Europe: Day 2

After a refreshing and much needed night of sleep we got up at 6:30am local time, which would have been 12:30am EST.  But it did not feel like midnight, it felt like we were getting up at a normal time.

We had a delicious European breakfast of various deli meats and cheeses, bread and croissants, fruit, yogurt, and coffee.  I really prefer that sort of breakfast over cold cereal.

Then we got ready to visit 4 farms in Denmark that all had VMS milking robots.  But first we filled up our little cars with fuel.

This was a crazy sign that we saw along the way.

Each farm that we visited was unique in some way.

The first farm, had an automatic feeding system.  I'm really not sure all the specifics of how it works, so I will just show pictures of it.  They had 4 VMS milking robots.

Where the feed is mixed

This feeder moves along a rail from the feed mixing station to where the cows are, and feeds out the mixes

Some other highlights of this farm: 

I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before, so it started to die.  I put in my other battery, only to find out that it was also dying (I later found out that the battery doesn't hold it's charge), and we didn't have our charger along in the car. 

So Josiah and I and one of the guys from Canada, Cal, were exploring another barn on the property.  It was the old milking parlor, but the milking pit had filled up with water and the mats on the floor had floated to the top so it looked like the floor was 2 feet down from where we were standing.  Josiah and Cal were curious as to why the floor was up so high, so Cal decided to step down into the pit.  Instead of stepping down the 2 feet to the level of the mats, Cal fell completely into the water, he never hit the floor so we don't know how deep the pit was.  So he was soaked from head to foot when Josiah pulled him out.  So then we had to go back to the hotel for Cal to change and we were able to grab our camera battery charger, good for us, not so good for Cal.  But we are very thankful that he didn't hit his head on the concrete when he fell in, he just found their "swimming pool."

Cows are curious all over the world.

The second farm: 1 robot, equipment stored in the barn opposite cows

Calves are still cute on the other side of the world.

 Then we had lunch at a restaurant in Denmark:

All 7 of us plus our tour guide got this meal (the menu was in Danish or German, neither of which we knew).

And it was good, except for the red cabbage, which tasted like sourkraut.

The third farm: an organic dairy with 2 VMS

The fourth farm: 4 VMS, also organic with automatic feeding

Josiah looking in the manure storage

Then we went to the Delaval dealer's shop, where he keeps all his supplies that he takes out to customers.  And then we headed back to our hotel in Germany and ate at a nice little restaurant down along a lake, I think.

A good view:

 And good food, although a very long meal.  We were at the restaurant for 3 hours.

My meal:

Josiah's meal:

Then it was back to bed to get ready for another full day.