Industrial Dairy and the Sabbath
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
Within a Christian understanding of agriculrure, are there limits to how large a dairy farm should be? Is there anything “unchristian” about mega dairies? I think the answer to both is yes, and the point could be made from many angles. Today however I am only going to mention one reason, a reason that every Christian should be able to agree on. We can debate what the bible teaches about stewardship and the creation, on how we should treat animals, on debt and subsidies and so on…..but we should all agree that the big problem with factory farms is the denegration of the Christian Sabbath. You see, the only way multi-million dollar milk factories can pay for themselves is by running 24-7. The milking parlors run all day with just enough time between milkings to run the washer. Someone will be working on the Lord’s Day no matter what. Now cows must be milked, and miliing cows has always been seen as an act of nessisity and an act of mercy on the cow. I milk every Sunday. The difference is this, I milk my whole herd in 1.5 hours. I can get up early and milk and feed my stock and still go to worship the King. On a mega dairy, someone will be working an 8 hr paid shift while they should be at church. The owner, if he is a Chistian will make it to church but his servants will be working. There was a time in this country, not so long ago, when farm machinery stood idle on the Sabbath and stores were closed in town. The Sabbath, a gift of God’s covenant mercy on his people, is very important to a Christian agrarian soicety. It is central to its very being, and something we should all think about a little more than we probably do. On a mega dairy, every day is just like another for those who milk. Most of these milkers are spanish speaking immigrants who their “masters” tend to look down at as “their mexicans”. I could go on about the illegal alien problem and how these farms are helping to cause it, but that will have to be another day. I’ve got to get back to the barn, you see we’re kind of old fashioned and still do our own work.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the brain food.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Just stumbled across your blog and wanted to say hello. Good stuff!
November 1st, 2007 at 7:09 pm
HI Scott!!!
Great post. I was milking a new Holstein lady today and thought of you. This new one is huge compared to my old one. I was aghast when her hoof came about two inches from my face. Gotta love getting newbies used to our barn and the commotion the kids make. These Holsteins are a might more powerful than the Jerseys. How many head do you guys milk now? I was also curious about your barn layout. Is it a pit set up and how many can you milk at a time? Again, excellent post. We too are so glad for working on our own. Every now and again I get cows froma mega dairy. They are so not used to being handled.
Kansas Milkmaid
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:46 am
Hi Christina
We milk in a traditional tie stall barn with an around the barn pipeline system. I walk from cow to cow with the milkers, I milk with 3 units. Right now we are only milking about 35 cows or so. Bringing in cows from farms that don’t have kids can interesting for a while
Cows are creatures of habit thats for sure. We haven’t bought a cow in a long time. Now that we are organic, we can’t just go out and buy any ole cow anymore so all our girls have been raised here from calves.
Any of your boys trapping this year? We’ve got a few sets out but no fur as of yet.
Great to hear from you, tell your clan that the Terrys are praying for them all.
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm
How many head do you guys milk now?
Scott … I may be a total novice, but even I know that it is not the head that gets milked. Why didn’t you set her straight?
JFC
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:12 pm
LOL! JFC. It is lingo ya know!! Head means…what is your head count? What is the number of cows you milk? Oh this brings a good laugh…as it shows you are a novice and even dairying has a lot of jargon that can be misunderstood. I am not sure which to laugh at the novice or the jargon. I should put together a post on the lingo or Scott maybe you can. It would prove to be a lot of fun.
The kids named this new cow Love. We have one named Joy and then we have a goat named Peace. We have a lot of the fruits of the spirit in the animals. Now we are working on the people specifically a few unnamed midgets. Patience (the virtue) proved very helpful with this cow. She is adjusting after several milkings now. I am still stunned with her size. She dwarfs my Jersey girls and those hooves are so massive.
So, now I will show my igorance…what is a tie stall barn? I just know the pit versus flat barn. Does your milking time include the clean up too? You guys make good time. We are milking with three units too. It takes me an hour to milk, clean, bottle etc. We also add in the chicken and goat chores too. Seems like we could make better time.
I used to raise all our calves. I am only keeping milk cows right now. I need to figure out how to fix fencing before I raise more calves. I shouldn’t be so intimidated as I have gotten the AI down. It shouldn’t be that hard to fix fences. It is a mental block I know. I haven’t gotten calf raising all figured out. I ran a bunch in the pasture together they were varying ages but one ruined the udder of another. When they were up at the house they didn’t appear to be nursing on each other. But just a few months of pasturing brought a heifer to a two quartered heifer. I was sick. I lost a lot on her and she came out of a very good line too.
Thank you for your prayers Scott. I will let the crew know!!!
Solus Christus!
I can’t believe I just said that…boy things do change when God changes hearts.
Kansas Milkmaid
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Almost forgot…one of the older children thought they should name our buck goat Self-control…but we didn’t think it would be fitting. He demonstrates none of those qualities by getting out and eating rose bushes and other find sundries. Maybe I should have named that new cow Self-control for wishful thinking…wishing she would control that hoof of hers.
Kansas Milkmaid
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Gee…my attention span is bad. The boys aren’t trapping yet. They are terrorizing a few coyotes and possum’s though that find their way into the hen house. We got ‘em bad…coyotes this year. I think that is all….I need more omega threes for curb this ADHD.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:44 am
A tie stall barn is the traditional dairy barn in the NE. The cows stay in stalls, tied with chain. They get fed there and milked there. In the summer they live on pature and come in only to get milked but in the winter they stay in the stall most of the day.
That time dose not include clean up or any of the other chores, clean up is about a half an hour I suppose. The rest of the chores, in the winter anyway, take all day to do….the whole stinking day sometimes