Tuesday, 28 August. Rosendale Dairy, Rosendale WI.

      Our second stop on August 28, 2012 was at Rosendale Dairy in Rosendale, Wisconsin. Rosendale Dairy is currently milking 7700 cows and is the 7^th largest dairy farm in the states. They have 4 farms totaling 21000 cows and the one was visited is on a 100 acre lot, including barns, manure, feed and pavement.  The barns are ¼ mile long and 400 feet wide with several groups of 300 cows each. They are grouped this way so that when being milked the cows only spend 45 minutes away from their stalls. Rosendale Dairy calves at a location an hour and a half north of the home farm. The cows are checked every half hour for signs of calving, resulting in about 25 calves a day. Every cow is put in a separate pen to calve out and when they have they get to lick to calf clean then the calf is moved to a calf pen and tube fed colostrum. They are shipped to the calf barn within 24 hours.

     One barn feature is that Rosendale Dairy uses sand bedding to make the cow as comfortable as possible since they want them to lay down for 14 hours a day. They recover the sand and only have to add 15% of new sand when they re-sand the pens every two weeks. Another feature is the fans along both sides of the barns. The left side pulls air in while the right side pulls it out to keep air moment going and to keep the barn cool as well as the air conditioning wall (water and air running through metal membranes).

     Rosendale Dairy feed for about 12 hours a day in total including mixing, feeding, and pushing feed in. They top the feed off 2 or 3 times a day and the feed gets pushed in about 8 times a day. They make up to 40 000 pounds of feed 4-5 times a day. Rosendale Dairy owns 2000 acres and rent it all out. They buy all their feed in.

     The cows get milked in a set of 80 cow rotary parlors. They are in the parlor for 8 minutes in total and out of their pens for a total of 45 minutes. Rosendale Dairy ships out 80 000 gallons of milk per day in 13 to 15 milk tankers. Rosendale Dairy was an unreal experience and I would strongly recommend taking a tour if you every get the opportunity to.

Lieke Kuijpers