Cynthia Morgan looks baCk on 30-plus years in ... - InMaricopa.com

Nice work… if
you can get it
Photo courtesy of Shamrock Farms
ThE girls All rave
ABout thE shoWErs
and thE Food, too.
By JoE gIumette
Imagine NOT HAVING TO COMMUTE TO WORK, BEING CAREFULLY
bathed at least twice a day, enjoying free medical care, eating three nutritious
meals a day at no cost to you, spending your free time outdoors in cooler weather,
or indoors with the proper shade, mist and circulating air, and spending only 11
minutes or so actually working each day.
Dream job?
You bet — if you’re a cow living on Shamrock Farms just south of Maricopa. About
17,000 of these black and white beauties (Holsteins, with a few brown-and-white Guernseys
thrown in) live their lives in relative luxury, away from the traffic and pressures of
city life, surrounded by farms and open space. Only about 10,000 of the herd are actively
producing milk at one time; there are an additional 4,500 heifers and about 2,500 calves
who live separately on the same farm, waiting for their day in the milking barns.
A staff of 88 works with General Manager Frank Boyce to make sure the animals maintain
the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. They get some help — if that’s the right word —
from the county, the state and the federal government, all of whom have a serious interest
in seeing to it that milk produced in this country meets the standards regulators established.
“Our product exceeds those guidelines,” Boyce says proudly. No growth hormones
are used in Shamrock milk products.
28 InMaricopa.com | Vol. 5 Issue 3