fair oaks farms

Several weeks ago we went to Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana with Jeremy's family. I thought it was a pretty cool place so I'm sharing, if you ever get that way. It was only about 2 hours for us.
It was scheduled to rain in the afternoon the day we went so we did the outdoor activities first.
**There is something for all ages here as far as activities. 
This looks like a easy peasy climbing deal but apparently it was pretty hard. None of the men got to the top on the "difficult" part. Bwahaha! I heard a lot of talk about how hard it was to get a grip on those climbing things. Excuses, excuses, men... (Kidding, it did look tough.)

Fair Oaks Farms is huge so they have cows having calves all the time. We witnessed this birth and believe, I broke out in a cold sweat watching her have contractions. Someone finally came out and helped ease the legs out and finally the calf was born. She had a boy too - I bonded with her. :)

That face on my girl - so Madeira.

This train was a big hit with the little girls. I didn't get a picture of it but River was a big fan of the corn maze. Who knew?

Her. :)

Us.

This was one of the those "interactive" type theaters. Where they randomly spray you with water and blast your ears with loudish noises. Not a fan. At the end, the cow on the screen lifts her tail and you get a face full of water...
Umm, but the content of the movie was interesting.

After the movie, you walk through their set up of the cow's stomachs and their anaerobic digestor display.

Luke, giving a try at climbing this wall with magnetic climbing gear. It was pretty tough - he didn't make it to the top either.

Because of diseases and cleanliness, our tour of the farm was pretty much all done by bus. This is just one of their dairy farms. They milk 2800 cows a day, 3 times a day. They get 8-10 gallons of milk per day per cow. Pretty crazy.

5 acres of cement where they mix the feed for the cows.

I thought this rotary was awesome. The cow steps on to her spot by herself where someone cleans her and puts the milker on. The milker is on for just 5 minutes but they're on the rotary for 8.5 minutes to allow time for cleaning, etc. Each cow steps off herself when she's done - I don't know if the rotary ever stops moving. These farmers or whoever behind this are efficiency experts.
Also highly efficient - the milk comes into a tank straight from the cow at around 101 degrees. In 5 minutes, it's cooled to 32 degrees.
Fair Oaks also has an anearobic digestor, turning all the cow poop into power, which not only fuels all their farms (11 right now) but extra for the local power grid. I think this is amazing!
I had to think of my dad while I was touring this place. Pretty sure he would have thought it was as incredible as I did, at least their methods of turning a dairy farm into a veritable milk factory.
Honestly, I can't tell you enough how scientific this place is. During the tour, they described just how the farm works - which is like clockwork. I'm probably biased but it sounds like people of German descent engineering this...but we'll save that for another post.

And lastly, what would a dairy farm without an ice cream shop be? Pretty lame. Mad, enjoying her ice cream. (And she does, greatly.)