Beautiful calf with few days of life
One of the calves sucking my cousin's fingers.
Calf cradles to prevent calves from being on chains
General view of one of the 3 stalls with a capacity of 175 cows in each stall.
Two of the cows with the automatic scraper. This type of scrapers are distributed in all the stables for the welfare of the animals.
A multitude of cows lying down, each one in its own locality. What delighted me the most is to see that they have no chains and are free inside their stall.
General view of the number two stall
A few additional cows from stall number three
Digitized milking parlor. That cow that is being medicated with antibiotics for a disease by means of a code that has the cow as a slope, the robot derives that milk not to be mixed with the rest of milk and is discarded.
Last week, taking advantage of the fact that my 7 year old cousin was at the family home we have in Asturias, we went to visit our neighbor's cattle farm and thus fulfill an old request that
had made to me a few months ago, where he wanted to see a large number of dairy cows. I hope
will excuse me, because I could not go until last week to take the photos I had promised you.
The livestock farm of the brothers Adrian and Manuel of Folgueirosa cattle ranch is one of the largest there is in Asturias, with more than 500 head of cattle in Asturias and about 300 heifers in one farm, the community of Aragon.
In the farm they have in Asturias, it consists of three stables with a capacity of about 175 cows in each of them. Apart from the large number of cows they have, I was very impressed by certain aspects that I am going to tell you about.
The calves when they are born have their individual cradles with a net that prevents them from escaping or any predator such as wolves from entering. At the same time, with this system they avoid that the calf has to be chained as it happens in other farms.
After this, I noticed that the cows were not chained either. Each one is free to walk around in its stall. At the same time, as a way of giving them a massage, they have automatic scrapers for the cows in the stables.
Finally, another thing I liked is the degree of automation and the use of robots to facilitate the farmer's work, such as the automatic machines for cleaning the stables and the processors that control the milking of the animals so that the milk from cows that are undergoing some kind of treatment does not mix with the milk from healthy cows, which is a benefit in the quality of the milk they supply and, therefore, in the milk that is finally marketed.
Best regards to all.
Photos of my property taken with an iPhone SE.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).