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Happy cows, healthy environment It's much healthier being a Fair Cape Free Range™ cow..... On the Loubsers’ family farm near Durbanville in the Fairest Cape, our cows lead a healthy life. No stress, plenty to eat, wide outdoors for exercising ........ and the odd source of amusement, like our turn table milking parlour. Here, sixty four cows stand on a slowly revolving platform while gently fitting suction caps carefully extract the milk. Why our cows are happy, healthy "Fair Cape Free Range"™ cows:
WE CARE ABOUT NATURE Our milk is produced in an environmentally friendly manner. We recycle, have measures in place to prevent any harm to natural systems, and we re-use our cleaning water after filtration. About our Fair Cape Free Range™ Milk Bottles Our milk bottles are made from a special plastic called PET. This is a biodegradable and easy recyclable plastic material.
Milk, in South Africa, despite being a highly sought after commodity, is a commodity none the less. More and more there is a requirement to differentiate and separate from the crowd as more and more competitors enter the market. Fair Cape has decided to differentiate our milk based on the wellbeing of our animals and the environmental friendliness of our facility. According to the United States Department of Agriculture “Within USDA's policies and programs, animal well-being considerations involve enhancing the food animal industry by improving farm animal health; overall living, transport, and harvest environments.” Contrary to popular belief, cows, who descend from the cold climes of Scandinavia are not at all well suited to the African climate. As such, much care has to be taken to ensure that they are always as comfortable as possible. To illustrate this point, below is a picture taken of a cow outside on a moderate 23 degree day in August 2005
 The above picture clearly illustrates the fact that the stereotypical view of cows grazing in a field under the heat of the day does not hold for South Africa and in fact is a source of great stress and discomfort to the cows who are far more comfortable in minus 5 degree weather than they are in 20 degree. Fair Cape, in our quest to increase the comfort of our cows, consulted internationally to find the current international best practice for cow comfort. We eventually sourced an Israeli system. This multi-pronged system to ensuring that our cows are the best looked after will be further explained below. The first step was to build very technologically advanced sheds for the cows to live in. These sheds pictured below give each cow a vast amount of space to move around in and entail and under-cover and open air section. They are specifically designed to channel the hot air up and out of the sheds through gaps in the roof while allowing the cooling breeze to blow through and cool the cows. The temperature inside the sheds is generally 10 degrees cooler than outside while keeping the cows absolutely dry and out of the rain.
 To attest to the effectiveness of the housing, the picture below was taken on exactly the same 23 degree day in September 2005 as the fist picture. You will notice how comfortable the cow is and how its demeanour and those in the background is the extreme opposite to the cows who was left to roam in the open under the heat of the sun. The cows are provided with scientifically formulated natural bedding to lie and sleep on. The bedding is a formulation of mud, straw and sawdust and is periodically sent away for testing to Johannesburg to ensure that it is healthy and comfortable for the cows to lie on.
 The next dimension to our cow-centric milk farm is the milking parlour. Our cows are milked on a massive turntable which is totally automated to ensure optimum well-being of the cows which in turn translates to optimum milk yields. Every time a cow is milked (3 times a day), four variables are recorded.
How Each cow has a tag on its back right leg (below)
 When the cow stands on the milking table, that tag identifies them to the computer on the milking machine which then knows exactly which of the over 1000 cows which we milk three times a day they are. Milk Yield The computer attached to the suction cups which milks each cow measures the volume of milk each cow produces. This is an indicator of the health of the cow. If a cows milk yield decreases it is a clear indication that the cow is not well. The computer then flags the cow as requiring attention. Electrical Conductivity of the Milk White blood cells have a defined salt content and the more white blood cells there are in a cows milk, the more conductive the milk is. Mastitis, an infection in the udder which significantly decreases a cows milk production and renders its milk useless is a significant problem in the dairy industry. Just before mastitis takes hold, the white blood cells in a cows milk increase sharply. By identifying that this cow is a mastitis risk we are not only able to treat her immediately thereby mitigating the potential milk losses but we also ensure that the mastitis tinged milk is immediately identified and does not enter the public domain. Activity of the Cow The average activity of a cow between milking periods is between 100 and 200 steps. If a cow is ill its footsteps drop significantly and if it is on heat, its footsteps increase to about 500 steps. The orange tag on the cows’ feet pictured above measures the amount of steps each cow takes and feeds that information to the computer each time the cow steps onto the milking turntable. By measuring the steps against the average steps the cow takes, the computer is able to flag a cow for attention if there is a significant deviation either upwards or downwards. Weight of the Cow The weight of a cow can drop significantly and sharply if the cow is not well. Each cow is weighed each time they step off the table. If the weight is out of spec the cow is flagged for later attention. What Happens Once the Cow is Flagged As the cow steps off the table, she walks past another scanner. The scanner immediately recognises whether the cow has been flagged for attention. If it has, a gate automatically opens and the cow walks into the enclosure. Once the cow is in, the gate closes and the other cows proceed back to their housing. A vet then inspects every single cow whose statistics are out of spec to ensure that they are in fact healthy and ensures that each cow is healthy again. This daily medical care is a critical element to ensuring that our cows are happy and healthy. Environmental Friendliness Another unique feature of the Fair Cape Free Range ™ Milk is the environmental friendly nature in which it is manufactured. We are unique in our ability to produce milk without a single drop of effluent polluting the ground water. The process works as follows and can be illustrated by the picture below
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