Loskot working the machine that aids in milking the dairy cows. The suction tube is applied to each cow, and milk is collected. Mason Loskot did this twice a day, every day, to 150 cows!
Over the summer, IAA student, Mason Loskot interned at a small local dairy farm, where he learned what it meant to milk 150 cows twice a day. Loskot, a second-year student majoring in Agriculture Leadership and Communication, interned at Garden Fence Farm in Street, MD to get a taste of dairy farming. Expecting a small sampling of bovine husbandry, Loskot was quickly thrust full-fledged into the busy life of a dairy farmer.
He experienced first-hand what it is truly like to live in the boots of a Maryland dairy farmer. Even his sleep schedule revolved around the lactating cows’ milk cycle as well as their feeding schedules.
Originally from Bel Air Maryland, Loskot found himself in an unfamiliar setting when stepping foot onto his internship site. Knowing little of bovine husbandry, Loskot was excited for the coming months as absolutely everything would be a new experience. Daily tasks on the operation included feeding livestock, weaning calves from their mothers by feeding them milk from a bucket, giving calves their essential immune-system promoting colostrum after birth, and shoveling manure. One of Loskot’s more interesting duties was being on the watch for mastitis, a bacterial infection on the teat of the udder which decreases output quality, due to an increased white blood cell count in the milk. Luckily, Loskot spotted two teats on an udder with the textbook appearance of curdled milk coming from the teat. Loskot then had to strip the teat with alcohol, band the teats for identification, and distribute necessary medications for the infection to be controlled. Loskot learned that day that something as simple as unusual milk output from a teat can have a much more sinister effect on milk quality than it may seem.
Working on the dairy farm, Loskot soon adjusted his sleep schedule to fit the needs of the lactating dairy cow. There are no office hours on a farm, you are never technically off! “I woke up every day at 6 am, worked until 12, came back at 4 and left at 8. I would go home, shower, eat, and sleep. Then I would wake up and do it again,” said Loskot. From June to August, he worked 10-hour days attending to the dairy cows.
Loskot chose this internship for large animal experience as he one day wants to own a small farm. This internship gave him the first-hand experience needed to decide if dairy farming was the field he wanted to go into. Loskot’s advisor, Roy Walls, found himself surprised at the amount of dedication it took to operate a local dairy operation, “Mason is a good hard worker who wound up in a situation where he did not know much of what he was getting into, but he survived. I think he got a good taste of the production aspect of dairy farming, even though he may not have gotten the full view of what it takes to run a dairy operation.”
When looking toward the future with this newly gained experience, Loskot is leaning more toward a crop operation because he says it is too strenuous to care for dozens of animals every day. However, Loskot says he may use animal foragers such as goats to clear foliage.
Although Loskot gained valuable experience in herding, treating mastitis, and the modern milking process, Loskot hopes to use his newfound large animal knowledge to apply it to his future crop operation. Loskot’s internship over the summer gave insightful ideas to how to raise and care for large animals, but also gave him the chance to find out that he wants to move away from animal production and more towards crop production as it does not involve the hectic schedule a dairy farmer endures.
