Organic Pastures

Today we went on a field trip to Organic Pastures dairy farm in the sticks of Fresno. Organic Pastures is a family owned and operated farm that produces and sells raw milk and raw milk products. Our tour guide was Kaleigh, whose shirt stated "Mom in Training" - Kaleigh's dad, the CEO, informed us at the beginning of our tour that his daughter was expecting their first grandchild, a boy, and was due in January (I thought that was cute lol). The kids on the field trip ranged in age from 1 to 9 years old. The tour guide kept the facts simple and most of the tour was spent just checking out the cows in the main pasture.

We learned that they have several different types of cows at Organic Pastures - Not just Jersey, Holstein and French Normandys, but lots of cows that are a combination of those 3. The Combo-Cows produce the best milk, which gets to be up to 75% cream.

We walked around the labor and delivery pasture and were greeted by an assortment of Happy Cows (if you live in California, you've seen the commercials!). They were very friendly and allowed the kids to pet them.

While in the L&D pasture, we met a cow named Boo. Boo is a PETA sponsored cow that was going to be slaughtered because she only had 3 teats. So PETA adopted Boo, and she now lives in the main pen at Organic Pastures. National Geographic took interest in this cow, and when they came out to photograph her, they discovered she has 4 teats. PETA comes and hangs out with Boo, brushes her and walks around with her. She has no tags and has a large bell around her neck to help PETA to identify her.

As you can see here, Boo is also a friendly cow :)

After we left the Mama's and Papa's (there was a few bulls in there, too) we hopped in our cars and cruised across the property to where they keep the calves. The calves are kept in solitary pens from 3 days to 2 weeks old, it helps to keep them safe from coyotes. They are then shuffled around different pens, depending on their age, and eventually land themselves in the L&D pasture that they were born in :) We loved the calves! They were a little nervous due to all of the action, but a couple of them were curious enough to be pet, and even nursed on our fingers.













We finished up our tour by tasting some raw milk, and chocolate colostrum, both of which were pretty good. I really can't afford to spend $8 for a gallon of milk, but if I could I would probably switch to raw milk. The benefits sounds pretty awesome.