On the Thewis family farm, about two-man hours a day are devoted to cleaning the milking parlor and equipment after the farm’s morning and evening milkings. In addition there’s more time spent on deeper, more intensive cleaning throughout the year.
“It’s easier to clean on a humid day because the cement will sweat,” Peter Thewis said as he hosed down the floor after a morning milking.
In winter it’s best to clean right after the cows leave the milking parlor because they warm it up.
“The time spent cleaning doesn’t change, if I could milk 300 cows (instead of 110) the time spent cleaning wouldn’t change at all because it’s the same amount of square footage,” he said.
Dairy farmers in Wisconsin are inspected at least once a year by a dairy sanitarian working for the state’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Producers are sent a letter stating what month their inspection will take place, but the exact date is not announced.
Inspectors look at the general health and cleanliness of the animals, and the general cleanliness of the barn, including whether there is excessive manure buildup, odors and water management such as backflow prevention of water lines and well protection, according to DATCP spokeswoman Leeann Duwe.
The boys, all members of the Morrison 4-H Club began preparing for the fair shortly after school ended in May.
“This is the culmination of all their efforts,” Horn-Leiterman said.
— By Joshua Clark
That is about the same as the maximum take-off weight of five Boeing 747-400’s, each weighing about 900,000 pounds.
Hay is cut three times a year. Some of it is turned into about 250 round bales, weighing 1,000 pounds each, that are moved by a skidsteer. Corn silage is stored in seven 9-by-165-foot plastic-wrapped tubes.
The goal is to get through the winter without having to buy feed for the cows, an expensive proposition in an industry in which farms struggle to stay profitable with razor thin margins.
— By Mark Hoffman
Being a small farmer like Briggs means that you must accept that your operation and finances will be buffeted by forces out of your control. And this year, the whims of nature seem to be conspiring against him and other farmers across the state.
First, a harsh winter killed off the hay in his fields, grass that he would have used to feed the 100 or so head of cattle he owns. To replace that hay, Briggs had to buy seed – an extra cost – and plant it. The cold spring meant he was late in getting that seed, and corn, too, into the ground.
The first cutting of that hay is just getting ready to be harvested for silage. Usually alfalfa, the typical hay crop, is cut and harvested throughout June, maybe even late May if conditions are right. In good years farmers can get a second, and sometimes a third cutting off of fields. The more hay a farmer can get, the less feed a farmer has to buy for his cows. Hay and corn are money.
Briggs welcomed the July heat. Corn, especially, thrives in hot, humid conditions. But still the corn, which also got a late start, is lagging behind where it should be for this time of year.
Overall, he said, “it’s been a discouraging summer.”
There is a bright spot. The price for milk has increased over the past six months or so. Briggs said he’s been getting about $18 per hundredweight, or a hundred pounds of milk. A half year ago, that price was $12 to $15, he said.
He doesn’t know how long these milk prices will last, and if they do, whether the extra income he’ll get will offset the costs he’ll incur. He expects he’ll need to buy hay and corn to augment what he predicts to be poor crop yields. A lot of farmers will be doing that, he anticipates, so the demand for corn and hay will drive up prices and gouge into Briggs’ bottom line.
So how does Briggs deal with all the uncertainty, especially when his, and many small farms like his, are on the cutting edge of financial survival?
He shrugs. “It’s hard,” he said.
For Briggs, spending time caring for his cows, doing chores with Jenny and their son, Justin, helps with the anxiety. One cow, especially, helps. She cuddles up to Briggs when he walks over to her and scratches her head.
Her name is Spice.
The Briggs family calls her “Spice the Therapy Cow” because she is so friendly.
— By Keith Uhlig
— By Mark Hoffman
Winter-kill took many of their alfalfa crops, which they plowed back into the ground and replaced with corn to supplement the feed. Brian Horn said the plan this year is to stretch that alfalfa by making a 50-50 blend with corn silage.
“A lot of guys are complaining about the heat, but we need it. We’ve got a lot of cows to feed. We’ve gotta grow forage. That’s our plan with the corn,” he said.
If all goes well, they plan to be able to take the corn for silage in October and have enough to get them through till next season.
“The stuff we’re making today is the primo stuff – the alfalfa that we want,” Horn said. “I think we’re gonna do okay.”
See more photos from the Hornstead farm.
— By Joshua Clark
After weeks with frequent rain, though, Horn-Leiterman and her family still have hundreds of acres of crops to plant — a process that normally starts earlier in the year, but was delayed by wet weather this time around.
As a result, they’re going to need all of September and October to get their crops — hay and corn — off their fields, Horn-Leiterman said. An early frost could cause problems for the crops they’ve worked so hard to produce.
“That’s going to be a huge gamble,” she said.
Those crops are eventually used to feed about 1,500 cows producing milk at the dairy. So, Horn-Leiterman is hoping for a dry, sunny summer, with only spurts of rain to soak the fields.
But it’s not easy to rely on the weather when so much depends on it, Horn-Leiterman said.
“They say that’s what makes it fun,” she said. “That’s what’s making it very stressful this year.”
— By Chris Mueller
So when Emily found a job driving construction equipment, she put their herd of 30 or so Jerseys on Craigslist. They had to sell the cows, she said, before the dairy operation lost any more money.
More than 300 Wisconsin dairy farms called it quits between Jan. 1 and May 1, according to state dairy herd license records, and about 90 farms — three a day — closed in April alone.
Ed Flood, a livestock broker from Ellenburg Center, New York, bought the cows from Emily and Brandi sight unseen. He had a home for them on organic dairy farms in New York and Indiana.
“Everything came together really fast,” Emily said.
“We were thinking that if we could have made it another two years, to get our debt down to a more manageable level, it would have been easier for me to transition to a new job. But we are just going to have to wing it,” she said.
Brandi will continue in her administrative job at Blackhawk Technical College in Monroe. She and Emily plan to keep their 92-acre farm, where they also live, and raise some crops for other farmers.
“It’s going to be really tight for a while … but we were not taking on more debt,” Emily said.
They also may raise “family cows” for people who want a cow or two for their own milk.
“We’re basically selling them pets,” Emily said.
They’ll keep a few cows of their own — for milk, butter and yogurt and to keep the barn at least partially occupied.
Their Jerseys have been bred to produce what’s called A2 milk, which doesn’t have a beta-casein protein that some say makes conventional milk less digestible, almost intolerable, for a large number of people.
A2 milk has grown in popularity, but it’s unlikely that Emily and Brandi will return to dairy farming full time. Once their dairy operation license lapses, it would be hard to requalify unless they spent a lot of money on upgrading their milking equipment.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s worth it,” Emily said.
Read more about Brandi and Emily and their decision.
— By Rick Barrett
She showed the kids what it was like to milk a cow by hand, using a glove filled with water . She also had the class make butter.
The highlight was Peter Thewis bringing a small male calf named Ironman to interact the kids.
— By Mark Hoffman
Winning bids came from as far away as Colorado.
— By Mark Hoffman
“They see how things are born, how they live, how they die, how things are made. They see Peter and me work together,” said their mom, Kendra Thewis, who farms along with her husband and her father-in-law, Mike.
They have a work ethic formed through chores and helping tend the family’s cow herd.
“I think they (farm kids) just have a better work ethic,” said Kendra, who also grew up on farm. “Their work ethic is better than a lot of adults because they know what it’s like to feed something all the time. Chores have to be done before you can go somewhere.”
Even at the age of 7, Starr is starting to assume some responsibilities.
“I have to feed the calves. It’s hard work and I don’t like doing it sometimes,” she said with a smile.
Kendra, who grew up on a farm near Almond, in Portage County, used to watch her parents do chores from a playpen in the barn. That’s common on farms, she said. Farmers who might not have easy access to child care or don’t have grandma or grandpa available to watch the kids just take their kids with them into the barn while they do chores.
And for some, that’s just how they want it.
“I never wanted to live in town … ever!” she said. “I just don’t like the small little spaces.”
— By Mark Hoffman
Two members from Dairy Farmers of Ontario came to Wisconsin in March of 2018 and explained their supply management system to us by way of five very well-attended meetings held throughout the state.
Most who attended left with a new sense of hope and firsthand knowledge of how to move forward, even though we also knew that supply management has been an unpopular idea for decades in the U.S.
Dairy farms have become more efficient at adapting new technology and producing more product, which is why a supply management system of some sort is more important than ever.
A whole book could be written to explain how milk is priced and farmers are paid, but essentially the current system is constantly pushing each farm to produce as much milk as possible from that farm, which in times of surplus pushes the price lower. Then you are back looking for ways to produce more milk to replace the lost income — and as soon as milk prices come up, everyone wants to produce more milk to capture the higher prices.
We are always on this treadmill going nowhere. We only want long term, sustainable solutions. The taxpayer-funded “bailouts” do little for the average family farmer and only draw more distance between farmers and consumers. In my opinion, a properly managed system would make these unnecessary. In the last couple of years, farmers have been paid about the same as farmers were getting paid in the mid ’80s! Have you checked the price of farm equipment or supplies lately? They are definitely not 1980s-priced. Dairy farms are huge economic drivers, when we have money we like to spend it on equipment upgrades, facility maintenance, supplies etc. Our local economies are far better off having many farms, rather than just a handful of large scale farms scattered throughout the state.
Bottom line is that a properly designed supply management system would benefit more than just farmers, and since we currently don’t have one it could essentially be “built” how it will work for the US. Beginning in late March, the Dairy Together movement will be hitting the road and traveling around the country with the goal of sharing information and ideas and engage farmers and policymakers in community conversations. More information at www.dairytogether.com.
— By Jim Briggs
Emily says cows weren’t alone in feeling the effects of winter.
“Every time it snows it creates more work, shoveling doors and bunks, more fuel in the skid loader to clear the driveway for the milkman.”
Like many farmers, she feels her place needs some cleaning and tender loving care to bring it back to normal.
“This has been a winter if just being happy everyone gets milked, food and water every day,” says Emily.
— By Mark Hoffman
But they’re still kids. So a trip to a water park is a special thing, a time to join their parents away from a milking parlor, to splash and play.
Last weekend the Thewis family took time between the morning and afternoon milkings to visit a waterpark 30 minutes from their farm for a few hours. Before the waterpark, the family stopped by the local implement dealer for a free lunch.
When your herd needs to be milked twice a day, it’s difficult to get away. They have been able to go on two-night camping trips in the past when a neighbor will do their milking for them and then they will repay the favor.
— By Mark Hoffman
The little calf was a Jersey, and she stood among a crowd of more than 50 other full grown versions of herself. Owning a Jersey herd sets the Briggs Family Farm apart from most farms. Holsteins, the familiar black and white cows, are the most common of the dairy breeds.
When Jim and Jenny Briggs purchased their farm in late 2014, they chose to buy Jersey dairy cattle for both sentimental and practical reasons.
Jim Briggs is a third-generation dairy farmer, and both his grandfather and father owned and milked herds of Jerseys on their family farm located about 25 miles southwest of Boston. Jersey cattle tend not to produce as much milk as their larger Holstein cousins, but the concentration of butterfat and protein in their milk is much higher.
That higher quality of milk was important to the Boston-area farm, because the Briggs pasteurized and sold their milk directly to consumers.
“If you drank that milk,” Jim Briggs said, “you would never want to drink store-bought milk again. I’m convinced that’s part of the reason why people are drinking less milk than in the past. Today’s milk just doesn’t taste as good.”
Jim Briggs had other reasons why he wanted Jerseys on his and Jenny’s town of Frankfort farm. Jerseys are smaller, so they are easier to handle in the barn. An average Jersey weighs 1,000 pounds; Holsteins average 1,400 pounds. Jerseys also have nice, curious personalities, Jim Briggs said, and tend to be healthier than other breeds.
The Briggs Family Farm is struggling for survival, and being a farmer is stressful. But the animals are a big reason why Jim and Jenny were willing to take financial risks to start up their dairy, and why they work so hard to keep the business afloat. They love the animals.
“They’re our lifestyle. They are our income, so it’s in our best interests to take care of them,” Jim Briggs said. “We know every cow, their names, their personalities. … They are essentially an extension of the family, more or less. You’re around them seven days a week. It’s hard not to (love them).”
The winter hasn’t been ideal. A combination of frequent snowstorms and frigid temperatures have made life more difficult for Horn-Leiterman and anyone else who frequently spends time outside on a farm. Horn-Leiterman spends her mornings feeding calves — a job that requires her to spend time outside, which can be especially trying on bitterly cold mornings.
“You’re ready to throw your hands up in the air and go back to bed,” she said. “But that’s obviously not possible in this line of work.”
Despite the harsh winter weather, the dairy is forging ahead toward planting, a crucial step that ensures the cows have enough to eat.
“We are stuck in this cold weather trying to keep everything rocking,” she said.
Source: jsonline.com
