BD&BPA, FARM EQUIPMENT PDF Print E-mail
Farm Equipment

Tractors are used on the farm for cultivation and harvesting.

Common pieces of equipment on dairy farms include grass cutters, hay rakes for windrowing grass prior to baling and balers, which consolidate the grass into either small square bales or large square or round bales.

Specialised feeder wagons are used to feed grass, hay or silage to cows. Mixer wagons can chop, blend and feed out various types of forage with concentrates or other feed ingredients.

Modern dairy farms have semi-automated milking systems called milk parlours that allow the milking machine operator to milk in excess of 50 cows per hour. Cows usually have their udder cleaned about 5 minutes before the milk claw is put onto the cow’s teats. A vacuum pump controlled by a regulator then milks the cow and pipes the milk into a large vat called a bulk milk cooler. Milk is cooled to 4 degrees C before it is collected by the bulk milk truck. Cows are most commonly milked two times a day, early in the morning and late in the afternoon.
There are eighteen milk shippers in Barbados that have their milk collected once a day by the Pine Hill Dairy. Milk is then pasteurized and homogenized before being made into a variety of products for example; fresh white milk, fresh flavoured milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese and ice cream to name a few. Milk or milk products are sold locally in Barbados as well as exported to many of the islands in the Caribbean. Exported milk products earn valuable foreign exchange for Barbados. Unlike many islands in the Caribbean Barbados has produced a large proportion of the milk or milk products that it consumes.