A typical day on the dairy (copy)
I had a dairy farming friend who received a call from a young lady conducting a survey. Her questions dealt with work and focused on the hours spent on the job. As my friend shared his day, the survey-taker finally stopped him and basically called him a liar!
“No one works that hard for that little of pay!” she screamed and hung up on him. I understand, even people who have farmed all their life, if they haven’t milked cows for a living really don’t understand how demanding a dairy operation can be to the operator.
Andrea and I started our day at 2:45 a.m. so we could get our bearings and be at the barn at 3 a.m. sharp. Dairy cattle are creatures of habit; they have a very strict bio-clock that demands that their days are as similar as possible.
Why 3 a.m.? Why not 6 or 7 o’clock. The answer for us was Sunday School…. Remember that because it will take a bit to get back to why Sunday School.
Before milking, we fed a few bales of alfalfa hay to the cows, sanitized the milking system, configured the piping into the bulk tank and gathered the herd onto the holding lot.
After the milking was completed, we had to breakdown the milkers and place them in the CIP (cleaning in place) system, run the chlorine wash cycle and then the acid rinse. Clean out the feed bowls, and wash the inside of the milking parlor, scrubbing the walls and hosing down the floors and drains to remove any “debris” left by the cows.
If it was milk truck day, the tank washer had to be supplied with soap and acid rinse as well. Once that was handled, the holding lot, loafing barn and feedway all had to be scraped to remove the manure from overnight and the manure was pushed into a box where it free-flowed to the lagoon. After scraping, the tractor and blade were hosed off so the manure didn’t eat the tractor’s metal up, especially the wheels.
After the barns were cleaned, the feedway was cleaned out and the waste feed was hauled to steers and heifers out the road. The feed bunk itself was cleaned up once Andrea started milking. I shoveled out the bunk and put fresh feed out to the herd.
Once the cattle out the road were fed, we’d be ready to eat breakfast and get ready for Sunday School and Church.
So why 3 a.m.? All of the activities listed above took us about six hours to complete… best we could do. Therefore, starting at 3 a.m. was simply a question of math. If we needed to back at the house by 9 a.m. to eat, get cleaned up and get to Sunday School then 9-6 = 3 a.m.
As I mentioned before, cows are creatures of habit so if we needed to start Sunday by 3 a.m., then that was our schedule Monday through Saturday as well.
I liked our schedule because it gave Dad and Dean (our employee for nearly 30 years before he passed) a break. They showed up about 7:30 and we were ready to tackle whatever the day held. We might be baling hay or chopping alfalfa, planting corn or spreading manure in preparation of planting.
We might be hoeing tobacco or building a new truck bed in the shop. One thing was for certain, a day off wasn’t in the cards.
Andrea and Mom had their post milking chore too. Andrea had a toddler to contend with and she also watched the herd for standing heats or signs of sickness. Mom had her baby calves to feed, depending on the time of year, she’d have between 15 and 45 on the bottle to feed twice a day. In between, she gardened, canned jellies or made homemade applesauce from the tree near her clothesline.
In the afternoon, Mom would watch Hillary so Andrea could start the evening milking at 2 p.m. I would have the herd’s next feeding by 3:30 and then return to whatever chore or project we had going on until 5 or 6. We really didn’t have a quitting time as most of what we did was chore oriented. We worked until we got done, reached a good stopping point or ran out of light.
By then dinner and a warm shower was a welcome pleasure but once again, we couldn’t linger. I am only have joking when I tell crowds today that our bedtime was half past Final Jeopardy.
We dozed off many nights knowing the answer without a clue what the question was. Whether it was a birthday, an anniversary or Christmas Day, 2:45 a.m. was coming and we had to be ready to start all over again.
Dr. Andy Overbay is the agriculture and natural resources extension agent for Smyth County.
