Homeland Creamery is a family-owned dairy farm in Julian, North Carolina. During their public tour they show guests one display calf in a tidy, comparatively larger-sized hutch as an example of how calves live. But this is not the reality of how most of their calves are housed.
After being forcibly taken from their mothers a mere 3 days after birth, calves are sent to the very back of the farm (out of public view) where they languish isolated in lonely crates for 2-3 months. There they have little room to move around, and no play, stimulus, or interaction with other calves during the time they most crave maternal contact and nurturing. When they are older, they will be confined with 2-3 others.
Artificial Insemination is used on all females. Because male calves are of little use to the dairy industry, most are sold off where they are either rasied on other farms for their semen, or killed for beef production.
Each milking cow (there were currently 200) will have one baby each year and will not be milked for just just three months out of each year. Once their babies are born and taken away, there is a separation between the male and female calves.
Because male calves are of little use to the dairy industry, a small amount of male calves might be raised on the farm, but many are sold off where they are either raised on other farms for their semen or killed for beef.
While their website states “cows are family too,” the entire business is based on destroying the mother-child relationship, and routinely sending forcibly orphaned babies to slaughter. Mothers will also be killed off when they become “less productive.”
Homeland Creamery does not distribute to Asheville currently, but used to supply to:
- Dobra Tea House in Asheville, NC
- Nine Mile in Asheville, NC
- Moments Coffee and Catering in Swannanoa, NC
Asheville Dairy 