Farming on a grand scale
US - To survive, some ditch red barns and invest in mega-operations
26 December 2006
1 minute read
Ostrom is one of the owners of Tidy View Dairy, where up to 6,900 cows eat, sleep and live in seven barns that if stretched end to end would run roughly the length of 14 football fields.
In one of the dairy's two milking parlors, there's a soft, steady beat of Mexican ranchera music as five Latino workers walk down a center aisle, tending to 100 cows attached to milking machines. From entry to exit, the process takes 12 minutes, a ballet of animal, man and machinery that runs repeatedly day and night, producing enough milk to fill up to eight 6,000-gallon tankers daily.
The operation, including storage for feed, silage and manure, is on 80 acres.
This is not your grandparents' dairy farm. "The dairymen in Wisconsin have a common enemy, and it is the West Coast large production units we're competing with," Ostrom said. "In order to compete, we have to reinvest. And reinvestment does not look like 25 years ago.
Source: JS Online
