The Dairy
The dairy at Shelburne
Farms maintains our working landscape, provides the real-life story for
teaching about sustainable agriculture and the value of agricultural
resources, and is the basis for our cheesemaking operation. It provides
a high quality, value-added food using low-input agricultural methods.
Watch Our Sun to Cheese Video!
- Part 1 (6:15 minutes) (YouTube)
- Part 2 (7:19 minutes) (YouTube)
A Grass-based Dairy
Shelburne Farms relies
heavily on pastures to support our Brown Swiss Cows. Cows graze
small sections of pasture for 12 to 24 hours and then are
"rotated" to a new section. The grazed area is given time to
regrow before it is used again, keeping the pastures healthy. The environmental benefits are:
- no
crop-based herbicides and pesticides;
- less machinery and fuel to
plant, maintain, harvest, and transport grain;
- manure as a natural
fertilizer on pastures;
- less water pollution by
maintaining thick pasture growth.
A Brown Swiss Herd
We have 200 registered Brown
Swiss (107 milking cows and 90 young stock). Brown Swiss were selected
by Derick Webb in the 1950s for the breed’s hardiness, foraging
ability, quality of milk, longevity and gentle temperament. Most of our
cows are bred to calve March to June. This synchronizes a cow’s
peak nutritional needs with peak spring pasture growth. We breed our
cows through artificial insemination and with bulls. We raise
all our female (heifer) calves, are raising some bull
calves for dairy beef, and have sold purebred bulls for
breeding stock.
Milk Production
A Brown Swiss cow on pasture produces about 50 pounds of milk a day. Milk
production is highest for the 60 to 90 days after the cow gives birth,
then slowly decreases over the next 10 months. At 10 months, the cow
is dried off and milking stops for 2 months. She then gives birth to a
new calf (about 12 months from the birth of the last one). Most of our
milk is used to produce our Farmhouse Cheddar cheese.
An Efficient Milking Parlor
Our
milking parlor, constructed in 1995, complements the grass system by
milking cows quickly and returning them to pasture. The parlor is a double-16, mid-line swingover design. Sixteen cows line up
on one side of the pit. While they are milked,
16 more cows file down the other side of the pit and are prepped (their
udders are washed). As cows from the first shift finish, their machines
are swung to the new cows. Milking continues virtually uninterrupted.
Once milked, the cows walk out and a new batch takes their place.
The parlor works by a
system of gates controlled from the pit. A motorized gate in the holding
pen swings behind the cows to move them into the
parlor. As cows file down the sides of the pit, two
"guillotine" gates stop the lead cows. The operator manually
raises the gate when the cows are ready to exit the parlor and closes it
on the lead cow of the next set. Two people currently milk
about 80 cows an hour, taking extra time to prep the cows to ensure the
highest quality milk for cheese production.
