The rotating milk barn, or milking carrousel, on the Dairy Campus. Photo Marieke Enter. Testing the acidity of milk, coca-cola and vinegar with a pH meter. Investigating whether your breath contains a measurable amount of methane. Learning what a freemartin is or how much the heaviest cow in the barn weighs. Discovering that campus cows produce valuable data in addition to milk. And, last but not least, swooning over a newly born calf.
As part of the Science Weekend, the Dairy Campus in Leeuwarden opened its doors to some 450 visitors on Saturday. The number of visitors was considerably less than the 1250 that visited the Dairy Campus during the last edition in 2019. The heavy downpour doubtlessly played a part. Resource is quite sure that the meadows in Friesland need not fear a water shortage any time soon.
Checking out bovine butts
But it was dry and comfortable inside the barns. WUR and Van Hall Larenstein researchers talk about their projects and, where possible, involve the visitors. They learned how to check out bovine butts. Or rather: attributing body condition scores to a set of predetermined bodily characteristics of the cow. Visitors could also learn about methane and CO2 research in barn systems or see what rations are given to various pairs of cows for a study on the link between diet and nitrogen emissions.
And all the while, the dairy farm continued its regular business, Science Weekend notwithstanding. The lactating campus cows looked for the milking robot or did their rounds in the milking carrousel. The main difference was that they had plenty of attention on this day. The other daily routines on the dairy farm continued as usual. Calf 4419 was born at 11.53 on Saturday. The animal had many a visitor swooning over it and, in doing so, offered a glimpse into the aspect of the dairy sector that is increasingly in the public eye: the relationship between milk, calf and cow.
(And for those wondering: a freemartin is a calf from a multiple birth that is genetically female but has some sexual characteristics of a bull, is infertile and therefore unable to produce milk. The heaviest cow in barn number 1 weighs approximately 850 kilos)
