I wanted to highlight the many ways that we prioritize animal welfare and our animals’ quality of life on our small, family farm. Where industrial systems are designed to maximize profit and treat the animals as a commodity, we keep a close eye on our cows and prioritize their well-being. We believe that our farm is a complete system and that by carefully tending to our land and animals, we can avoid many issues that plague larger farms.
This doesn’t mean that our way is devoid of difficult choices. While the cow can’t talk to us, we spend enough time with our animals to know when the humane and hard decisions are the same. As we balance the pain with the joy, new life with the loss of life, it is so tempting to wish for it all to hurt a little less - for us to call our cows by numbers and not learn their personalities, friendships, and habits. But I think that depersonalizing the cows - by giving them numbers and managing them through a computer - is where big dairy goes wrong. We ask our animals to provide for us, and not caring about them deeply in return would be heartless. The moment that it stops hurting when we lose a cow is the moment we need to stop farming. If our hearts don’t break when they pass, we don’t care enough.
The choice to stay small is at the core of our farm. We believe our animals are intrinsically valuable and not just interchangeable food-producing widgets. Staying small allows us to know and honor each animal truly. Whether it is humoring Spruce with extra head scratches or making sure that Donkey gets her special bucket of water, being able to give individualized attention to each cow is so important to us.
In the name of animal welfare, we also do some things that are a little unconventional for our industry. Watching new life be born into the world is so profound. We tend to take a relaxed approach to birth — letting our Mama cows have their babies on pasture and intervening only in the rare instance they need help — and calf rearing. We keep our calves with a group of nurse cows. While raising calves with their moms breaks a cardinal rule of dairy farming, we discovered that it works well for us and that our calves grow faster and do better than when separated. Our nurse cows seem to relish their roles. We love our animals and want to do right by them.
To learn more about animal welfare: