On my vacation I drove from Washington state to Arizona, and I noticed something that I hadn't seen (or maybe hadn't noticed before: The desert dairy.
At first I thought that these operations were feedlots. I'm going to qualify what I'm saying here. I didn't talk to any of the farmers running these, and my commentary here is only my opinion, not neccesarily fact, or even true. It's opinion.
The basic dairy is a permanently fenced lot, an acre or two in size, with several shade structures on it. There's not a scrap of green on the ground; it appeared that the dirt was mostly cow manure, and that the yard was scraped down from time to time, generating piles of manure, that you can see at the top of the photo above.
The cows appeared to be being fed grass and alfalfa hay. I couldn't tell if they were getting some sort of prepared feed in addition. This is a little different view than you'd get if you looked at the milk carton. Usually they show a happy cow on grass, with a barn in the distance.
Some of these dairies are small; 200-300 cows, some are very large. Sometimes it appeared that the operation was very large (>1000 cows) but split into several units. In these pictures you'll see a variety of dairy cow ages; some are currently being milked, some are replacement heifers. I didn't see any steers; apparently they're elsewhere.
There are green fields around the dairy; and the cows diet is at least partially forage. from my perspective, having a ruminant like a cow on a bare dirt for their entire life seems a little sad.
General notes; all of the animals seemed in very good condition. The lot was dirt/manure, but the animals themselves were relatively clean. The feed being offered appeared good quality. Since they're feeding forage, I'd say that they can probably achieve a USDA organic label. The farm itself appeared to be in good shape; things were neat and tidy.
This particular operation was very big, and they'd arranged their hay bales so that it was hard to see over them. I took most of these pictures from the shoulder of the interstate.
in this picture you can see the next "unit" of dairy cows. It was just as big as the one that was closer. there was another one behind this one, and two more to the left and right. I'd guess there were 3-4,000 cows total. that's a lot of milk.
There you have it. Grass fed dairy cows. I saw most of these farms in Utah and Nevada, with a couple in oregon and Arizona.
4 days ago