Sometimes here in Wisconsin, we get focused on America’s Dairyland and tend to forget there’s a lot of dairy beyond our borders. A reality check came a few weeks ago during the World Dairy Expo.
Farmers toured our farm from Poland, CzechRepublic and Bulgaria, as well as dairy students from Ontario, Canada, bull stud distributors from around the world, and dairy nutritionists from the United Kingdom. Sprinkle in a few dairy farmer friends from other states, fourth graders from the Milwaukee area and the Leadership Watertown group, and that rounded out our 12 days of tours with nearly 400 people visiting Rosy-Lane!
This past summer we were lucky enough to host an intern, Tomas, from the Czech Republic, who worked with our dairy herd. (We also hosted another local intern, Matt, who worked with crops, and he just returned to Farm and Industry Short Course at UW-Madison). Tomas stayed for nearly three months and took on many responsibilities, including calving-in cows and caring for newborns.
Before he left the United States a group of farmers from his country toured our farm. They asked many questions about reproduction, feed, bedding, genetics and employee training. They were anxious to soak up what worked for us so they could take some of that information back home and put it to work on their dairy farms. Tomas will help supply them with genetics to improve herd performance.
No matter where our visitors were from, our basic message to them is this:
There is no one magic bullet to our dairy’s success (100 pounds of milk per cow per day). We don’t have a secret feed ingredient or expensive new equipment we can credit. It’s doing all the little things right every day to keep our cows happy and healthy. This includes lots of clean sand bedding, fresh water and high quality feed that is mixed and delivered consistently. Our well-trained staff follows proper milking protocols and skillfully cares for sick animals.
We feel our success comes from covering the basics, every day. Hopefully our international visitors (and others) see they can put some of this in place back home.
Learning from our visitors is a bonus during World Dairy Expo. Farmers from all over the world face many of the same challenges we do in Wisconsin, like pricing and marketing of milk and dairy foods. We appreciate the fact that people who love cows are down to Earth, no matter where they are from.
It’s also nice to know we aren’t the only ones who will travel around the world to see good cows! What else is there in life??!!
Although we could be farming almost anywhere in the world, I’m happy to have our cows and family call Wisconsin home. As some our visitors say, “If I were a cow, I’d want to live at Rosy-Lane.” You can’t ask for any higher compliment.
Linda Frey says
Way To Go Daphne! You should be very proud of all that you and Lloyd have accomplished! We certainly are proud of You!!
Evelyn Wrensch says
Your post was very interesting. We live on a farm. Used to have dairy cattle too. Now we just have sheep, chickens, ducks and geese. We only had 113 acres and milked 20 cows. Before retirement we had 200 pigs also. We’re both 86 now so we’d rather have fun than work.