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FARMS AND FARMING

dmin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:22:13 +0000

Farms are important to the world. We get nearly all of the food we eat from them. When our country began, most people were farmers. As they learned more about agriculture, farmers began to use science to make their crops grow faster and grow more. Farm animals were grown so that they made more milk or gave more meat. Old machinery became new, time and energy-saving machines.

Today’s farmer knows a lot more about farming than our ancestors did. Farmers need to know about the land, crops, animals, selling the products, managing money, and borrowing money when they need it. Tokyo Escorts

There are two groups of farms: specialized and mixed farms. Specialized farms raise crops or animals that grow well in their area. Farmers would not waste their time and money planting a crop if the climate would not let it grow well. Some examples of crops on a specialized farm are:
Corn Soybeans
Wheat Potatoes
Sugar beets Pineapples
Nuts Cotton
Flowers Christmas trees

Specialized livestock farms include about half of all farms in the United States . Some examples of animals on livestock farms are:
Beef cattle Sheep
Dairy cattle Goats
Hogs/Pigs Poultry
Horses

Some farms are mixed farms because they produce two or more products. The dairy farm we visited produced milk, calves to sell, plus corn, hay, and soybeans that they used to feed the animals.

MILK AND CHEESE

dmin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:23:23 +0000

HOW NOW, HAPPY COW?
Grass Fed Dairy — Milk and Cheese from Grass Fed Cows
On a fairly regular basis, Grinning Planet throws cow pies at “industrial agriculture”—those massive, corporate farming operations—while singing the praises of small farms and sustainable, non-chemical agriculture. It all sounds good: who doesn’t prefer the idea of varied, natural, lush fields to endless miles of genetically engineered corn stalks, and who can’t see that happy barnyard animals are better off than sad creatures trapped in cages, pens, and feed lots.
But deep down, we all must wonder at times whether industrial agriculture is just a natural evolution of farming, and whether without it our farmers would be unable to keep the abundant supply of food coming our way.Not only does the following article answer those questions with a resounding “no,” it’s also a great success story in a corporate-dominated farming world that is increasingly short on happy endings. It comes to us from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, which has generously granted reprint rights.
~ ~ ~
Small Dairy Farms Get Greenbacks From Grazing
by Erin Toner, Great Lakes Radio Consortium
In the retail world, big-box stores have made it tough for small companies to stay in business. That’s also true for agriculture, where the big guys are massive feeding operations that house thousands of cows. Surviving as a small farmer in that world often takes a new way of doing business. Here’s the story of one dairy-farming family that’s found a way to stay in farming, and make a pretty good living….
DOWN ON THE DAIRY FARM
It’s one of those hazy and muggy summer mornings, where the air’s thick enough to soak up the smell of manure and dewy grass. Nearby, cows are swatting flies with their tails, eating grass and relaxing in lush, green pastures. These days it’s a lifestyle most dairy cows never get to experience. Most are confined in big buildings with hundreds or thousands of other milk-making machines (cows).
Howard and Mary Jo Straub didn’t like where dairy farming was going. So about ten years ago, they switched from a farm that warehoused dairy cattle indoors, to something called seasonal rotational grazing. Mary Jo explains how it works.
“The cows get a new paddock or area, and our areas are about five acres, and each day they would get a new five acres of grass to eat. We have 24 paddocks, so every 24 days, they would be back into the same five acres.”
And in those 24 days, rainfall and the cows’ own manure has helped the grass grow back in that first paddock, and then the second, and so on. This is very low-maintenance farming, and low-cost farming.
The Straubs don’t have to buy tons of grain to feed their cows. And they’re not applying pesticides or fertilizer to their pastures as they would on a corn field. They don’t have tons of manure to dispose of, they don’t have loans out on grain-harvesting machinery, and they don’t have to pay lots of employees to feed and manage their animals.
Howard Straub says farming is a lot easier than it used to be, and a lot more lucrative.
“We used to get up and milk, we did a three-time-a-day milking before. We mixed up five loads of feed for different groups of cows. Now we just milk the cows twice a day and when we’re done milking we open the gate and let them out to go eat.”
BUT IS GRASS FED DAIRY PROFITABLE?
Since their costs are so low, the Straubs make between 800 and 1,000 dollars profit on each of their 84 cows. Before, they made around 150 dollars profit per cow.
Howard Straub says grazing has made cattle the chief asset on his farm, instead of a bunch of machines. His cows are healthier because they’re eating grass, like they were meant to do. And because they get lots of exercise, the cattle live longer, produce more milk, and have more calves.
Even though the idea with grazing is that there are sprawling pastures for the cows, it doesn’t require any more land than confined feeding farms. That’s because you have to consider all the land that supports a herd of cattle, says Tom Kriegl, who studies dairy farming at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“You can have a diary operation where the only land that you own is the land that the building sits on that you house cows in, and you might buy all of your feed for those cows and you would not own the land that the feed is grown on. But you actually need that additional land that the feed is grown on even if you don’t own it.”
ROTATIONAL GRAZING AND DAIRY FARMING’S FUTURE
Howard and Mary Jo Straub say they encourage all the young farmers they meet to make the switch to rotational grazing. And it is catching on. The Great Lakes Grazing Network estimates that almost half of all new small and mid-size dairies in the region are using rotational grazing.
Kevin Ogles is a grazing specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He says grazing is probably the future for all smaller dairy farms. But he says grazing is complicated, with benefits that don’t come immediately.
“The concept is simple. Mastering it—that takes a while. So, once people make the transition after doing it for a few years, that’s when you hear them talk about the economic gain. The quality of life has improved.”At this point, you could call the Straub family master grazers. Since they started ten years ago, Howard and Mary Jo have managed to pay off a 250,000 dollar mortgage. Today, they’re almost debt-free, and they’re able to stop farming for two months in the winter, when they head down to Florida, as Howard says, to take time for the fun things in life. He says that would never have been possible before.
© 2004 Great Lakes Radio Consortium
[Story originally aired on GLRC August 2, 2004]
Ah, that’s a great story.
So, while you contemplate that hot young star sporting the milk moustache, you might also consider buying milk that comes from a family farming operation. It takes a little time examining the labels—after all, they all try to SOUND like they’re old-timey dairy operations. Look for “pasture fed” or “grass fed” on the label. Not even the “organic” label is a guarantee that the milk came from happy cows munching on green grass, though organic is still a good alternate choice if you can’t find milk from grass-fed cows. Sometimes you can even find a brand of milk that is both organic AND grass-fed. Yumm! Moooooo. Yumm! Moooooo…
Publish date: 14-SEP-2004

DAIRY COWS PART II

dmin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:20:18 +0000

Dairy Cows
Traditional small dairies, located primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, are going out of business. They are being replaced by intensive ‘dry lot’ dairies, which are typically located in the Southwest U.S.
Regardless of where they live, however, all dairy cows must give birth in order to begin producing milk. Today, dairy cows are forced to have a calf every year. Like human beings, cows have a nine-month gestation period, and so giving birth every twelve months is physically demanding. The cows are also artificially re-impregnated while they are still lactating from their previous birthing, so their bodies are still producing milk during seven months of their nine-month pregnancy. With genetic manipulation and intensive production technologies, it is common for modern dairy cows to produce 100 pounds of milk a day — ten times more than they would produce naturally. As a result, the cows’ bodies are under constant stress, and they are at risk for numerous health problems.

Approximately half of the country’s dairy cows suffer from mastitis, a bacterial infection of their udders. This is such a common and costly ailment that a dairy industry group, the National Mastitis Council, was formed specifically to combat the disease. Other diseases, such as Bovine Leukemia Virus, Bovine Immunodeficiency Virus, and Johne’s disease (whose human counterpart is Crohn’s disease) are also rampant on modern dairies, but they commonly go unnoticed because they are either difficult to detect or have a long incubation period. A cow eating a normal grass diet could not produce milk at the abnormal levels expected on modern dairies, and so today’s dairy cows must be given high energy feeds. The unnaturally rich diet causes metabolic disorders including ketosis, which can be fatal, and laminitis, which causes lameness.
Another dairy industry disease caused by intensive milk production is “Milk Fever.” This ailment is caused by calcium deficiency, and it occurs when milk secretion depletes calcium faster than it can be replenished in the blood.
In a healthy environment, cows would live in excess of twenty-five years, but on modern dairies, they are slaughtered and made into ground beef after just three or four years. The abuse wreaked upon the bodies of dairy cows is so intense that the dairy industry also is a huge source of “downed animals” — animals who are so sick or injured that they are unable to walk even stand. Investigators have documented downed animals routinely being beaten, dragged, or pushed with bulldozers in attempts to move them to slaughter.
Although the dairy industry is familiar with the cows’ health problems and suffering associated with intensive milk production, it continues to subject cows to even worse abuses in the name of increased profit. Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a synthetic hormone, is now being injected into cows to get them to produce even more milk. Besides adversely affecting the cows’ health, BGH also increases birth defects in their calves.
Calves born to dairy cows are separated from their mothers immediately after birth. The half that are born female are raised to replace older dairy cows in the milking herd. The other half of the calves are male, and because they will never produce milk, they are raised and slaughtered for meat. Most are killed for beef, with close to one million being used for veal.
The veal industry was created as a by-product of the dairy industry to take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted male calves. Veal calves commonly live for eighteen to twenty weeks in wooden crates that are so small that they cannot turn around, stretch their legs, or even lie down comfortably. The calves are fed a liquid milk substitute, deficient in iron and fiber, which is designed to make the animals anemic, resulting in the light-colored flesh that is prized as veal. In addition to this high-priced veal, some calves are killed at just a few days old to be sold as low-grade ‘bob’ veal for products like frozen TV dinners.

BEEF CATTLE PART II

dmin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:13:32 +0000

Beef cattle are raised for their meat. Cattle farms are very important to the world. We get veal, beef, hamburger, and hot dogs from beef cattle. Veal comes from calves and beef comes from older cattle. We also get leather, glue, soap, and medicine from them.

Cattle are raised all over the world. In India, people think cattle are holy so they aren’t killed or eaten there. Some kinds of beef cattle are Aberdeen, Angus, Brahman, Charolais, Herefords, and Polled Herefords. Farmers pick which breed they want to raise by the climate where they live. For example, some cattle can be raised in areas where there isn’t too much water.
Male cattle are called bulls and females are called cows. Steers are males who cannot reproduce. Young cows are called heifers until they have babies. Then they are called dams. The father is called a sire and the baby is a calf.
Most cattle are registered. When an animal is registered, their ancestors are traced and written down. This is stored by an organization that keeps track of breeding information. Cattle get an ear tag when they are registered. The ancestors of animals are important when farmers do selective breeding.
Cattle are usually kept in pastures where they eat the grass. When cattle eat, they swallow and then bring the food back up into their mouths to chew again. This is called cud. Ranchers [Cattle farmers] know how many cattle can be kept in the pasture before all the grass will be gone.
Calves are born in the spring. They are watched carefully and given shots so they don’t get diseases. They get branded with a mark that shows a ranch symbol. If the cattle wander away from the ranch, this shows people where they belong.
Later in spring the herds are moved to different pastures so that the grass can grow back again. Ranchers put out salt licks with minerals in them. These are solid blocks of salt [with minerals] that cattle like to lick. Farmers will move the herds every three or four weeks.
Just like in cowboy movies, ranchers use horses to herd the cattle from one pasture to another. Some ranchers use four-wheel drive vehicles.
In fall, the herds will be moved closer to the farm house. These pastures will be ones that were used in the early spring and will have grown grass again. Beef cattle are usually sold then. If cattle are kept over the winter, they go to smaller pastures nearer to the house. This is so that the rancher does not have to go so far to check on them when it gets cold. The ranchers will have to feed them when it snows.
Beef cattle are cheaper to raise than dairy cattle because they mostly eat grass. Dairy farmers need to pay people to help them grow crops to feed their cows and they buy protein to add to the food. This makes them cost more money.
Calves can be sold to other farmers who raise them in a penned area. They are fed special food so that they fatten up quickly. It takes between four to eight months before the calves are ready for the meat-packing plant. A steer is ready to be sold when it is about one and a half years old. Ranchers try to sell them at a time that they can get the most money for them. The animals can be sold to someone who will fatten them up for market or right to a meat-processing plant.