Caring for the dry and the calving cows and the raising of the calves has been moved west to our farm which lies between Shattuck, Oklahoma and Follett, Texas. This 39 square mile farm has been developed into improved Bermuda pastures, irrigated with over 100 center pivot irrigation systems. It is primarily an animal operation which acts as support for the Tuttle-Minco dairy herd.

All calves are born here. (about 40 per day) They are fed milk twice a day for about 80 days. They’re housed in 3,000 individual hutches. After weaning from milk the heifer calves are raised to maturity with supplemental feed on pasture year-round. When a cow gives birth and begins producing milk she is milked for a short time and then moved to the diary operation at the Tuttle-Minco farm. When she drys off, 300 days later, she is moved back to the Shattuck-Follett farm to calve and begin the process all over again.

The Tuttle-Minco farm is home to Braum’s milking herd. The milking of the cows is continual, stopping only periodically to clean the barn and equipment. The cows are brought to the milking barn in groups of 400 and enter one of the eight doors. Each door opens to a row that holds 50 cows where they form a herringbone pattern to facilitate attaching them to automatic milkers. The barn holds 400 cows at one time and milks approximately 1,600 per hour. The barn is heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer for the comfort of the milkers.

As the cows are milked the milk flows through stainless steel lines to a filter and through an instant cooler. Then it goes into one of two 30,000 gallon storage silos. From the storage silos it is pumped into a 12,000 gallon stainless steel trailer and hauled the short distance to the processing plant. This trip is made several times each day and night.

It’s a great advantage for freshness to have the processing plant right on the farm. It’s also one of the few milk processing plants in the United States to operate seven days a week.

Braum’s 260,000 square foot processing plant features the most modern equipment available. The raw milk is brought from the milk barn to the plant where it is kept cool in huge stainless steel silo tanks. The cold raw milk is pasteurized, standardized, homogenized, vacuum processed, then cooled back down and packaged. While the milk is being readied for packaging, we’re busy getting the packages ready. Here, we see the plastic milk bottles being formed. Braum’s makes both the gallon and the half-gallon containers that we use.

It keeps the cost of the product down and offers us the best possible quality control. Milk is packaged at 6,000 gallons and 3,600 half-gallons per hour. The packaged milk is conveyed directly into the cold rooms where it is automatically cased, stacked and loaded onto dollies and put on automated lines ready for load out later that same day.