We went on a pasture walk at Marlindale Dairy in Groton this week. We saw the pasture management system, which involved intensive grazing on 12 paddocks, each paddock grazed for about one day, in a 2-week rotation. 120 milking cows are pastured and are milked twice a day (hoping to phase towards once a day). The pastures have not been reseeded since the farm began pasturing in the 1990s, but it is cut a few times a year.

In addition to the pasture, we saw the milking parlor and the Slurrystone manure pit (pictured above, photographed by Lexi Valachovic). The manure pit, installed just 3 years ago, holds almost 2 million gallons of manure, which is about 9 months of manure for the Marlindale Dairy. The pit is not covered but develops a natural crust. The Marlindales bed with straw, from their own oats. Although cows prefer to lay in sand, sand is particularly damaging for equipment. Marlindale Dairy utilizes diversified income to support their operation, such as selling corn, hay and soybeans. Pasturing is a cost-reduction strategy as well as a way to promote cow health and longevity. Overall, this dairy had a very effective business model focused on diverse income and low input. It is inspirational to see a small dairy able to be this successful, as many small farms are being bought out or going out of business across the country.

This week we went on a farm tour of Carey Farms and Walnut Ridge Dairy. Carey Farms, in Lansing, milks about 250 cows. They graze their milking herd through a rotation of pastures. During the summer, the cows are pastured at night. The cows also get some of their nutrition from TMR (total mixed ration), once a day. Spending time in the pasture helps the cows’ foot and leg health, and thus their longevity. The grass is safer to stand, walk and fall on than concrete. Older cows get fewer injuries than in indoor free-stall barns. Pasturing also reduces the amount of manure that has to be spread, which lessens fuel and labor expenses. Pictured below is a calf at Carey Farms, photographed by Lexi. Carey Farms keeps their calves in a well-ventilated barn for the first few months of their life to ensure their health as they build immunity.

Walnut Ridge Dairy, also in Lansing, milks 1200 cows in a rotary parlor. They are phasing their herd from A1 milk into A2 milk production. A2 milk is more digestible than A1 milk, reducing digestive side effects for some consumers. A2 milk earns a premium compared to A1 milk. Over time, A2 sires are being used to transition the herd to A2 production. More dairy cows used to be A2, but breeding for higher milk production over the past few decades has led to most dairy cows today being A1. Walnut Ridge Dairy prioritizes cow comfort, with fans and sprayers to keep cows cool in the summer. The rotary parlor allows for continuous milking since there is no time-out for loading/ unloading the parlor. This makes milking faster and less expensive (and the cows get a ride on the parlor!).

This week Nutrient Management Spear Program made their annual overnight trip to Northern New York, including a visit to Miner Institute, Adirondack Farms, Champlain Valley Agronomics, and the Northern New York CCE farm.

Above is a picture from the inside of the calf barn of the Miner Institute research dairy. Note the drainage from the calf pens and the ventilation on the ceiling. The facility was built prioritizing animal health. Other parts of the dairy that we visited included the manure lagoon, bunk leachate management system, grain silos, milking parlor, and field research plots investigating tile drainage. The dairy milks about 500 cows, three times a day in a milking parlor. The farm is huge, with many research projects going on.

Pictured below is a month-old foal and its mother at the horse farm of Miner Institute. Miner predominantly has Morgan horses. The horse farm has riding lessons, boarding, and they have a breeding program as well.

Pictured below is an anaerobic digestor, at Adirondack Farms, owned by Jon Rulf. The digestor separates methane gas from the liquid portion of cow manure. A solid-liquid separator is used to remove the solids from manure and bedding and reuse them as bedding, while the liquid goes into the digestor. The gas from the digestor can be converted to electricity and go into the grid, or cleaned methane gas can be pumped into National Fuel’s natural gas pipelines. Currently, New York state does not pay much for electricity from anaerobic digestors. NYS was paying 3 cents per kiloWatt, compared to 28 cents/ kiloWatt in Vermont. Jon is hoping for a change in policy, since digestors are very expensive and take many years to pay off. Furthermore, digestors often clog or have other problems.

The trip to Miner Institute and Northern NY was very informative. The anaerobic digestor was the most interesting part of the trip for me. Hearing about policy differences for digestors across states was very interesting, and made me reflect on my role as a voter. Overall it was a great trip. Long hours in the car made for a lot of bonding with the team, and we also made many connections to new people as well.

This Friday I went to the Cortland County fair with Lexi (Valachovic), one of the dairy sustainability interns in the Nutrient Management Spear program, to help get cows and exhibitors in order for the Junior Dairy Show. Our job was to make sure that each class of kids bringing their cows into the show ring was complete and that no exhibitors missed their chance to show. Throughout the show we saw a variety of milking cow breeds: Holsteins, Jerseys, Ayrshires, Milking Shorthorns, and one Guernsey. Pictured below is a Red and White Holstein.Next is a Jersey.

The show cows are all clipped and groomed extensively to be ready for the show. The cows are judged based on breed characteristics and overall appearances. “Dairy femininity” is a word that gets used a lot on the winning cows. Cow judging is not for the untrained eye!

After the dairy show, Lexi and I helped out with the rabbit show. The rabbit show was much less stressful on the exhibitors and the animals. The rabbits were judged based on overall health and the exhibitors were judged based on their knowledge of rabbit care and rabbit health. One of the exhibitors found out that their female rabbit was actually a boy! Pictured below is Honey Bunny, one of the rabbits shown (not the rabbit that got the gender reveal). Besides seeing the animal shows, we also got to see the birthing pen, where cows give birth during the fair for the public to see. One of the cows had a calf while we were there. It was a very busy day at the fair!

Lots of lab work this week, and lots of field work. We sampled at various locations, including the Cornell research farm in Aurora. While there, a thunderstorm passed over, but we only had to wait in the truck a few minutes before we could get back to work. It was a gravelly field, and much easier to sample from after the rain.

In lab, I learned how to run the active carbon test (permanganate oxidizable carbon), which involves ground oven-dried soil, potassium permanganate, and spectrometry. Using the cuvets for the spectrometry was fun, it really makes the agricultural chemistry feel like serious chemistry in a way that other lab tests do not. Having learned about the active carbon test in various soil science classes, it was really cool being able to help run the test in a lab. Active carbon is an indicator of the amount of bioavailable carbon in the soil, a common indicator of soil health.

This week I did fieldwork with the Nutrient Management Spear Program (NMSP) for part of the week, and I went to the Cortland County CCE office a few days of the week to meet up with Janice and see what kind of work she had going on. I helped Janice harvest the results of a seed corn maggot experiment one afternoon. We were digging up two-week-old corn plants to look for seed corn maggot damage. There were four different trials, which varied based on the type of seed used. The control seeds were untreated, and then there were fungicide-treated seeds, diamide-treated seeds, and neonicotinoid-treated seeds. Digging up baby corn plants under the hot sun, we were very excited when we found our first maggot. The infected plant is pictured below. This seed was treated with fungicide.

The seeds infected with seed corn maggot felt soft to the touch and were often leaky, as compared to firm, dry uninfected seeds.

Later in the week, we collected sticky card traps again and disassembled the traps for the year. We also visited a landowner to advise him on pasture management. He was having trouble maintaining healthy pastures for his horses to graze. Pictured below is myself with a seeing-eye pony for a blind horse. The pony ate the grasses I had been collecting for ID purposes while I was getting my picture taken.

This was a busy week of fieldwork! On one of the days, I went to fields around Cortland County with Janice Degni, CCE Field Crops Specialist (and my CCE mentor), to collect the results of seed corn fly traps. Janice showed me how to collect the sticky cards off of the traps and put on fresh cards. The sticky cards are intended to collect seed corn maggot flies, which are identified by the number of hairs on their legs. Fortunately, we only deliver the cards to the Entomology department and do not need to count leg hairs. While driving between fields, we saw a baby woodchuck in the road and moved it out of the road. It is pictured below, for anyone unclear about what a woodchuck is (you might call this a groundhog)…

Besides collecting sticky cards, we also looked at weeds in the corn fields and ditches near the traps. I learned to identify lamb’s quarters, bindweed, mugwort, pigweed, crabgrass, and more. It was a highly informative field day.

Working with the NMSP team, I had my first day of fieldwork. We sampled soil for the yield stability zone project. This entailed sampling 15 plots within one field. Each plot had 4 sampling locations, with a 4-inch and an 8-inch sample taken at each location. Additionally, a small sample of soil from each 4-inch sample was put on ice for microbial analysis. It was a lot of work but we got through it eventually. I definitely got my steps in! Pictured below is the field, and fellow soil sampling team.