Today as part of my Leadership Weld County class we learned about the agriculture and natural resources in Weld County.
The day started with a professional impersonator of Warren Monfort, the trailblazer of our community who started the “pen-feeding” of cattle that has now become the norm. He talked about how he got interested in doing it and the millions and millions of dollars that were made in this business. He barely skimmed the surface of the problems that it caused (causes), but it was still quite a fascinating story of determination. We also learned about Greeley’s role in water rights in all of Colorado and what we will need to do to hold all the water in the future (possible reservoir projects on the horizon).
From these two discussions, I put together something that no one really addressed. They talked about the fact that feeding cattle requires a lot of corn and silage and how corn is a very water intensive crop. Then, the next speaker talked about our lack of water on these dryland plains. It seemed rather strange that here we have a species of animal (actually buffaloes roamed freely here for a long time too) that loves to roam around and eat dryland grasses but yet we decided to create at least two problems where there was one perfect solution (no need to water, and the cows would pasture and stay healthier).
After these presentations we went to a dairy farm called Cozy Cow Dairy in Windsor. It was so sweet. You could tell that the woman who gave the presentation really loved her cows. She even painted a mural of them in the tour room! After we saw a milking demonstration we tasted their milk which is a mixture of Holstein and Jersey milk and some cheese curds. While it is not an organic dairy, they do not use bovine hormones and they limit antibiotics. I thought everything they had was excellent!
The next stop was at an oil rig. I have never been to an oil rig before. It was noisy and windy and dirty, and I don’t think I could ever work there, but it was pretty interesting how they do it all. We even had to wear hard hats like real workers!
Me and Jamie at the oil rig
Next up was very close to my heart of course because of my own chickens. We toured Morning Fresh Eggs in Platteville. They are a producer of Eggland’s Best Eggs, if you’ve ever seen those commercials. The factory was very clean at least in the part that we were allowed to see, and they had a lot of reasons why factory farming of eggs is great. I, as you could probably surmise, completely disagree, and this is in fact one of the reasons we got our own backyard hens.
But it was still interesting to see what it would take to raise over 1.6 million chickens indoors…again, what a waste because here is an animal that loves to peck around, play outside, take dust baths and roost at night. Instead we have turned them into nothing more than production units that get to live to 104 weeks (2 years). Reminds me a little of the Matrix. Let me say it again so you can wrap your mind around this: One and a half million chickens…holy cow (or chicken) that’s larger than Denver if that were people! And they said that each person on average eats about 5 eggs a week in both whole egg form or in cakes, ice creams, and other products. That would be about what one happy hen in your backyard could produce for you! Why do we feel like we have to make factories out of everything?! Even the easiest, best solutions turn into problems when we try to force living things into factory mass production systems.
Just check out the sheer number of eggs in this video I took:
We also got to talk with a local farmer about his vegetable farming experience. Overall, the whole day was quite fascinating and probably the most important to learn about in terms of Weld County’s heritage. I was certainly happy to get home to find three healthy speckled and not so standardized eggs in the girls’ nesting box. It helped confirm for me all the reasons we garden and raise chickens and in general utilize our own natural (human) resources as much as possible.