, and at the rate that it is now growing, it is likely to be more than knee high by the fourth of July.

May 16, 2008

Last week’s sunny days were spent preparing the dry and baron soil so we could start planting corn. The schedule was crazy, with eating meals in the tractor, making sure a fresh work crew was ready to take over, and keeping the equipment in good working condition.

Preparing the soil means a tractor pulls a piece of equipment called a chisel plow across the field to turn over the soil. The next piece of equipment needed in this process is the disc. Our 15-foot disc spreads across the field and evens out the rows of earth that have been plowed to make it like a smooth carpet of soil.

If the soil is even, the planter easily lays the seeds of corn into the ground, making straight, uniformed and equally calculated rows of corn. Believe it or not, the corn planter has a computerized system that tells the person who is planting exactly how many seeds have been planted in each field. The whole planting process is fulfilling to watch, but it takes hours upon hours of preparation.

Our son, Robert, got out of school early a couple of days so he could take his turn on the tractor to help with the planting. During a few nights, my husband, Duane, kept the plow and disc tractors running longer just so they could stay ahead of the corn planter that was catching up to them in the fields.

This week we received a much-needed break from planting, thanks to the rain. We have a total of 500 acres of corn that need to be planted. After last week’s “spring planting” surge, there are only 120 acres left to plant. Even though the hard-working guys weren’t able to finish, nobody complained about taking a rain break for a few days. Not only does the rain help the corn seeds to sprout through the ground, it also gives Duane, Robert and the other tractor drivers an opportunity to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

April 10, 2008

Holy cow! What a holy cow weekend! Usually on weekends we have a couple of calves born, but we set a record last weekend when we had 13. The “lucky 13” weekend all started when my son, Robert, left for a weeklong mission’s trip. He must have made a deal with the expectant mothers and convinced them to wait until he was out the door.

I knew the weekend would be special when we had three calves born on Friday night. I got those calves fed and tucked away and went to bed. When I got up the next morning, the calves were still coming. Eight were born throughout the day on Saturday, with two more on Sunday.

Each newborn calf needs significant attention, and I barely had a chance to take a deep breath in-between tasks. Usually there are employees around to help me when it gets this crazy, but on weekends, it’s usually just part-time kids.

After a calf is born, she gets one gallon of her mother’s first milk, which is called colostrum. Feeding a newborn calf colostrum helps build up antibodies that are critical to the calf’s immune system.

We have a protocol for newborns: They get their mother’s milk, a vaccination pill and a vitamin pill. We also dip their navel with iodine to protect the umbilical cord from bacteria. All these steps are important to make sure our calves stay healthy.

It was a bit crazy for awhile, until the calves got into a routine and started drinking their milk without needing my extra attention. The pace has slowed down considerably since last weekend. But maybe the cows and calves are just taking a break because they know that another Friday is just around the corner.

March 28, 2008

This year, it was my turn to host the Hershey family’s Easter gathering, and we had a great time with lots of apple pie, chocolate eggs and peanut butter whoopie pies.

There was plenty of space on the farm to hide Easter baskets. My husband, Duane, and his brother, Brad, hid the baskets this year, and the children were excited to find their treasures in trees, around the farm and inside the farm truck.

The main agenda for the adults was fellowship around the table. I used my grandmother’s china set to serve the Easter dinner, and the small soup bowls started a discussion on today’s unhealthy eating habits. I pulled a soup bowl from my cupboard that I had purchased a month ago. The size difference was astonishing. Today’s bowl towered over my grandmother’s soup bowl — it was nearly five times the size.

That revelation started a conversation about nutrition. My sister-in-law, Julie, is seeing a nutritionist, so the rest of us began drilling her with questions of what is good to eat and what is not. I was happy to hear that the nutritionist agrees with the 3-A-Day™ of Dairy philosophy of making sure we have three full servings of dairy products a day. In fact, Julie is encouraged to have as much 2% or lowfat milk as she wants to drink.

Julie is also instructed not to have an over abundance of carbs and high amounts of sugar and to make sure her snacks are healthy choices. Cheese is high in protein and is a great snack to help increase energy and curb the hunger pangs. Julie is on her way to higher energy and a healthier lifestyle.

I was encouraged by her advice and decided that I’m going to be more careful about my eating habits: making sure I use a smaller bowl, including more dairy in my snacks; and limiting my sugar intake. That is, after I have one more chocolate peanut butter egg.

March 15, 2008

Dairy farmers tend to go to several meetings during the winter months. These meetings give us ample time to regroup, connect with old friends, and learn about new technology.

One topic that surfaced at every gathering was the subject of rbST. If you are not familiar with it, rbST is a manufactured form of the naturally occurring hormone bovine somatotropin (bST.) Some dairy farmers use this product on certain cows as a management tool to increase milk production. Science shows there is no effect on the hormone levels in the milk itself.

If you’ve been paying attention to the random television clips and occasional newspaper articles that include a lot of emotion and strong opinions about rbST, I’d like to add my thoughts and hopefully make this a clearer issue for you.

We live in an era of instant communication, and one disadvantage of this is that unreliable comments can be printed before being confirmed valid or true. Unfortunately, this is what has happened with rbST, with some marketing campaigns claiming milk produced without rbST is “better quality milk.” Yet, there is no testable difference between it and conventionally produced milk sitting two rows down in your grocery store.

One thing that helped me sift through this confusing issue was to find a few Web sites that are reliable and factual, and to remember a few important tips on rbST:

• Any gallon of milk that you buy at the store is safe. All milk has been tested 19 times before reaching your grocery store shelf.
• There is no way to test for rbST in milk. There is no way and no test to tell the difference.
• bST is a natural protein that is produced by every warm blooded mammal, including people.
• rbST is a safe supplement for the bST. Adding rbST does not increase the level of bST in the cow – it only increases the pounds of milk produced.
• rbST was tested for nine years prior to being declared a safe product by the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
• If you are looking for more information, here are two Web sites I recommend: www.rbstfacts.org and www.milkismilk.com.

February 6, 2008

Have you made your New Year’s resolution yet? I did, and guess what? I broke it already. This year I resolved that I was going to do a better job at keeping up with my blog. Before I knew what was happening, my busy farm life was rolling right into February, and I wasn’t sticking to my promises.

However, I’ve decided that it’s better to be late with my resolution than not keeping it altogether. So as of today, I’m back in the blogging business.

I also made another resolution that is coming along fine. Last year, I wasted a lot of time searching through stacks of magazines and papers to find something in the barn office. I started out in January determined to get the cow information in our barn office organized.

I’ve tried to take some time each week to go through the stacks in hopes of creating a better filing system. Believe it or not, it’s working! The other day, my husband, Duane, asked me to find information on a certain group of heifers. I knew right where to look because it was filed in the proper place.

It’s not so bad keeping resolutions after all.

September 21, 2007

Every season on a dairy farm, we are busy for different reasons. These past couple of weeks have been among the busiest of the year as we began harvesting our corn. Some farmers store their chopped corn in an upright silo, the tall concrete structures often seen standing beside a dairy barn. But because my husband, Duane, planted almost 400 acres of corn this spring, and because we feed 550 cows, our corn silage is kept in a trench silo, which is a large, open concrete floor with side walls.

Silage is harvested with a corn chopper that cuts the corn about 10 inches from the ground. The stalk, tassel and ear of corn are chopped into small pieces — about the consistency of a finely sliced salad — and blown into trailers to be taken back to our trench.

Sometimes when we are really short on help, I drive the pack tractor. This huge tractor is driven back and forth over the silage, packing it down as tight as possible. Silage needs to cure, and the tighter the pile is packed, the better it will be for our cows to eat. While I help with the harvest when needed, most times I get to hang out around the farm to take care of newborn calves or anything else that needs to be done.

August 14, 2007

Wow, what a heat wave that was! I’m always amused by watching the weather forecast during those hot days when forecaster’s recommend staying out of the sun. For dairy farmers, that’s not an option. Our cows still need to be fed, milked and cared for no matter what the weather. In fact, the more extreme the temperature, the more work it is for us.

On high heat index days, I make rounds through the calf pens, looking for signs of heat-stressed animals and making sure that everyone has plenty of water. I also make sure the fans are blowing full speed. The maternity pen also needs to be checked more often. Cows that will be giving birth in high, extreme temperatures need more TLC.

Cows don’t like hot weather. They are made to produce milk, which means their bodies already generate a lot of heat. They would prefer if the temperature would stay around 40 degrees. In the summer, we can’t get our barn’s thermometer down that low, but we make it as cool as we can by running high powered fans and sprinklers.

The fans and sprinklers are set on timers that automatically start running when the barn temperature reaches 70 degrees. The hotter it gets outside, the more often the cows have a fine mist of water saturating their bodies. When you add the air from the fans, the cows think life can’t get much better!

And some days, I would agree. In fact, we all find excuses to walk through the barn and stand under the sprinklers with the cows.

July 27, 2007

A dairy farmer friend of mine was grocery shopping recently and noticed the lady beside her was buying six gallons of milk! Now that’s a sight that warms a farmer’s heart and Chrissy, being the friendly person she is, decided to thank her for her support. But to Chrissy’s surprise, the woman was stock piling her milk supply because she heard that the price will rise significantly, and she wasn’t a happy shopper.

Thankfully, Chrissy explained to her that just like every other business, costs are rising for dairy farmers, too. It costs more to truck the milk, feed the cows, and repair equipment. In other words, it costs more to produce a gallon of milk now than it did before. And rest assured, farmers will not be driving to the banks in their new tractors as a result of this current price increase.

In an online farm newsletter I read recently, Ken Bailey, an economist from the Pennsylvania State University, was interviewed about the price increase in dairy products. Bailey explains that the cost increase is due to “domestic supply and international demand.” Americans are reaching for their “3-Every-Day of Dairy” more often, and the European, Australian and Asian countries are all increasing their dairy products imports. We buy milk at the grocery store just like you do. But somehow I don’t mind paying more for my milk when I think about the benefits of a tested, secure and controlled milk market. Milk and dairy products remain one of the best values in the grocery store. They offer great taste and nutritional value for just pennies per ounce. We’re proud to be producing a food that is a staple in most American’s homes.

July 13, 2007

We are doing something this week that dairy farmers seldom have the opportunity to do — we are taking a family vacation right in the middle of the summer. Our daughter, Kacie, is playing in a national basketball tournament in Florida, and because it fell over the same time as our son, Kelby's, 10-day leave from the Army, we decided to take some family time away from the farm. Taking extensive time off is not a normal happening on a dairy farm.

The last I checked, those cows won't wait to be milked until we get home, and I don't think Orlando would be happy with 600 mooing cows clopping the streets of Disney World. So we left them in the good care of our employees and said a prayer for good weather and for everything on the farm to work properly while we’re away.

With cell phones, my husband, Duane, can still manage major decisions back home, so we are glad for that technology. It's difficult for farmers to totally leave a farm behind. There is a lot at stake with the dairy: Cows need to have proper feed and water; equipment needs to run smoothly; and the health of the herd is critical.

I've been away enough times to know that by the end of our vacation, we will be ready to head back to the farm and get back to work. Going to the barn for chores is as routine for us as the cows heading for the milking parlor. And even though it's good for us to take a break from the normal, it will feel good when our feet hit the farm again and we’re back in our comfort zone.

July 2, 2007

Hi, I’m Marilyn Hershey and my husband, Duane, and I own/operate a family dairy farm in beautiful southeastern Pennsylvania. Most people from this part of the country would say we have a large dairy with 550 milking cows, 450 young stock and 500 acres of crops. But on the farm scale across the country, we are still considered a midsize dairy.

Technology is a wonderful tool, and just like other businesses our farm depends on Internet, updated testing and modern machinery to keep the dairy running day to day. Being able to communicate with you at dairyspot.com is a great way for you to understand the workings of a modern dairy farm.

In the coming weeks, you’ll find out how we keep our cows cool in the summer, what goes into a cow’s meal, the extra care taken in growing our crops, and how we share the joy of milk with people we meet. Chances are you will hear about our children. We have four kids — two of them in opposite parts of the country and two still at home finishing their last years of high school. Family is a big deal to us; we are operating on the farm that Duane’s family farmed.

Whatever the subject of interest, I hope that through our time together you will glean new knowledge about the ways of a modern farmer, understand day-to-day cow happenings, and learn something new about that great product – milk – that is packed full of goodness, taste, and nutrition.

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