We’ve driven past this place many times and seen the enormous cows and corncobs and chairs that serve as advertisements along I-65. We invited friends along and met them there at 9:30 on a Saturday morning.
We decided, since we were there, that we’d pay for the whole package — The Dairy Adventure and the Pig Adventure, which, for the two of us, cost $54.
We wandered about a kids play area and rode a cow merry-go-round. When it was time for our tour, we climbed on a cow-painted bus and rode about half a mile through fields like this.
The bus drove us past a lot filled with bales of hay and along several long barns while a recorded message gave us exciting facts about collecting manure and milk production.
We drove past a row of calves in small cages — I forget why.
And through one of the barns where we saw a lot of cows.
The bus driver then pulled through a garage door and instructed us to exit the bus and climb a stairway.
We stood on a sloped walkway and looked through a window at a bunch of cows being milked on a turntable.
We were told that cows are creatures of habit. When they are brought into this barn, they enter the turntable stalls on their own when they are ready to be milked. It takes eight minutes to clean their utters, attach a milking machine and milk them. When they make a complete circle, they are supposed to back off on their own and head back to their barn. As we watched, about one in ten went around for a second loop. The guy explained that they aren’t milked a second time — it must be cheaper to let them go around twice than to have someone stationed to make them leave.
We then got back on the bus and rode back to the starting point — and that was the Dairy Adventure.
The light on the birthing barn was green, which mean a calf was being born. We rushed over and sat in the bleachers to see this.
The process, already underway when we arrived, lasted about five more minutes. As soon as the calf came out, the cow started licking it.
It was almost standing when we left 20 minutes later.
There were two stalls.
Another cow was laying down in the other stall, giving birth to her own calf with little fuss. She did point her nose toward the ceiling and give a bellow right at the end, but that was all.
This one was lacking some of the motherly instinct. She had to be prodded to stand up and then shown her calf before she started licking. And her licking was a good deal more vigorous — at times she almost flipped the calf over.
It was time for our Pig Adventure. We had another 20-minute wait in a pig-themed playground.
We then boarded another bus and drove to a building not far from the cow barn. We were told this one would take us an hour to view. We were in and out in 20 minutes. While there, we saw … pigs.
The highlight, such as it was, was a guy artificially inseminating sows while a couple boars stood in front of them to get them in the mood.
We then had to wait for our bus while being jostled by a troop of Boy Scouts.
The interesting parts — the cow milking, the cow births, and the pig inseminating — took us perhaps 40 minutes of the five hours we were there. We spent much more time waiting around and riding around on buses. It certainly wasn’t worth $54.
The whole thing was highly industrialized — rather surprising in light of the popularity of organic, free-range foods. But the place is popular. When we left, it was packed. We had a mediocre lunch in the cafe and some awful pastries in the bakery and were on our way.