Moooooo

The Lacamas Stockdog trial is put on by the Johnston family who own the Johnston Dairy farm in Camas, WA.  Lynn Johnston encouraged my girlfriend and I to take a tour through the dairy barn at milking time. We jumped at the chance.  It was very interesting.  The cows come into the milking palour 3 X a day.  They all know their routine.  They come in and back into their stalls.  As soon as the milking machine is turned on and making noise the cows start dripping milk.  This is before they are attached to the milking vacuum machine on their teats.  It reminded me of when a mother hears her baby cry, her milk starts to automatically flow. They heard the tick, tick, tick of the machinery turned on and they started to drip, drip, drip  :0) 

Pedro came in and washed the floors down.  Then he used a betadine solution to clean the teats and dried them off afterwards.  As soon as that was done, he start to attach the vacuum system to their teats.  He has 3 attached in this photo and is going on down the line.

I guess you would WANT to be milked 3 X a day if you had udders that filled with milk!  Yikes.

These cows had a hard time lying down outside with those gargantuous udders.  It reminded me a big bosomed woman trying to lie prone, face down.  Uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, I forget how many pounds of milk each cow gives a day.  They told us in pounds, not gallons.  But, I remember thinking....whoa...that's a lot of milk!

Once the cow is milked, the vacuum looses pressure as there is no more milk to be delivered and the milking contraption "pops" off the cow.  I don't know why, but that amused me.

The next room where the milk is pumped through pipes into this large vat .

Calf huts.  Igloos for the little guys.

Some were quite friendly.  I asked Lynn why they keep the calves in separate huts.  He stated it was for disease control.

1072 can come live with me.  I got a BIG kiss from this little guy.  Pretty neat to be at a stockdog trial and have the opportunity to see a dairy farm operation.  Thanks to Lynn and Alison.