A Farm is More Than Just a Farm
The modern dairy farm is more than just a farm. The modern dairy farm is home to exciting sustainability innovations, many of which consumers may not understand the importance of.
For example, farms across the Southeast are embracing innovations that provide the highest level of comfort for their cows. These innovations include features in a freestall barn such as fans, misters, sand bedding, and cow brushes. These features keep the environment top of mind in design and use, as the water used throughout the systems is recycled up to 4 times, the sand is recycled up to 50 times, and fans and misters are on a thermostat, so they only run when the temperatures reach a certain degree.
“Each cow has a bed to lay in. Sand is the gold standard today in the industry. We’ll put in fresh sand every week and keep it groomed. We then recycle that sand. We will collect about 80% of that sand, clean it, and bring it back into the facility,” explains dairy farmer John Harrison of Sweetwater Valley Farms in Philadelphia, Tennessee.
Some dairy farms have robotic milkers allowing the cows to be milked at their preferred time. This cutting-edge technology allows farm families and their employees more time to focus on other aspects of the cow, such as cow comfort, herd health, and management, as they continue to maintain the farm.
“We track all the cows in the robotic facility. They wear a necklace that is similar to an Apple watch or a Fitbit,” explains Mary Lindal Harrison. “It is constantly tracking all their information--whether that is how much feed they are eating, how many steps they are taking every day, their milk quality, how much milk they are giving every time they are in with the robots--keeping up with all their information and sending that to the computers so we can look at it every day.”
Many dairy farmers have implemented methods to reuse water up to 4 times on the farm. Often, water that is used to clean milking parlors is reused to clean production areas and then to irrigate fields. Many dairy farms will use a heat exchanger, which is a technology that uses cold water to partially cool milk and then collect the water to use again as drinking water for cows.
The modern dairy farm is doing so much more than the farm in consumers’ imaginations. Learn more about today’s dairy farming at Sustainability and the Dairy Industry.
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