Dairy farming
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Dairy farming is a class of agricultural, or more properly, an animal husbandry enterprise, raising female cattle for long-term production of milk, which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy for processing and eventual retail sale. Most dairy farms sell the male calves borne by their cows, usually for veal production, rather than raising non-milk-producing stock. Many dairy farms also grow their own feed, typically including corn, alfalfa, and hay. This is fed directly to the cows, or stored as silage for use during the winter season. Additional dietary supplements are added to the feed to increase quality milk production.
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Dairy competition
Most milk-consuming countries have a local dairy farming industry, and most producing countries maintain significant subsidies and trade barriers to protect domestic producers from foreign competition. In large countries, dairy farming tends to be geographically clustered in regions with abundant natural water supplies (milk is mostly water) and relatively inexpensive land (even under the most generous subsidy regimes, dairy farms have poor return on capital). These too promote regional competition and laws to protect the regional production of milk. However, New Zealand, the fourth largest dairy producer in the world, does not apply any subsidies to dairy production.
Dairy farming in the world
In the United States, dairy farming is an important industry in Vermont, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida, and New York but the largest state in dairy production is California. In Europe, Denmark, northern France,southern Ireland,United kingdom, Switzerland, and especially the Netherlands, are particularly known as centers of dairy production. The worlds largest exporter of dairy products is New Zealand which farms on a larger scale compared to Europe if not the U.S.A.
Management of the dairy herd
Modern dairy farmers use milking machines and sophisticated plumbing systems to harvest and store the milk from the cows, which are usually milked twice or thrice daily. During the warm months, in the northern hemisphere, cows may be allowed to graze in their pastures, both day and night, and are brought into the barn only to be milked. During the winter months, especially in northern climates, the cows may spend the majority of their time inside the barn, which is warmed by their collective body heat. Even in winter, the heat produced by the cattle requires the barns to be ventilated for cooling purposes. Many modern facilities, and particularly those in tropical areas, keep all animals inside at all times to facilitate herd management. In the southern hemisphere milking animals are more likely to spend most of their lives outside on pasture.
Animal health is an important aspect of dairy production. In countries where cows are kept outside year round health problems such as lameness may be reduced, while in tropical areas problems such as sunburn and dehydration may require that cows remain indoors.
The milking operation
A farmer with a modern milking installation such as a large herringbone or rotary parlor would be capable of milking around 300-500 cows per hour. Farmers in New Zealand aim to milk the whole herd in under two hours twice a day so that the animals get the maximum time in their pasture. Farmers in other countries usually have smaller plants and 150–300 per hour is more likely.
Milking machines are held in place automatically by suction that, through a heartbeat-like pulsing action, draws the milk out of the cows, into the pipes and, eventually, into a refrigerated bulk tank. The milk passes through a strainer and a plate heat exchangers before entering the tank, where it can be stored safely for several hours at approximately 3°C. At pre-arranged times, a milk truck arrives and pumps the milk from the tank for transport to a dairy where it will be processed into many products.
The milking of cows was traditionally a labor-intensive operation and still is in less sophisticated societies. Farms usually had personnel to milk only a few dozen cows, and keeping a dozen milk cows for the sale of milk was profitable. Now most dairies must have more than one hundred cows in milk at a time with other cows and heifers waiting to be "freshened" to join the milking herd. In New Zealand the average herd size, depending on the region, is about 600 cows.
Use of hormones and antibiotics
Many farms in the US provide cows with growth hormones (known as "BST" or "rBGH") to increase milk production. In Europe, use of BST is strictly forbidden.