Prisoners produce dairy products in paddock to plate lesson

It is located at low-security prison farm - the Cadell Training Centre - and will boost the milk supply to the SA corrections community.

The dairy, which is a 16-bay, eight-a-side herringbone, has been in operation since January 22 with delays on the official opening due to decommissioning the old dairy.

Department for Corrections industries manager Marcus Wills said they needed a new dairy as the previous eight-bay walk-through dairy was built back in the early 1960s and its technology hadn't been upgraded since 1981.

"Because of who we supply, our demand keeps increasing," he said.

"We actually supply all our milk to Adelaide Women's Prison, Yatala, Adelaide Pre-release Centre, Adelaide Remand Centre, Mobilong, Port Augusta and ourselves.

"The need was there to increase our herd numbers."

Mr Wills said any excess raw milk was sold to the Barossa Cheese Company or La Casa Del Formaggio.

"All our raw cream goes to Barossa Cheese Co and Udder Delights," he said.

"We don't keep any raw cream, but we are looking at processing the cream now to start keeping some within the institutions and supply our kitchens."

Mr Wills said they had doubled the milking capacity of their Holstein Friesian herd, which runs on 150 hectares dedicated to livestock at the prison.

"We are milking 115 cows at present, with another 42 pregnant and expecting to drop within the next three months," he said.

"Out of that group, there's probably 30 heifers that will be dropping for the first time, so that will increase our milking herd by another 30.

"We just need to keep our production up, because we'd like to expand sales elsewhere.

"But also, of course, in our business, being corrections, it's an ever-growing business."

Mr Wills said the cows fed on lucerne and ryegrass pastures managed by prisoners.

"We have three officers down in the dairy, one livestock manager, one processing manager and one that goes between both sites," he said.

"And then it's all serviced by prisoners.

"We have eight milkers and we milk at 5:30 in the morning and 1:30 in the afternoon.

"Then we have eight to 10 prisoners who are associated with the processing and packaging facility and operate Monday to Friday, eight until four."

Mr Wills said the prisoners were also hands-on with the cows out in the field.

"We have 10 prisoners within the dairy day gang, who are out in the fields tending to the cows, carrying out animal husbandry, looking after calves, dropping lines for the paddocks and maintaining fences, cleaning troughs and doing feeds," he said.

"We are trying to help these prisoners become rehabilitated and reduce their recidivism and encourage them to go out and seek employment on the outside when released."

Mr Wills said their milking efficiency went from one hour and 45 minutes to now getting the herd through in 45 minutes.

"Since we've gone across [to the new dairy], there's been a massive increase in milk and cream production and that can only be put down to the new technology," he said.

"In the old dairy, we were able to hold 6000 litres of raw milk, but we can now hold 10,000L, and when we processed we could only retain 5000L of processed milk, now we can retain 10,000L.

"As we are going into the winter, we are probably averaging 1800L per milk."

The prison has also opened a new processing facility at the same site.

Mr Wills said they went from being able to process 900L/day to 2000L.

"From the dairy, the milk gets pumped straight into a vat room, and then from the vat room, we transfer it into the processing room," he said.

"We send out [the corrections] deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and in the delivery run, we also cover our customers."

Mr Wills said the prisoners experienced the entire paddock-to-plate process.

"We remove the cream so it's a reduced fat product, and then we bottle on site, put the milk into crates and into the coolroom, then it goes into our refrigerated trucks and out to all the customers," he said.

Mr Wills said the processing facility was a self-cleaning Clean In Place kitchen, which had reduced cleaning costs.

"It's all automated and controlled a lot better than what we've ever had in the past," he said.