A Merry Band of Bloggers

My sister lives in Colorado, where the sun always shines and the air is always fresh and the temperature is always just right. So when she visited recently and stepped out of her car, she about fell into a small heap in our driveway because breathing humid Missouri summer air is not for the faint of heart.

Or the faint of hair.

So let's hear it for all the food bloggers and dietitians who willingly volunteered to visit the dairy on a hot, humid Saturday morning, knowing full well what it would do to their hair. I mean, hearts. I mean, heat. It was hot.

Ok. C'mon, guys. Just clap.



(And while you're at it, please give a gentle, quiet "Hooray!" -- we don't want to startle them after all -- for the cows, who start feeling heat stress in about January and don't get a break from it until the following December. Well, not quite. But let's just say they love water misters and fans in the summer as much as kids love a good water park. More maybe.)

Thanks to our friends at Midwest Dairy,  we were able to host these brave blogging souls on a warm day in June, giving them a chance to see where their food comes from up close and personal. Like, so personal a calf could suck on their fingers personal. (Sorry for my white legs. My spiritual gift is getting sunburned without tanning. Clearly.)



Our merry band of bloggers got to see baby calves, only a couple of hours old, and hear from my farmer how we care for the littlest animals on the farm. Between the calves and our multitude of kittens, everybody would have been fine being done at that point.

BUT WE PERSEVERED.

And by that I mean that we kindly nudged them on to meet some of the older heifers and the mama cows who took time out of their lunch to pose for photographs.

#2780 showing off her best side.

(Let's face it: Every girl has a best side.)

 

We rounded out the tour with a trip through the commodity shed to see what our cows eat, explain how our nutritionist tweaks the ration, talk about what silage is and discover why it's an important part of a cow's diet.

After that, we headed back to the shop to guzzle a bathtub full of water (Did you know that's about how much water a cow drinks in a day? Almost 35 gallons! And here you thought your eight glasses of water were good . . . ) and enjoy a meal together, surrounded by silage choppers and wrenches and flies because that's what life is like on a real dairy.

Lauren Lane, one of our favorite food bloggers, even made us brownies for dessert, and I'm not saying that I maybe basically skipped lunch and just went straight for the chocolate, but I CAN say that there was one extra pulled pork wrap left over because, well, I maybe basically skipped lunch and just went straight for the chocolate.

Side note: Brownies taste even more fudgy when enjoyed with milk. And because milk is healthy and so wonderfully good for you, you can even have a second brownie if you want. They basically balance each other out.

This is why you need farmers in your life. We can be helpful when you're trying to make important life choices like this. 

 

We're thankful for our social media influencer friends -- whether they're Instagrammers or bloggers or Facebookers or all of the above -- not just because they took time to come to the farm and see how their food is made, but because as farmers, we're busy . . . you know . . . FARMING. And that means we don't always have a lot of free time to chat with every person in the grocery store or on the street about why dairy is such an affordable, healthy food option.

But people like Cara of Streetsmart Nutrition and Lauren of Lauren Lane Culinarian do. They have the gift of story telling, photography, research and knowing their followers so that they can share information with them in a helpful and winsome way.

 So when a Lauren or a Cara or a Steph of KC Cheeses or Shanna from Wellness for the Win want to know or be reminded of see for themselves where their food comes from, and when, seeing how we care for our animals and land and each other, they believe as strongly as we do about milk and butter and cream and eggs, they help us tell our story in really fun ways.

And we are -- and remain -- grateful for that.


Photos courtesy Wheat Photography

What do cows eat?

   

If you ask our toddler, she claims cows eat Goldfish. If you ask people who haven't been around livestock, they think cows just eat "grass." If you ask a cow what she'd like to eat, she probably ask why you gave a mouse a cookie and a moose a muffin and didn't give her any baked goods. 

#carbsforlife

Two things: 

(1) Each day, one of the guys at the dairy has the job of mixing rations for different groups of cows. The ration is routinely tweaked by the dairy's nutritionist, who increases or decreases ingredients based on the cows' health, nutritional needs, and production. 

(2) The ration is mixed in a giant mixer that holds tons of feed. Literally. Tons. Think of it like a Kitchen Aid mixer the size of your kitchen, and instead of teaspoons, you're measuring in pounds. Hundreds of pounds, to be exact.

Don't worry. We're not finished debunking all your bovine myths. There's still more!

So, what do cows eat?

ALL THE THINGS. 

When the guys get ready to mix the ration for the day, they are combining several ingredients, none of which, sadly, include Goldfish.

The smallest bowl pictured above contains ground corn. Think high energy, high calorie food, and then take it times ten. Plus, unlike me when I eat sweet corn, it's already ground up, so cows don't have to spend an hour with giant toothpicks picking husks out of their teeth. We're thoughtful like that.

Next up: dried distillers grain. If you want to sound like you know what you're talking about next time you visit a dairy, call it DDG. When grain is used to make ethanol, the leftovers get repurposed into, you guessed it, food for cows!

Then there's mineral mix.  That's pretty self explanatory. Minerals. Vitamins. In a mix. A local feed mill creates that mix since we don't carry enough of each on the farm to make our own.

And in the biggest bowl? Soybean meal. Because everybody has to eat their vegetables and proteins, even 1500 pound cows.

 

Pop quiz to see if you remember what's what!

Ready?

 What's featured in the picture above? 

That's right. DDG!

 

Lest you think that's all that goes into a cow's own personal Chex Mix, there's more!

Soybean hull pellets are in the smallest bowl. Fat and fiber. You name it; they've got it.

The white fluffy stuff in the bottom right? Whole cotton seed. (Pro tip: If you're under the age of 10, a giant pile of cotton seed is great for jumping in. It's also great if you're over 10; people just might look at you funny.) Cotton seed is yet another source of -- you guessed it -- protein, fat, and fiber.

In the third largest bowl, you'll see gluten feed pellets. These are made of corn byproduct (seriously . . . nothing goes to waste!), and while they're not as high in protein, they're still chalk full of fiber.

And in the biggest bowl? Alfalfa. In addition to other nutrients, alfalfa adds calcium and is easily digestible, so cow stomachs don't have to work quite as hard. And when you have four stomachs, you can use a little break now and then. 

Additionally, corn and rye silage get added to the ration. (You can learn more about silage here.) Silage is like a giant energy bar for cows. It provides them with huge amounts of fiber and energy, and those, in turn, boost their milk production.

 

Lactating cows get a special feed called -- aptly -- lactation mix. It's made of ground corn, cotton seed, DDG, vitamin and mineral mix, soybean hulls, and soybean meal.

When I sit down to meal plan each week, I try to include fruits, veggies, proteins and dairy in each meal. Likewise,  the guys mixing the ration for the cows each day combine different amounts of each of the above commodities to make sure that the cows are not only well fed but also healthily! 

I mean, no girl wants to sit around just eating HoHos and Oatmeal Cream Pies all day. 

Just kidding. 

Me. 

I do!

But there you have it. No Goldfish, unfortunately, but lots of fiber, protein, fat and energy uniquely mixed and suited for specific groups of cows' needs. 

And now you know . . . the rest of the . . . . um, ration?