Page 6 Stories of the Heartland • Sunday, September 21, 2025 hometownsource. com / heartland /
tificial insemination. The tanks are kept cold with liquid nitrogen at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit so the semen does not die. Mike has a choice of which bull semen to use from his tank representative. It usually takes two or three tries to get a female pregnant. A female is called a cow after she has birthed a calf.
There is a difference between organic milk and regular milk. With organic milk, farmers cannot spray chemicals on the fields that cows graze. Neither organic milking cows nor regular milking cows can be injected with bovine growth hormone( bGH), also known as bovine somatotropin( bST).
Asked whether almond milk is hurting the dairy industry, Mike said that isn’ t the case. He drinks almond milk himself.“ It’ s not actually milk. It’ s nut juice,” he said. The Orbeck farm is considered a small farm, as it has fewer than 120 cows. Even so, it produces a lot of milk. Over a period of 10 months, just three cows will fill a milking truck with 75,000 pounds of milk.
Most of the milk from Mike’ s cows is made into cheese at a plant in Melrose. According to the USDA’ s 2025 Dairy Outlook Report, the trend in dairy consumption is moving away from fluid milk and toward manufactured products such as cheese and butter.
Mike usually milks cows for 305 days, then lets them dry out for 45 days in the pastures. After 45 days, he breeds them back. He can milk five cows at a time using five milking units. Four automatically shut off, but one must be watched and shut off manually.
Typically, cows live for five years, though some live up to 13. When they get past 10, the problem is they don’ t
The Orbeck Family Dairy Farm located in Paynesville.
Cynthia Parsons / Stories of the Heartland
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