May 24, 2012

Today in class we had a speaker from The Dairy Council. She talked with us about the Dairy Council and also about how a registered dietitian can be most helpful when working with the media. The Dairy Council for this area covers the whole state of Ohio and West Virginia. The council is funded through the dairy farmers. I thought it was amazing how many dairy farmers there are in the state of Ohio compared to how many cows each farmer has on there land. Did you know that there are about 3,000 dairy farmers in Ohio? Or that these dairy farmers all have a different number of dairy cows on there land that ranges from having just 5 cows to an upwards of 250 cows?! I thought this was so interesting. To be part of this council you do not have to have a specific number of cows on your land you just have to milk them and then sell the milk. The number of cows on each farmers land all depends on the space the farmer has and the type of land that they have. Ohio has a large number of farmers but more small farms because of the lack of land available for farming. West Virginia has even less dairy farmers but that is because they have way less available space to use for farming. I have never been on a dairy farm before so it will be neat to see when we take our field trip to one on Tuesday. Our speaker today was very entertaining to watch and she involved us a lot in the class discussion. I really liked the games she played with us. She did a different form of Simmon Say's where she would ask if we had a glass of milk yesterday, or had breakfast or had a dark green leafy vegetable. I thought this was a really cool game to make people aware of there eating habits.