Hello, CREAM friends and family!
Another month has gone by, and how quickly! We've had a busy time of it; last month we tested the waters, this month we dove straight in.
We wrapped up September with a class trip to the Deerfield Fair. After a month of working hard to learn so many new things, it was wonderful to take the evening off, eat some greasy food, and take in the lights, sounds, and smells of New England's oldest family fair!
Of course, the girls stay busy every day of the year. This month saw four fresh cows with two bulls and two heifers born to the CREAM herd. The cycle of life is relentless anywhere, but especially on a dairy farm! We welcomed Lindsey, Sapling, and Symphony back to the milking herd as well as first-calf heifer Pico. She is slowly but surely adjusting to life as a cow after two years of youth and freedom. I feel you, girlie - it's a tough lesson for all of us!
As we continue to familiarize ourselves with the barn and the herd, we have begun to make our own changes and improvements. Each CREAMer has started to explore different aspects of managing a farm. So far, we have seven active subcommittees managing Herd Health & Welfare, Nutrition, Fundraising, Scheduling, Apparel, Arts & Crafts, and of course Clean Cows! We're quickly learning just how much goes into maintaining an operation like this and how lucky we are to have the resources we do for this course.
Armed with the knowledge and confidence of students whose university is footing the bill, we have made a few management changes this month. The biggest has been changing our cows' diet; we separated our herd into high and low producing cows and worked with Dr. Pete Erickson to formulate two diets specific to each group's nutritional needs. Our "high" group is made up of cows that are early in their lactation cycle and making a lot of milk. Our "low" group is made up of late-lactation cows who are slowly decreasing in milk production as they get towards the end of their cycle. By feeding separate diets, we are able to allocate some of our more expensive feed components to the cows who will use them to make more milk (instead of giving all the goodies to our drying-off girlies who will just use them to get fat!). While all of this works perfectly in theory, applying it to the herd presents plenty of logistical problems that we have tackled together over the course of the past few weeks. We are incredibly thankful to Pete and farm manager Jon Whitehouse for helping us learn by doing, and to the girls for putting up with us while we fussed and tinkered with our system. Things are smoothing out and we are excited to see what will come of our efforts in the next few months!
Besides switching up diets, we have also worked hard to improve herd welfare. The girls get regular turnout and CREAMers are constantly brushing and washing down cows to keep them all clean. Implementing a turnout schedule has made a huge difference in our herd. The girls are able to go out in nice weather for around 45 minutes per day; cows don't need a lot of exercise, but it's still important for them to stretch their legs! By the time milking starts, they've tuckered themselves out and are calm and easygoing in the parlor. Working in a tie-stall barn means we have to put in a little extra effort to make sure this happens, but it truly makes life easier in the long run. Regular exercise reduces stress and injury and increases milk production - it just makes sense. Once again, we are thankful to the barn staff and to last year's CREAM class for giving us the tools to improve our herd management.
The first quarter of our time managing the CREAM herd is already coming to a close. We couldn't be more proud of all we've managed to accomplish in this short time. Aside from our work with the herd, CREAMers on the Arts & Crafts subcommittee have truly taken ownership of our space in the Fairchild Dairy Research Center. The CREAM office is receiving a complete makeover and a new mural is going up on the office wall. We are eager to continue our work throughout the rest of the year and leave our mark on this place when we pass the torch to the next group of CREAMers!
As always, we thank our friends and family for your support and engagement. We truly depend on your involvement to keep programs like this alive! You can subscribe to this newsletter and follow us on Instagram for regular updates on our class activities as well as future opportunities for fundraising and community support.
All our thanks,
- Birdie
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