Life on an Extra-Large Dairy Farm

Last week, on my quest for the Wisconsin Idea, I learned a little bit about a lot of new topics.
Like about the existence of a place that makes microtools, that are smaller than a human hair.
They're call end mills (kinda like a drill bit, for all you other lay folks like myself), and they are designed and made in Janesville, WI at a place called Performance Micro Tool. There are some pretty cool pics on this site. Fascinating.
And very, very, very tiny.
And then there was the opposite of tiny, a dairy farm that houses 3000 cows.
Three thousand cows.
That they milk three times a day.
You did that math correctly.
That's essentially NINE THOUSAND COWS.
Crazy.
And a little crowded.

(They don't actually live like this - this is the tail end of the milking process [no pun intended] - the last of the cows getting ready to be milked before the line of 3000 begins again. This loop takes about 4 hours.)

They live in the largest barn I have ever seen.

It is 7 stalls wide. This picture doesn't even begin to capture it - just know that this road in the center goes off in both directions (we are on a walkway above the barn). It is wide enough so a truck can drive through and deliver food. They eat a lot.

These cows have just finished the milking process. It's quite the trip they take around the barn.

I couldn't help but take this picture. When I was in South Africa I seemed to regularly catch the back-sides of all animals, so this was a little throw-back to my time in the Motherland.

It's a little blury, but I couldn't help but share this 'one of these things is not like the other' shots.

We also visited the "subway."

This is where the magic happens.

Sorta.

Fifty cows are milked at a time, for around 4 - 5 minutes apiece (the machine is hooked up to the udders by a herdsman, but they drop on their own when the cow is dry). The  milk passes through here, where it's measured and all that jazz. Each cow has a number and a microchip - her temperature is taken, as well as all other sorts of health stats for each one. VERY different than the farm I grew up across the street from. Technology is everywhere.

This place was fantastic in theory, but when seeing all the cows in person, it was hard to decide what I thought of the place. I'm still not sure, though I do feel like I know more than I did a week ago. And while I think it could be great for the cows to spend some time outside (does it matter if they don't know any better?) and the manure lake smelled beyond horrific (it was a lined-pond that doesn't go into the ground water), it was pretty organized and systematic. And the cows didn't seem to audibly be complaining.

So I'll keep drinking my milk and eating the tasty Wisconsin cheese. (I learned that most of the milk here is made into cheese because it's so tasty).