Cows are part of the family at Misty Meadows Farm

Dave Herbst drives a tractor trailer full of visitors through his family’s dairy farm, Misty Meadows, in Smithsburg, Maryland on October 2, 2016. The family hosts tours and school field trips to educate people about the work they do and how they care for their cows.

There are currently about 160 cows, mostly Holsteins, being milked at Misty Meadows Farm. They are milked twice a day in a room that holds 12 cows at a time. Before milking, the cows’ teats are cleaned with iodine to kill off any germs and bacteria. They are then wiped off and attached to the milking units which feeds into a large milk tank. Of all of the cows’ milk, about eight to ten percent is used in the farm’s on-site creamery.

When the family living on the farm expanded, they had three choices: farm more land, increase the size of the herd or add a new facet to the business. That is when they decided to build the creamery, which was completed five years ago. There was no more available farmland and Jenny Malott, Herbst’s daughter who manages the herd, wanted to be able to know every one of her cows. Increasing it to the size necessary would mean losing that connection with her cows.

Like most dairies, they use antibiotics, but only as treatment for an animal’s specific problem. That means that only two of their roughly 300 animals were on antibiotics. “They are all my kids,” says Malott, who says she knows each cow by name. “If your kid is sick you’re going to take them to the doctor, and that’s how I feel about my girls.”

Milk from cows that are on antibiotics is dumped, and once the cows are off of the drugs, their milk is tested to be free of antibiotics before it is used for human consumption. In 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completed a milk sampling survey which found that over 99 percent of milk tested was free of drug residues of concern.

Learn more about agriculture in the Chesapeake Bay region and check out Misty Meadows Farm Creamery on the Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail.