Lamoni Middle School FFA Tours Shatto Dairy
On Friday, May 5, 2023, the Lamoni Middle School FFA went to Shatto Dairy Farm in Cameron, Missouri. The students who participated in the trip were Macie Jeanes, Allyson Martin, Ethan Elliott, Travis Noel, Naliyah Nary, Kacen McKillip, and Josie Hill.
After arriving at the dairy farm, the group sampled all of the different flavors of milk. There were around eight different types of milk that we sampled. We tried their award-winning chocolate and root beer milk. I think we can all agree that the best kind was root beer milk. We even got the opportunity to try their limited-edition apple pie milk!
After the sampling, we toured the farm. The employees took us to the place where they pasteurize and homogenize the milk. During this part of the tour our guide, Leroy Shatto, told us some fun facts about the farm. He told us they start milking 200 calves and 300 cows at 4 am and that they are milked 3 times a day for about 20 minutes. Each cow produces about 80 lbs of milk a day. He shared how he started with only 20 cows and went on to buy 80 more. Since then the company has been rapidly growing.
The FFA members learned a little bit about the farm’s history. They took us to where the milk is packaged and put into crates to ship. Here, Mr. Shatto informed us that you can ship the bottles back to the farm for them to be reused. This means not only do they have great milk, but that they care about the environment too. They told us that they send out around 3,000 containers of milk a day! Our tour guide took us to the next part of the farm where they milk the cows. Unfortunately, we could not milk the cows. However, we met some of the dairy calves that were only two weeks old.
After this part of the tour, we got our ice cream and shopped around for a bit. The middle school group went to pet the cows across the road and headed home. Overall, this trip was very fun and interesting. It was a very good experience to see how milk goes from farm to table.