Field Trip to Prairieland Dairy

by Jackie Barnhardt, Outreach and Membership Director

In November, we began to stock Prairieland Dairy products and they have proven popular with our customers. We carry whole, 2%, 1%, skim, and half and half. In December we featured their all natural eggnog, and received rave reviews.

Our staff took a field trip to visit Prairieland Dairy near Hallam. We toured the farm and processing plant. We were greeted by Terry Landes, Marketing Manager, and instructed to slip on blue plastic elf-like boots not only to keep manure off our shoes, but to protect the plant from contaminants visitors may carry in.

Prairieland Dairy milks 1,500 cows producing 12,000 gallons of milk daily. The whole milk contains 3.5% butterfat. The other types have butterfat ranges as follows: skim milk 0.00 - 0.02%, 1% milk 0.08% - 1.2% and 2% milk 1.8% - 2.2%. Every batch of milk is tested multiple times during processing for any trace of antibiotics, ensuring every batch is of the highest quality and antibiotic-free. Gallon jugs from every processing day are reserved until two weeks after the expiration date for customer quality assurance.

The milk is hormone-free and antibiotic-free. Growth hormones are never used on the herds. If a cow gets sick and needs antibiotics, that milk is dumped out and milk is tested until free of antibiotics before the cow is reintegrated. A veterinarian is on site every week.

General Manager Jim Nelson tours the dairy barn.

The layout of the dairy barn is a large open air rectangle that the cows can migrate around a central mound of sand bedding. Sand does not grow bacteria like straw or other fiber bedding material. The flooring of the barn is rubber for the cow's comfort, with grates and a pit to drain water. A mister is overhead with a regulator that sprays when the temperature gets too hot. The run off from the pit flows downhill to a lagoon and the manure is composted and spread over crops.

Cattle are fed silage, sweet bran, corn and alfalfa. They also eat spent brewers grain byproducts from Lazlo's brewery in Lincoln and cereal byproducts from US Grains. 98% of everything on the farm, including the feed, comes from within 50 miles of farm and every effort is made to prevent usable food products from going into a landfill. We toured the nursery barn as well. The cows are Holsteins, artificially inseminated, and bred throughout the year so milk production is year round. A calf was born while we visited. "One farm, one vision. That's how we like to think of it," said Terry.

Jim Nelson, Open Harvest General Manager, continues to plan for the future with the dairy. "As they expand and grow their product base, we see Open Harvest building an even stronger relationship with Prairieland Dairy. For us to continue to grow and support local, we need to find vendors that support the same philosophy of sustainability," he said.

Prairieland Dairy Day will be held June 26. This is the opportunity for families to tour the farm. Save the date! This will be a great day of family fun at the dairy farm. This year Open Harvest is pleased host the local foods pavilion.

Look for more information in the Spring.