One last Italian story

One last story about some American dairy farmers visiting Italy last April. This day, our bus left Parma and traveled past many miles of flatlands in the Po River Valley. Almost every field had an irrigation canal every hundred feet about 2 feet wide. Occasionally there will be a much larger canal which feeds the smaller ones. As we drove to our next farm visit, we actually had to stop with the bus and back into a driveway to allow cars to get past us because the road was built on top of a canal dike and was very narrow.

We arrived at the only Mediterranean buffalo farm in northern Italy. All the other water buffalo farms that produce milk are in southern Italy. As we arrived at the farm, we could hear strange, guttural nasal sounds. Water buffalo make a strange nasal bellow unlike a Holstein cow because they have an extra flap in their nasal cavity that can be closed so they can go underwater. It is believed that they originated in Northern Africa and came to Italy during the Roman Empire. Water buffalo love being wet. They are not bred for style and weigh about 1,100 to 1,500 pounds. They are all black, have long hair, and have curved horns that start just behind the eyes and curve back along the neck reaching about 8-12 inches long and 5-6 inches in circumference. They are also very chubby.

Housing for adults was a bedded pack about 8-10 inches deep with little room for movement among the animals in that pen. The farmer had a milking parlor that could handle horned cattle and they were milked two times a day. All milk is frozen during the winter months and then thawed and processed in the farm’s cheese factory in the summertime.

Calves weigh about 80 pounds when born, but they grow rather fast and have the ability to produce milk within 18 months. The largest problem that they had with their cows was prolapsed uteri. This farm had 180 cows worth about 300 euros when pregnant. The gestation for a female water buffalo is 10.5 months. They are typically bred AI two times and then a bull is introduced. Their diet consists of soybeans, straw, sugarbeets, and corn for about 88 pounds of intake per day. Water buffalo milk is 8%  butter fat, 4% protein, and 18% total solids with a daily average of about 25 pounds. The productive longevity of water buffalo is about 15 years. There are no restrictions on the amount of milk that can be produced mainly because this farm is the only processor of Buffalo mozzarella cheese in northern Italy. They also butcher three animals per month to supply their customers with fresh meat.

The following day we took a bus to Venice and boarded a boat to get us to the central portion of Venice. Venice has a population of 48,000 but gets an average of 80,000 tourists per day. The city of Venice was created on about 115 small islands in a shallow bay of the Adriatic Sea. There are 165 waterways in Venice with most of them being 10-15 feet deep. However, the Grand Canal is deeper. There are no cars in the city. In the 1980s it was discovered that wells pumping water out of the earth in the city of Venice were contributing to the sinking of the city. After that point water was brought in from the mainland as the city’s fresh water supply. Because Venice is so low, it is susceptible to flooding. Just before the coronavirus pandemic, a large flood inundated the downtown square near St. Mark’s Cathedral, causing heavy damage to some of the old tourist attractions and churches. There are short tables scattered all over the square and the purpose of them is for people to be able to cross from one side of the square to the other without getting wet after a flood. The biggest problem that Venice has is rats. They were brought to the city by merchant ships in the Middle Ages. These rats have caused three plagues in the last 2,000 years. Estimates are that there are seven rats for every human living in Venice. Cats were actually imported to help remove the rats.

The last castle we visited in Italy was part of a large dairy farm called Maccaresse Dairy just outside of Rome. This farm sold the land that the Roman airport is built on. It was a very modern dairy with a rotary parlor, high genetic Holsteins, and two digesters. They produced about 15% of the milk needed in Rome every day. Most of the alleys in the barn had cable scrapers with the center of the alley being lower than the sides so that the cows were very clean. They raise all of their male calves to slaughter size without castrating them, according to EU rules. This farm also donates 800 acres each year to the World Wildlife Federation for use as an educational tool for the Roman population. The farm’s noble had a lot of foresight to establish his farm so close to Rome.

As our bus left Florence on its way to Rome, the weather became very wet. The scenery was beautiful, if we could see it. So to keep the passengers occupied, the crew leaders asked each couple how they met before they got married. By far the most popular meeting place was a bar but the circumstances were varied and humorous such as one couple who had met at a bar and she didn’t like her male acquaintance. A few months later they met again and that led to 50 years of wedlock. There were also two other couples celebrating 50 years of marriage. At our final evening dinner in a popular Roman restaurant, Mary and Willard, Barb and Dan, and Kay and Bob were serenaded by opera singers as a gift for their long lives together. I found myself wondering how many cows have experienced life with those three dairy couples.