Day 30

Today was another adventure. We took a 3-hour bus ride northeast of Lanzhou to visit some more dairies. The scenery on the way to them reminded me a lot of the South Dakota Bad Lands there was nothing but barren brown mountains. This went on for about 2 hours. Then almost in a straight line, there were crops, mostly corn. They had leveled off some of the mountains, and valleys and made fields. These where watered using drainage ditches. We also drove through several small villages. It was a ton of fun to look out the window and watch all of the people’s faces as they got excited and pointed at me when they noticed. I saw a few people struggle to keep their balance as they stared over their shoulder. The first dairy we visited it was very modernized. I honestly felt like I was back in the States. They had a double 18 parlor, milking around 1000 head. They milked 3 times a day, 6 am, 2 pm, and 8 pm. I am not sure what kind of numbers they were getting although I am sure they are not close to what we get at home. I say this because the feed quality is not available here. Their silage does not have the same quality and the hay does not have the leaves we do and has a high NDF. They were using a large feeder wagon and had a silage pile defacer. The dairy was being expanded with several buildings outfitted with free stalls equipped with waterbeds. The second dairy was about an hour drive from the first. Its appearance was not as impressive but they were also very modernized. They were only milking 800 currently but they were not at full production yet. They had a 34head rotary parlor. At each dairy we had about 15 people visit with us and after the walk through, we would have a comment session. I have no idea what they talked about, as I did not receive much translation on this trip. Although it was cool to see the dairy’s nonetheless.