Linn and Benton Counties Dairy Princess Ambassador Stephanie Breazile recaps her travels to dairies abroad, noting similarities and differences.

My name is Stephanie Breazile, and I am the 2017 Linn and Benton Counties Dairy Princess Ambassador. I am currently attending Oregon State University majoring in Agricultural Sciences with a minor in Leadership to become a high school agricultural education instructor.

At the beginning of the summer, I attended a two-week study abroad program in England through the College of Agricultural Sciences. We spent one week in Nottingham and the last week in and around Cheltenham. One on the main things that we focused on throughout the two weeks was the dairy industry.

I was able to visit the University of Nottingham – Sutton Bonington Campus Dairy. This is a commercial dairy that is also used for research for the school. There were four robotic milking machines, one of which was used for the research cattle. The main research that was being done was feed trials, which Oregon State University does as well. One thing that surprised me at the dairy was that they still manually push the feed for the cows, when it seems that many dairies in Oregon are getting automatic feed pushers.

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I also was able to go to Westcomb Dairy, which also has their own creamery. We were able to go into their cheese cellar where their cheddar cheese aged. Their cheese ranged from 12 months to 24 months. They also had a machine that automatically flipped the cheese blocks so employees did not have to do that.

England is adding more technology to their dairy industry to become more efficient and have less human input because there isn’t enough people that want to work on dairy farms, much like here.

Being able to attend this study abroad program was very rewarding, and I learned so much more about the dairy industry as a whole. I will now be able to use the knowledge I gained as I share the story of milk as a Dairy Princess Ambassador and to future students as a high school agricultural education instructor.

The Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council is a proud sponsor of the Oregon Dairy Princess Ambassador program. Learn more about the program at oregondairywomen.com/dairy-princess.