On the dairy farm: A voyage into the milky way

On the dairy farm: A voyage into the milky way
Herd produces 20,000 pounds a dayBY KARA M. CONNERS
Press & Sun-Bulletin

NANTICOKE -- The faint smell of manure, drill-like hum of the milking machine and the occasional "moo" of more than 500 cows become fixtures of a day that starts at 5:30 a.m. and runs well into the night.

On a recent afternoon, a black-and-white border collie-Labrador retriever mix named Diesel rolled in a sweet-smelling pile of sawdust, tugging on a leash held by 13-year-old Aubrey Whittaker. Aubrey is youngest of the three children who work on the Whittaker Dairy Farm, their parents' 800-acre operation off State Route 26.

Some of the calves, each kept in an individual wooden hutch, crane their necks and lick Aubrey and her mother, Judi, with long purple-white tongues. The 40 members of the young herd chew and lick anyone or anything that walks by the hutches -- it's instinct. Yet the calves rarely complain, unless they need something.

"Just like a baby," Judi Whittaker said, "the only time you hear from them is when they need something."

The coarse feel of the calves' sandpapery tongues and wet snouts are conditions to which Aubrey has adjusted since she began feeding the calves last fall. Thousands of flies buzz around the calves' plastic buckets of vanilla-scented milk and sweet-smelling grain. More flies stick to a bright green strip of fly paper draped over a row of hutches.

Scott Whittaker's grandfather, Lewis Whittaker, founded the farm in 1915. Scott Whittaker's uncle Roscoe Whittaker inherited the farm. Scott and Judi bought the farm from Roscoe in 1981. In 1984, when the farm was milking about 100 cows, a fire destroyed two barns and killed 27 heifers.

Since then, the family has built and expanded the farm into a $1-million-per-year agri-business that employs the five Whittakers and three other people. The operation includes a 1.6-million-gallon manure pit and a group of concrete-walled food bunkers. Each cow consumes 100 or so pounds of food and drinks 100 gallons of water daily.

Across a worn path of gravel and dirt, a generator-like machine hums as a line of 20 cows slowly move into milking order. A cow must be at least 2 years old to produce milk; about 250 of the Whittakers' cows are old enough to be milked. The first of the three daily milkings begins at 5:30 a.m. and takes three to four hours.

Inside a cool, metal A-frame building, Keith Yalch of Lisle wears a mud-stained T-shirt and work boots as he hoses the cows' udders with a sterilization solution to prepare them for milking.

A milking machine latches onto the cow's udders like a vacuum cleaner and sucks the milk through a clear rubber tube into a 3,000-gallon steel drum, causing the cow's milk vein to swell like an enlarged intestine. The herd produces 20,000 pounds of raw, unpasteurized milk each day.

After milking, Yalch dips each cow's udders in iodine to stimulate milk production.

Piles of sand-like feed sit near the milking facility. The cows, which weigh about 1,400 pounds fully grown, eat ground corn, cotton seed and a protein mixture. The Whittakers will occasionally alter diets so the cows will produce milk that contains more protein or fat.

A truck picks up the milk daily. Though it's tough to say exactly what dairy product the Whittakers' milk will become, it often goes to a processing plant in Waverly to be made into mozzarella cheese.

The Whittakers have two of the six types of milking cows -- Jerseys and Holsteins. Jersey cows are brown or tan; Holsteins are black and white. A dry-eraser board lists the identification numbers of cows that are in heat, pregnant or sick.

The pregnant cows are placed in a special barn as they wait to deliver. On July 4 a cow gave birth to triplets -- the first time on the farm in 30 years. The family normally doesn't keep the male calves; the bulls are typically sold for beef.

"When a male is born, their life is generally a lot shorter," Scott Whittaker said. Females live an average of eight to nine years.

In each cow's right ear is a yellow or orange number tag containing the cow's birthday, and the Whittakers' herd information. In the cow's left ear is a metal identification tag that's part of the National Farm Animal Identification system, a database that helps farmers track animals' origins and geneaology.

The federal government sets regional milk prices, which can significantly vary from month to month. Currently, milk is selling for $20 for 100 pounds; last year prices hovered around $11. Sometimes it can be an unsettling lifestyle.

"We really sweat it sometimes," Scott Whittaker said. "Sometimes you are lucky to break even, and sometimes you are lucky to make a little money."