Our last full day is already here 😦 With a few things planned for today, we were up and at ’em around 10am.
After stopping at Panera to pick up some breakfast, we were on our way to the NC State Randleigh Dairy Heritage Museum! NC State owns this dairy farm where they have over 300 cows they use to make milk and ice cream. They offer a tour of the farm, and we happened to be the only 2 people who signed up for it this morning!
Our tour guide was awesome, and she answered so many different questions we had. We learned there are 7 breeds of cow, and this farm has all of them. They also feed them a mixture of hay, grass, corn, cotton seeds, fruit/veggie pellets, and protein pellets. Cows eat about 100 pounds of food a day! Can you believe that??
That’s not even the craziest thing we learned today. Did you know that cows essentially eat, then throw up in their mouth, to chew and eat again?? They only do this for parts of their food that were too big to digest (since they only half chew their food the first time), but still… EW.
We then went into their milking parlor, which sort of resembles roller coaster seating. They milk 75 cows at a time, 3 groups in a sitting, twice a day. The cows come in, go to their stations, place their head in the rest, and after the utters are prepped, they attached a milking “machine” to them where they get milked for 10-15 minutes. The cows also wear a necklace type device, she called it a Cow Fitbit, that tracks all their vitals and details. They know when their cows are in heat, how much their milk weighs, how active they are, and more. Using that information they can detect if something is wrong with the cows. It was all pretty neat!
We then went into their reservoir room where the milk that the cows produce gets pumped into these huge tanks. One of the two tanks gets filled each day. Apparently, when the milk leaves the cow, it’s about 101.5 degrees! However for it to become milk, it needs to get down to refrigerated temperatures, so they have a machine that cools the milk to about 35 degrees in a matter of seconds. The cows produce about 7 gallons of milk each per day!
We then walked over to their calf area, where they keep calves in these crate looking things. Here they get their vaccines and are closely monitored to make sure they are doing well before going to the other pasture at about 8 weeks. The other pasture has cows that have not yet been impregnated or have never had babies and, therefore, don’t lactate and produce milk.
When cows do get pregnant, they get moved to a separate pasture. Our guide explained that cows are herd animals, and so they often have groups, or cow “buddies”, that they go through these stages with. Using the Cow Fitbits, they can usually track when cows are in heat. They will then breed a number of cows on the same day, which will then allow them to birth all of those calves on the same day. Apparently, cows are unlikely to go into labor early or late so it’s a pretty set schedule.
We then go to see the cow barn where the cows that do lactate and get milked live. They are essentially free range, allowed to come and go as they please except in case of extreme weather for example. Cows can eat, drink water, lay down in sand beds, relax under the shade, or sun bathe outside any time of day no matter what. Since it was only Izzy and I on this tour, the guide let us walk in the barn a bit to get a closer look at the cows. They were SOOOO cute, and I totally wish we could’ve pet them.
The tour wrapped up with some farm made ice cream that was so delicious. I tried the vanilla, and Izzy tried the chocolate.
Next stop for the day : Partee Shack! Mini golf, but better. Here we played regular mini golf, but each of the holes is unique. On some, the hole was in between some bowling pins. On others, you bounce the ball like you’re playing beer pong so it comes out a different hole on the other side. Some of the holes even have spinners at the beginning that you spin and may get a reward or a consequence. For example on one of Izzy’s spin, she landed on a spot that said I had to take my first shot with my eyes closed! We even got to do a hole inside of a school bus. It was all very unique and so much fun to do. They have 3 different “courses”, and we did 2 of them. Unfortunately I lost both rounds, so Izzy gets bragging rights there.
The rest of our day was pretty open since we didn’t have anything planned until ice skating later tonight. We figured maybe we’d get something to eat and hang out downtown for a little to see what we could find. We went to Gravy which, surprisingly, is an Italian restaurant. I got the Chicken Alfredo, Izzy got Chicken Parm, and then we shared a Caesar Salad. It was delicious, but very filling.
Izzy isn’t used to these trips I do where I’m usually go go go, keeping busy and seeing all of the things in the short time I’m there. Add in all the pasta we just ate, and she was getting tired. Our ice skating wasn’t scheduled until 9, and given that it was only 5 or so, we had plenty of time. As it turns out, we didn’t find much going on in downtown Raleigh. Most everything we saw was a restaurant or shopping of some sort. Even then, a lot of the shops were closed. Anything that was open didn’t really pique our interest. I figured if we couldn’t find anything else to do while we were there, maybe we could call the ice rink and see if they had openings for an earlier time slot.
Boy is it a good thing I checked, because our session got cancelled! Due to some unexpected conditions of the ice caused by equipment issues, they decided to cancel their sessions for the day. We were really looking forward to going, and even went to the store to get Izzy a puffer jacket so she wouldn’t be as cold as she was last night, so we then searched to see if there was another option for us.
Luckily we found one, but unluckily their only available slot was 9pm. So we essentially ended up in the same situation just a different place. That being said, we opted to go back to the hotel room so Izzy could take a nap and I could get a head start on this blog so I’m not up until 2am again writing it.
I’ve gone ice skating a few times, but Izzy hasn’t gone since she was a kid. We checked in, got our skates, and headed towards the rink. These skates weren’t your typical lace up ones, which I find very odd. They were buckle type ones, similar to snowboarding shoes. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I think I probably should’ve sized up because they were quite tight.
The rink was fairly busy, and even though we paid for 75 minutes, they informed us when we checked in that it would really only be an hour. Then we skated for around 10 minutes or so and they announced that everyone needed to get off the ice so they could Zamboni it and clear off the powder. While very necessary, I’m not sure why they don’t schedule the timing a little better. What was supposed to be 75 minutes turned into 60 minutes turned into about 45 minutes. Although annoying, and not what we actually paid for, I’m not complaining because our feet were hurting so bad that we didn’t mind not skating for the full time LOL.
No one fell and we did a decent amount of laps. It was a great time, and we had so much fun! Once our time was up, we walked around the mall for a bit. They had a huge Christmas tree next to the rink, so our course we took some pictures. We’ve come to the realization there isn’t much going on, so we headed back to hotel.
I can’t believe we already leave tomorrow. We’ll probably just chill for the most part, but who knows for sure. Be sure to come back tomorrow for the wrap up!
Oh, and even though I wrote a majority of this blog earlier during our break, here I am still after 2am posting it cause for some reason I couldn’t get my pictures to upload 🙂
TRAUDTSTWOCENTS 