From Horrified Observer to Active Communicator — One Dairy Farmer's Journey to Blogging

by

Julaine Treur was on Facebook one day when she stumbled upon a video of a family of dairy farmers. The video described the family’s role as stewards of the land, and Treur felt it was absolutely beautiful. She thought most people would share her sentiment. Then she read the comments.

“I was horrified,” she said.

“People were talking about abusing cows, raping cows — they call AI rape — and murdering them when their milk production had ceased,” she explained. “I couldn’t believe that there were people out there that actually believed this.”

It was the inspiration she needed, as a dairy farmer, to start her own Facebook page where she could share photos of the farm, and interact directly with consumers. Facebook was a place of comfort for her, but it didn’t take long for her to realize there was room for expansion, and in September of 2014, Treur launched In Udder News, a blog where she shares day-to-day experiences on the farm, and provides insight into industry issues.

Continues below video…

Treur doesn’t shy away from controversy. She’s blogged about everything from artificial insemination to cow/calf separation. She’s written about cows on pasture, puss in milk, and has even addressed the Chilliwack dairy case.

Related20 Counts of Animal Cruelty Laid in 2014 Chilliwack Dairy Case

Photo by Julaine Treur
Photo by Julaine Treur

“It surprises me how much people want to learn,” she told RealAgriculture’s Debra Murphy.

Treur was a speaker at this year’s Western Canadian Dairy Seminar in Red Deer, where she spoke of her experience with “agvocacy.” She describes the term as “being a positive voice about agriculture in general,” and more specifically “explaining how we as dairy farmers do our utmost to take care of our cows and our land.”

But she also believes in transparency, and doesn’t think “agvocacy” is for just anyone.

“If you can’t have a civil conversation with someone who has a different viewpoint than you, you probably shouldn’t have that conversation at all.”

Wake up with RealAg

Subscribe to our daily newsletters to keep you up-to-date with our latest coverage every morning.

Wake up with RealAg

Please register to read and comment.

Privacy Preference Center

Necessary

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

gdpr, __cfduid, PHPSESSID, wordpress_test_cookie, woocommerce_items_in_cart, woocommerce_cart_hash, wp_woocommerce_session, wordpress_logged_in, wordpress_sec, wp-settings, wp-settings-time, __cf_mob_redir, wordpress_cache, realag
__cfduid

Marketing

Measuring interactions with the ads on the domain.

__gads,fsk_ut_2317
IDE

Statistics

These are used to track user interaction and detect potential problems. These help us improve our services by providing analytical data on how users use this site.

_ga,_gid,_gat,_cb,_chartbeat2,_chartbeat4
_ga,_gid
metrics_token

Preferences

Preference cookies enable the website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.

chartdefaults, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url
JSESSIONID, _os_session,anonymous_votes,csrf-param,csrf-token,user,user-id,user-platform,intercom-session,intercom-lou,intercom-session
personalization_id, tfw_exp

 

Register for a RealAgriculture account to manage your Shortcut menu instead of the default.

Register