Beautiful day in Switzerland

I have figured out that I must make a post, even though I cannot download the photos, so come back in a while after I have figured out the photos.

Swiss browns

This evening Claudia took me next door to the dairy farmer to see his new barn.  The old barn was built in the 1940`s or earlier and was a `confinement operation`of sorts.  The new barn was designed by the farner´s son--who traveled to New Zealand and Austrailia to study rotational grazing--and included a lot of fresh air, 75 Swiss brown cows and an interesting milking parlor.  Swiss brown cows have pretty much the same shape and coloring of our beautiful Jersey´s back on the ridgetop.  They are much heavier, though, which is helpful to survive the colder winters up here.  Their calves were gorgoeous--a much lighter brown, more of a creamy white--and very people-friendly.  In the milking parlor, the farmer stands between two rows of elevated cows and applies the milking machine to half of the cows while the others chew the cud.  When the one side is complete, the farmer switches the milking claws to the other half of the cows, shoos out the milked cows and brings in a new batch.  Tony, the farmer´s son, told us that what used to take more than two hours now takes 45 minutes and they even added 15 more cows to their collection and it did not increase the milking time.  The new barn is set up so that the cows can walk outside at any time  (except during milking) and can choose where they chews...

Milking Parlor--Swiss style

Earlier in the day, I took a walk into the small village of Neuenkirk just for a look around.  Tomorrow, while everyone is at work or school, I am going to walk up the mountainside to see what there is to see.  In the afternoon, Claudia will take me to a glass factory that is famous in Switzerland.