Reflections

The dairy held a training class on Friday right after first shift milking. Galen, the Land-O-Lakes trainer, visited the parlor before hand and took readings on how well Andrew and I were putting on milkers. To put on a milker, we first press a button that creates a vacuum in the milking machine. The goal then is to leak less than 3 Kpa (think that's the measurement) of vacuum as we slip each inflation over a cow's teat. I put them on w/ a loss of 1.1 so did very well. The training was held at the owner's home in the basement - cooler than the barn's utility room where we have held meetings in the past. The emphasis this time was on safety training. That applied to not only the people milking but the guys who feed the cows and clean the stalls. Galen then had a quiz. However intently you might have listened to Galen's talk, it wouldn't have helped at all w/ these questions. He asked, for instance, Which country ate the most cheese per person? (Greece). How many pounds of milk go into making a pound of butter? (21). How many squirts from a cow's teat does it take to get a gallon of milk? (350). A good quiz because it relaxed all of us and got us laughing and talking. The owners had sub sandwiches brought in afterward for us. Actually, for a training session, pretty enjoyable.