Mt. Crawford Creamery

The farm was purchased in 1924 and the dairy was started in 1952.

 They have 68 cows that are milked twice a day. They have Holestein and Holestein/ Jersey cross. They make milk, butter, and yogurt onsite. Th day that we were there they were churning butter.

The parlor is a Double 6 Haring Bone that can milk 12 at a time. They added the take offs in 1989 and still use weight jars that help when cows are sick and milk needs to be dumped. They keep hand written notes in spiral notebooks. They process as much of the milk as possible and ship the rest off. They watch heat cycles to breed cows and use A.I. unless they have a hard time catching a first time heifer, then they use a clean up bull. They keep the calves separate until they are 90 days old and keep on milk as long as possible then switch to milk replacer. They stay on the cow for 2-3 days. After 90 days old they group them to get use to eating in herds, they are placed in counter slope barns that are scraped 3 times a week. Any extra milk that they have to sell they get paid for a class 3 or 4 price which is determined by the state milk commission so they try to have as little extra as possible.

This was an ideal small family farm. It was interesting to hear the history of the farm and the milk was amazing. I really enjoyed seeing all of the different local products from other farms in the area.