Every once in a while the Wagner team gets the chance to leave the farm and help other organizations spread the word about agriculture. This week a handful of our staff has been going up to Golden Oaks Farm to lead programs for their Dairy Days. Golden Oaks is a state of the art dairy in Lake County that produces over 6,200 gallons of milk every day. Just for a reference, that is enough milk for more than 100,000 people to all have an 8 oz. glass of milk.
The folks up at Golden Oaks had a really neat day set up for the kids. In the section that I lead we talked about cattle nutrition and Total Mixed Rations or TMR. For a cow to be healthy they need certain amounts of different foodstuff. After I showed the kids everything a cow eats from cracked corn to cotton seed we had the kids make a TMR of their own. Only their TMR was breakfast cereals that represented the ratios of the different feeds that are combined to make the cow's dinner. It was a pretty creative way to illustrate the TMR concept.
