Mooberry Farms

Address

Unit 28 Kya North Park

28 Bernie Street

Kyasands

Preservative free, hormone free, sugar free and stabiliser free dairy products from grass fed majority Jersey cows (20% Frieslands) who grass in Hekpoorrt where there's lots of room for oats, miles and Lucerne - 20 mins from Kya Sands where the dairy bottles the milk and produces all the cheeses, yoghurts and ghee.

Mandy ensures that the girls live long, healthy lives, rotating their crop (Rye and oats) and grass fields every 2 days. They do not till or fertilise the soil with anything other than the manure.

Mandy started with 1 cow after watching a Carte Blanche expose on "acceptable levels" of impurities in commercially sold milk (read: blood, pus and faeces):

What % of the cow’s feed is grass and what % is supplemented and at what times? 

They mostly eat grass. I cant say for certain the percentages of the split in feed but the cows get the lucerne chopped into the normal feed so a lot of that comes from what we have grown – they get around 5-6kg of this mix a day and then graze on different grass fields during the day and the normal veld at night so getting a lot of their diet from these fields. The grain supplement is also to make sure that they arent lacking any essential vitamins which can happen with the Joburg soils so with us supplementing a bit they are then assured to get a balance of the vitamins too

If supplemented, what is the feed and how is it grown (GM crops, chemically fertilized/herbicides)?   

We grow a lot of our own feed but do buy some feed in – the feed we get in has unfortunately got GMO maize in it as we are battling to secure a reliable source of GMO free maize that we don’t need to buy too much in bulk. We did have a source but the amount we needed to buy up front would have been more than we needed within the expiry date. The place we get our feed from does from time to time use theor GMO free maize but its wasn’t with each batch so we would rather say its got GMO so we don’t need to change it each time.

Is your animal feed GMO and glyphosate free? No

Are synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides used in the land where the animals graze? 

We only use our own manure back onto the fields so don’t use any additional fertilizers

Do you practice regenerative grazing (moved at least every 3 days to allow the grass to recover)?   

How do they graze? The farm is luckily very big so the veld that they graze on at night is large enough to never get fully grazed. The day time fields are grazed for 2 days at a time wherafter we move the tape to a new section and then they will graze on that new grass.

Are animals integrated with crops?  

In our normal crops of lucerne we cant let the cows graze there openly as they will get bloat but within the Oats and Rye they graze in there daily

How regularly are the grasses ploughed? 

The veld never gets ploughed so just grows each year with a normal veld grass. The oats, rye & lucerne field gets ploughed between each crop and the left overs stalks etc just get ploughed back into the soil

Do you use routine antibiotics or hormones? We don’t use any routine antiobiotics or hormones at all. We very seldom use antibiotics on the cows either and prefer to try treat as naturally as possible with Apple Cider or Aloe. When the cows get Tickbite fever or something more serious we will treat with an antibiotic but we double the recommended withdrawal time just so we are 100% certain there is no residual left.

Are you Grass-Fed certified/PGS certified or Organic certified? No

Are routine antibiotics and hormones given to the animals?   No

How do you manage predators? 

We don’t have too much of a predator problem in the day but at night time we do lock the calves up in a smaller field close to the dairy so we can keep an eye on them. But for the larger cows they do protect one another so haven’t had any issues there. We also have 4 donkeys that will keep the herd protected.

What breed of cow do you use?  NA

How do you milk your cows: Machine or by hand? 

We machine milk. I had the exact same question for myself a while ago as we did use to hand milk but I had a friend with a infra red machine that would pic up heat and we actually measured what the teats looked like after hand and machine milking and found that the machine milking actually had less heat on them after the milking process which I found really interesting. We were machine milking then already but just did it for our own research so could see which one would be more comfortable for them? If you stick your finger into milking cluster ( the part that goes over the teat it is a gentle massaging pressure on the teat vs a pull done with hand milking so I think it is kinder to the cow?) We also found it was cleaner as there was no chance of dust blowing into the milk buckets as when they are machine milk the milk goes directly into a cooling vat to get cooled down quickly which stops bacteria growth 

How do you ensure the comfort of the cow during milking: i.e. no sores or pinching machine attachments etc.? Do you do tail docking? 

the teats do get inspected before each milking to make sure they are clean and have no cuts or anything on them. They need to be predipped before hand just to ensures they are sterilized before milking. If we find that one does have a sore ( they can sometimes step on them unfortunately or get caught out in the fields) we will then treat them accordingly and not milk that teat out with the machine. The cows will also tell you very quickly if it is pinching as they kick out if something is wrong and my guys are very alert to making sure they are comforable during milking

How do you manage the hygiene in the milk? 

A bit of that is answered above but in a nut shell the cows teats are sterlised before they are milked. We then milk and the milk goes directly into a cooling vat so we can get it below 5 degrees as soon as possible which stops the bacteria growth. The milk will then be kept below 5 degrees after which we will manufacture the different products

Is the milk pasteurised or batch pasteurised?  NA

What is the daily yield per cow on average?   NA

How often are your animals impregnated and how? 

We have a bull that we use to cover our cows so it is all done natural within their own times of when their bodies are ready ( ie we don’t syncronised for impregnanting them or anything) they will have a calf on average of ever 18 month ( so pregnant for 9 months with 9 months of milking and then they will get pregnant again) some may be earlier and some later than this but this is on average

How long do the calves remain with the cows?

Our babies stay with their moms for 2 weeks after which they go into a “baby” group where they all stay together in one big calf group versus small individual pens. We found this works well from a social aspect and they also experience a herd dynamic with the older calves being with them. Here they are still feed cows milk versus a meal replacement powder. Once they get to around 6 months they go back out in the big milking herd with all the cows together. 

What do you do with the resulting male calves?

 We keep all our male calves and they get to grow up on the farm – then at around 18-24 months they will get sold for beef but they have had a stressfree upbringing being out on grass all day. Some people also get the older bulls to use for breeding. We also keep one bull for ourselves that we use for breeding as we do natural covering and not AI

At what age do your cows stop producing milk, and what do you do with them when you stop?

As we don’t push the cows for large production amounts the cows go on for 12-15 years in the milking parlour. Our oldest girl is now 15 and still milking well so this does help with us not pushing production

Are they certified grass fed and rotated? There is no real certification for Grass Fed Dairy so unfortunately don’t have any certificates for this but happy for anyone to come and see what we do if they want to just check for themselves.

How long do your cows live? NA

How and when do they get slaughtered? Luckily we haven’t had to slaughter yet as our cows are all still producing well so have to say we haven’t a firm plan on that yet

Are your animals ever transported by road how is their comfort and humane treatment assured?   :