Today on our third day of
our tour , the first stop we made was at Prairie Farms Dairy. Prairie Farms
Dairy is a fluid milk processing plant. It started out as a family operated
dairy , called Swiss Valley, but three years ago they were bought out by
Prairie Farms, which is a producer owned cooperative. They are third largest
plant of the six Prarie Farm dairies.
Prairie Farms Dairy processes milk and packages it into
cartons and plastic jugs. They make the
plastic jugs on site, which is more efficient than shipping them in. They also put milk in to a variety of milk cartons. Products that come out of the plant are white
milk , chocolate milk, strawberry milk, orange juice and they even make lemonade in
the summer time. 40,000 gallons of milk are processed per day which come in on
25-36 trucks.
The milk processed at
this plant only comes from dairy herds which are not given hormones. 275-300
employees are employed at this plant. They each have different jobs, ranging from
making the plastic jugs, filling the milk into the jugs, truck drivers, the people who are in the
cooler loading the milk. We all enjoyed out tour of the plant , we got to see
how everything works and how the milk is processed and packaged. Something that we were
all shocked off was how much different their price in milk was compared to
ours. 1 gallon of milk is around $3 or a little over. To end out tour we got to
sample some of their milk.
Clasey Kirkland
