#painting cows is theraputic

[sparklehounds]

did someone say cow

[fatrat66]

A WWOOFer's Life - Dairy Farming Quebec Style

I'm on a dairy farm again!

I have returned to the WWOOFing way of life for a little while. Spring has officially arrived, but you wouldn't know it here in Quebec, where everywhere still has a thick layer of snow covering everything (and it even snowed today, topping it up even more). I believe the snow is one of the main reasons for the biggest difference between the dairy farm I find myself at now, compared to the one I WWOOFed at in New Zealand... the cows are kept inside here. It's a concept I am not sure I like, upon first impression at least.

But it is what it is, and I am eager to learn more about it. Here is how today went:

7.30am - Wake up, an easy start to the day, unlike my host Stephane, who was up at 5am to milk the cows in the morning. He says as I'm only WWOOFing, I do not need to get up that early, which seems a fair deal to me. Perhaps I will offer to help after a few days, depending on whether I get the hang of the process.

8.00 - Breakfast. Fried eggs, toast, orange juice, and some French nown learning. Which I've already forgotten... Stephane speaks a little bit of English, and I speak almost no French... so we are helping to teach one another, which is fun.

8.45 - I am tasked with combing and brushing the cows, using a circular shaped ridged comb thing and a coarse grooming brush. I haven't counted them all yet, and for some reason haven't asked how many cows are here, but for 3 hours, I make my way along the rows of cows and clean their backs, brush their hair, wipe their tails, scrub their legs. It's quite theraputic (both for the cows and for me). I get lost in the task and am surprised when Stephane comes upto me before I have finished every cow, to say "It's lunch time!"

12.00 Lunch - Rice, chicken, tuna and toast. Scrumptious. Oh, and more French/English lessons for us both.

13.00 - I help to de-rust some gates and paint oil over the hinges, nuts and bolts, to protect them from future rust. A little tedious, but important.

15.30 - I started to lose track of time around this point, and the rest of the days jobs blurred into one. Around 4pm, I helped to clean the second area of cows (there are 2 groups on this farm - one 'traditional' milking setup, where two rows of cows are in their stalls, and "waited" on by the farmers. We feed them and milk them on the spot. And the second area is what I'm secretly referring to as the Cow Hotel. There's another large group of them in this separate shed, where they are looked after by an automatic milking robot. It's awesome. The cows walk in by themselves whenever they are ready, lured by a automatic food dispenser. The gates lock and a huge robot milking arm reaches under their bellies and does all the work: first it sprays the teats to clean them, and scrubs them with precise little mini-car-wash turbines. Then the 4 suckers seem to be laser guided (I see red lights flicking around the room as it searches), they pin point the cows teats, and begins to milk. All without any interference from the farmers. Amazing technology.

18.00 - I helped to dish out a big bale of hay that Raymond connects upto a pulley system that runs along the ceiling. From there, it runs between the rows of cows, and I use a spike thing to whip strips of hay down to feed to the cows. He tells me all of the instructions in French, and I wing it from there, mostly following his hand gestures.

20.00 - Back in the cow hotel, I help to clean up more shit using scraper-sticks, and I witness another automated system - the silage flies along a conveyor belt near the ceiling, pushes food out and spreads it along the ground. The cows seem to know when this will happen and poke their heads through the fences, getting a shower of food on their heads. Very amusing to watch. The Cow Hotel is full of gadgets - at one point I was standing there and could see the food dispenser belt dropping food on cows heads, as a chain pulled along a scraper to wipe up shit along the floor by itself (The Poo Butler), while another cow was in the gates getting milked by a robot, and off to the right was a cow standing under an automatic cow-scratcher, dealing with an itch. It really is quite a sight in there.

21.00 - Dinnertime. Ground beef (reared here on the farm of course), with rice, tomato sauce and homemade cheese curds (from the milk here, naturally.) Yumness.

12.00 - It's now midnight and I really should get to sleep! A new day tomorrow. No pictures to show as of yet. I've not got around to asking permission yet, firstly because this is a commercial farm, and I'm mindful about whether they will be okay with it. But also because of the language barrier, I'm trying not to ask anything unless its really important... I don't think Stephane will mind though, when I get around to asking him...