My name's Armando [? Caballero?]. I am a team manager out here at Brigham Creek Dairy, which is a dairy owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We have approximately 60 employees here at the dairy. And we manage 4,500 cows. About 4,000 of those we milk three times a day.
They produce about 300,000 pounds of milk per day. We produce approximately 125 million pounds of milk in a year. We milk cows around the clock. We milk them at midnight. We milk them at 2:00 in the morning. And there is even a 4:00 in the morning. Some people don't understand that. But yeah, we're here 24 hours a day. What's really unique about our situation here at the Church dairy is that we grow our own feed in-house. We grow our own forages, our own grains. We mix all of our feed on site. The basis of our ration is forage that's grown here locally mixed with approximately 12 other feed ingredients that are proteins, energy sources with a vitamin mix to help maintain healthy cows. That will give us maximum production. Our culture is, number one, to take care of the animals. We understand that by taking care of the animals, it actually makes them more productive. Cow comfort, making sure that our rations are correct, making sure that we handle the cows correctly in the barn. It's important that we take good care of these animals. We're taking care of His creatures and doing the best that we can to manage them, to keep them healthy, so that they can give us a product that we can give to those that are in need. It's just an amazing, amazing opportunity to be a part of that. When the milk leaves here, it goes to Welfare Square in Salt Lake City. And they basically produce a fluid milk or cheese or cottage cheese.
From there, it goes to bishops' storehouses in the area. And then as bishops have local people who are needy, they'll send them to the bishops' storehouse and get some of our product. Every day that we come to work, we make a difference in somebody's lives. It's unique in the sense that the cows here are producing a product that is used across the world. And just knowing that the products we produce go to help those in need, or that have had trouble in their lives, or even go to the third-world countries, it's great to be a part of that. When Jesus Christ taught that we should take care of the poor and the needy-- every morning when I wake up, I know that what I'm going to go do today is going to fulfill what He's asked us to do.
