The new multi-million-dollar dairy and processing facility has officially opened at Cadell Training Centre last week.
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It is boosting the prison's milk supply to the SA corrections community and is situated on a low-security prison farm in the Riverland.
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 eight bay walk-through dairy was built back in the early 60s and technology hadn't been upgraded since 1981.
"Because of who we supply, our demand keeps increasing," he said.
"All our milk we actually supply 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."
He said any excess raw milk was sold on to 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."
He said they had doubled their milking capacity from the herd of Holstein Friesians which run on the 150 hectares dedicated to livestock at the prison.
"We are milking 115 at present with another 42 pregnant at the moment 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 going 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 Willis said the cows ran on lucerne and rye grass pastures managed by prisioners.
"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 prisioners.
"We have eight milkers and we milk at 5:30 in the morning and 1:30 in the afternoon.
"Then we have eight to ten prisoners' who are associated with the processing and packaging facility and operate Monday to Friday eight until four.
He said the prisoners' were also hands-on with the cows in the field.
"We have 10 prisoners' within the dairy day gang who are out in the fields attending 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.
"All we're trying to do is help these prisoners out to become rehabilitated and to reduce their recidivism and encourage them to go out and seek employment on the outside when released."
Mr Willis said their milking efficiency went from the herd taking one hour and 45 minutes to now getting the herd through in 45 minutes.
"Since we've gone across, 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 liters of raw milk but we can now hold 10,000L of raw milk and when we processed we could only retain 5000L of processed milk now we can retain 10,000L of processed milk.
"As we are going into the winter, we are probably averaging 1800L per milk."
The dairy has also had the processor refreshed with a new processing facility also opening at the same site.
Mr Willis 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 then transfer it into the processing room," he said.
"We send out deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday and in the delivery run we also cover our customers."
He said the prisoners' were experiencing the whole paddock to plate process.
"We remove the cream so it's a reduced fat product, and then we bottle on site, put into crates and into the cool room then onto our refrigerator trucking out to all the customers," he said.
He said the processing facility was a Clean In Place kitchen.
"It's all automated and controlled a lot better than what we've ever had in the past," he said.
"We were self dosing in the old facility and we were probably over self dosing.
"So our costs in cleaning have been reduced and now we're definitely meeting a better standard."