It’s the Pitts: Dairy Diary

In college I never went home for spring or Christmas break. Instead, I worked at various livestock units to make extra money and give students in charge a chance to go home. 

I often worked at the beef unit and bull test and several times at the sheep and hog units. 

I never got a chance to work at the horse unit where a screw up could cost a lot more money. Killing a $30 lamb was one thing, but killing a $40,000 stud was quite another.

Oddly enough, my two favorite units to work at were the swine unit and the Project Dairy. Dairy students could bring a cow with them to college and live at the Project Dairy, and I was surprised there weren’t more students who took advantage of this program. 

But, I figured out most of them went away to college to enjoy four years of freedom from Holsteins before they went home to milk cows for the rest of their boring lives.

I had several dairy major friends, and I ended up spending a lot of time at the Project Dairy. I also spent the week before my employment there working with a friend who taught me the essentials so hopefully the dairy students wouldn’t come back to school to learn their cows were dead or had mastitis. 

I wasn’t totally alone, as there was also a big commercial dairy on campus with full-time workers who I could call upon if I had a disaster on my hands, and a professor in the dairy department checked on me regularly. 

This was the best part of working on the various units, as I got to know the professors really well. As a result, I was always the teacher’s pet in their classes. 

I shot pool and worked stock dogs regularly with the professor in charge of the sheep unit, who also happened to be a groomsman in my wedding.

The professor in charge of the beef unit became one of my best friends and got me my first two jobs in the cattle business, and the swine professor also became a lifelong friend.

I ended up taking an artificial insemination class from the dairy professor who watched over the Project Dairy and also sheared his kids’ lambs for the county fair.

The first thing I learned at the dairy is dairy cows are not the same species as beef cows.

Dairy cows actually round themselves up and aren’t always looking for ways to kill you.

I liked how they were more hands on, there were no bulls around and you knew where all of them were at all of the time. 

On the other hand, because they were much bigger, it hurt a lot more when one of them “accidentally” – although I think they did it on purpose – stepped on your toes. And, they produced a lot more manure which was always in a liquid state. 

I learned really quickly they could directionally aim a hoof or a belly full of alfalfa.

During the week I spent at the Project Dairy, there were 12 cows to be milked twice a day. All I had to do to round them up was rattle the grain sack. 

I milked four at a time, squirting them off, attaching the teat cups, taking them off and dipping their teats afterwards. Then I opened the stanchion and repeated twice more. 

I also had to be an alfalfa chucker and make sure there was plenty of hay in front of them.

Because I didn’t have a vehicle, my friend who was working at the sheep unit would come and get me and we’d eat at an upscale apartment complex for hoity-toity rich kids where my friend had a meal plan. 

As a guest, I dined on all-you-can-eat hamburgers and unlimited chocolate milkshakes. I’d arrive wearing my rubber boots that smelled like, well, aged hog poop and soiled dairy cows, while my sheep friend carried the overpowering smell of KRS. 

We grossed out all of the snobs, and after just two days, we were invited to never come back.

I really enjoyed the experience, but after a week at the Project Dairy, I realized I didn’t want to be a fodder forker, wear hip boots for the rest of my life or become a prisoner of lactation.