Feisty the cow visits Kaiser Elementary

Cheese, ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream and butter.

Kaiser Elementary School’s students Thursday morning listed some of the foods cows produce as they got up close to a bovine during a free assembly sponsored by the Dairy Council of California’s Mobile Dairy Classroom.

“It’s good for them to know where their milk comes from, where all their food comes from,” said Mobile Dairy Classroom teacher Steve Miller in a cowboy hat, sunglasses and boots.

The star of the show was 8-year-old Feisty, a 900-pound brown and white Jersey cow who makes her home at the Mission Viejo High School farm, Miller said.

Miller takes Feisty, or another cow, on the road to different schools in Orange, Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino counties about 160 days a year. For most of the students, it’s the first time they’ve seen a cow in person, like third-grade student Brandy Flecky.

“I think they’re really cool,” she said.

During the assembly, Miller introduced the students of the Costa Mesa school to the main types of dairy cows (Jersey and Holstein), what the differences are between them (Holsteins produce more milk, but Jerseys’ milk is creamier), and the basic anatomy of Feisty, including the ruminant digestive system and her nearly foot-long tongue.

“It’s like a big piece of sandpaper, and she can lick her own nose,” Miller said to the astonished students.

The Kaiser Knights got to their feet to get a better look when it came time for milking.

Miller explained about the mechanical milking claws that speed up the milking process, what happens after milking and the lactation process. But when he squirted milk toward the first row of third-graders, they got really excited.

“I was really fun,” said Jackson Gilles, 8. “I liked it when the milk was squirted.”

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Twitter: @britneyjbarnes