When I found out that I would get to go to Michigan for the Young Farmers & Ranchers Conference, I was immediately jazzed as I knew friends Annie & Jerry Link lived outside of Grand Rapids. They had invited me to visit her family’s dairy farm. Here’s an overview of what I saw. I will share more later about the milking barn, the new high tech center and maple syrup! You can read ahead at the Dairy Discovery blog for SwissLane Farms or on Dairy Discovery’s website!
The Farm
SwissLane Farms in MI home to the Oesch family
Some of the cows having a snack
Maternity
Annie monitoring a cow ready to deliver
The cow nearing delivery is in a special maternity pen
Nursery
a calf that needed time in the nursery
Annie & Jenna show me a nursery barn
I love the look of white calves
checking the medical records
Dairy Discovery
(This is the center the family built to host school tours, etc.)
the Dairy Discovery center at SwissLane Farms
That's me Janice Person in Dairy Discovery
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- a calf that needed time in the nursery
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- I love the look of white calves
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- SwissLane Farms in MI home to the Oesch family
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- Annie’s grandpa Oesch
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- checking the medical records
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- the Dairy Discovery center at SwissLane Farms
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- That’s me Janice Person in Dairy Discovery
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- Annie monitoring a cow ready to deliver
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- The cow nearing delivery is in a special maternity pen
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- Some of the cows having a snack
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- Annie & Jenna show me a nursery barn
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- one of the young calves in the nursery
Love the pictures. We go to the maternity ward at the local county fair every year. And even though we haven’t seen a calf being born we’ve seen some right after delivery with the cords still attached and nursing. Amazing. 🙂
I find big dairy operations fascinating.
I took and advanced placement class in college. Our semester project and the basis for the class was to build a virtual 1,000 head dairy. There were 6-7 of us in the class and we toured many dairies in the area, did extensive research and did a presentation to the community. Many that attended our presentation were dairy farmers that had moved here from Holland.
Thanks for sharing your tour, JP
The white calf is adorable! Great shots! Happy WW!
Those cows are ridiculously adorable…especially the one with her tongue hanging out! check out my ww http://peekababyny.com/newyork/post-1100/
Well hello neiighbor, well it seems that way anyhow. This is norm jahnke now out here in washington living with my youngest daughter. Sis and i grew up with our grandparents, ward and mary boulard. We lived on alden nash, just north of the round barn, the boulard barn, just 1 mi south of you. They had a general farm, mostly what they called a dairy however it had realy gone down hill afte ezzra death after college, he was supposed to be the heardsman. My granddad was the carpenter and syvester was the mechaniic.i knew most farmers around there. Went to grade school and church just down the road from you with dale johnson, steve carlson, lorain and june carlson , mary ellen and virginia bryant. At one time we had as many as 14 kids in 1st thru 8th grade and mrs headworth was the only teacher i was involved in agriculture, deeply. Worked on feilds just acrost the road from you employed by frits wengier that lived just south of us. Then i graduated high school at caledonia and went directly in to the air froce in 51. I often sit down here and check on farm and aircraft information now days, can’t do much more, at least untin vintage base ball time my e mail is [email protected]. give me a hit if you like?