CREAM of crop: Students, alumni rush to care for university’s cows

BURLINGTON,VT.— When COVID19 forced the University of Vermont to close and send its students home, the alarm spread:

What would happen to the cows?

The university’s beloved herd of about 100 dairy cows is normally tended by students taking part in the Cooperative for Real Education in Agricultural Management program, or CREAM. And without those students, the fate of the cows seemed to be in jeopardy.

In no time, dozens of CREAM alumni and students clamored to spend their spring and summer caring for the Holsteins.

“I would rather do nothing else than this over the summer,” said recent graduate Claudia Sacks, of Macungie, Pennsylvania.

On a recent hot weekday, she rose in the dark to help milk the cows at 3:30 a.m.

By early afternoon she was shoveling out the calves’ stalls. When she sees her favorite cow, Lazlo, she hugs her around the neck and gives her a kiss.

“They’ve taught me how to be a kind person and how to love other people,” she said. “You go into the barn and you see one of the cows licking another cow and it’s just, I don’t know, just a sense of sisterhood almost between them, so it’s really lovely to see the family that they’ve formed between themselves but also the family that we can form with them.”

The other six students are passionate, too, about the animals and hope to go to veterinary school.

They know the cows by name, how much milk each one is giving, who each cow’s sire is, who she’s bred to and when she’s due to calve, said faculty adviser and veterinarian Dr. Steve Wadsworth.

“These cows as well cared for as any animals in Vermont, maybe any animals in the country,” he said. “These students love these cows to pieces.”

The herd manager, Matt Bodette, couldn’t be more grateful. He was inundated with calls and text messages from students and alumni wanting to help or checking in on the farm. Probably 70 to 80 wanted to take up the work, but UVM only needed seven.

“They have really, really shined in every single way possible and I am — I will never forget them,” Bodette said.

LISA RATHKE / ASSOCIATED PRESS Cows at the University of Vermont dairy farm eat hay in their pasture last month in Burlington, Vermont. “I would rather do nothing else than (care for the cows) over the summer,” said recent graduate Claudia Sacks, of Macungie, Pa.