Thirty years ago, Nate Dickinson sold all his dairy cows under a federal dairy herd buyout program.
On June 29, more than 600 people are expected to visit his family’s Ideal Dairy in Kingsbury where the farm will show off its 1,350 cows during the National Holstein Convention.
Ideal Dairy is one of five farms convention attendees will tour that day in Washington and Saratoga counties.
“The biggest thing we’ll try to showcase that day is our genetics,” said Crystal Grimaldi, a sixth-generation member of the family run business. “My mom, Denise Dickinson, and cousin, Luke Getty, work very hard to make cows the best they can be with genomics and herd health practices. That’s going to be what we focus on that day.”
Ideal Dairy’s comeback story began in 1992. After selling his dairy cows, Nate Dickinson turned to beef cattle. At one point he had up to 1,100 animals and was still crop farming.
Meanwhile, his son and daughter-in-law, John and Denise Dickinson, had a smaller dairy farm, which they started in 1981, six miles away with 80 registered Holsteins.
“In 1981, there were double-digit interest rates,” Denise Dickinson said. “We were just trying to make ends meet but kept growing and growing. By 1992, we were using a lot of Ideal Dairy’s land to feed our animals because by then we were milking 250 cows. We just decided that if we were going to be a dairy of the future, we needed to grow. We decided to expand and come back here.”
They remodeled the milking parlor, bought 80 heifers and a registered herd of 40 Holsteins. Growth has been steady ever since.
The most recent big step was a 2013 merger with nearby Main-Drag Holsteins when Luke Getty, John and Denise Dickinson’s nephew, joined the business after getting out of college. Luke Getty’s brother, Kyle, is the farm’s chief financial officer.
“It really is a team effort,” Grimaldi said. “We really work with our employees to get them to value being part of the team as well. Something we really focus on is getting everybody to bring their strengths to the table and work together toward a common goal.”
Ideal Dairy’s milk goes to Dairy Farmers of America, and cows produce an average 90-95 pounds of milk per day.
Grimaldi grew up on her parent’s farm, but became a teacher because she really wasn’t interested in animals or crops. But as Ideal Dairy grew, Grimaldi found her own niche on the farm.
“It’s gotten so big and so varied that you can do almost anything and find a way to apply to it dairy,” she said. “I like human resources and trying to educate the consumer. That’s where I found my strengths, also organizing the office and keeping the books.
“Plus, the biggest thing for me is I really saw a great opportunity for my son (Aiden, 4) to be raised the same way I was with the same values,” she added. “That was really important to me.”
Her husband, Richard, is a sheriff’s deputy. However, spouses have quickly learned that it’s “all hands on deck” when something really needs to get done on the farm.
Grimaldi said Holstein Convention visitors will be surprised at Ideal Dairy’s location, only a mile from the village of Hudson Falls and five miles from Glens Falls, a city of nearly 15,000 people.
Despite ongoing development, the farm includes 3,100 acres — half owned and half rented — in Washington and Warren counties.
“We’re really pretty lucky with availability of land,” she said. “Families are holding onto old farms. We rent a lot of those places. But it does put you in a little bit of a vulnerable position because as land changes hands, sometimes you may not have the opportunity to get it from the next generation.”
The farm’s proximity to local communities presents both challenges and opportunities.
“People pass by our farm every day but still really don’t know what we do,” she said. “So we’re trying to work at getting better awareness. We haven’t gotten too much into school group tours. We’d definitely like to do more. We do a lot of Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups.”
The busloads expected during Holstein Convention are the most people the farm will host in a single day. Guests will see a large new barn addition under construction. Plans call for a new milking center in 2018 with two more free-stall barns, too.
One of the biggest infrastructure improvements was done in 2010 when Ideal Dairy installed new manure handling equipment to comply with concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFO, rules.
“Traffic on our road pushed us to find other ways to manage our nutrient management system,” she said. “We do a lot of drag-line use to get manure moved and nutrients on the fields without putting our trucks on the road.”
Manure can be moved up to a mile using drag lines and the farm has three remote manure storage locations. Ideal Dairy’s Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan has allowed it to move from daily spreading to timed applications.
“We plan to continue expanding our herd to increase our efficiency, maintain balance and create space for future generations,” she said.
The farm’s work with genetics plays a major role in making this possible. Specifically, Ideal Dairy is home to a separate but related venture called Cookiecutter Holsteins, launched in 2004, which is now a partnership between Denise Dickinson, and Luke and Kyle Getty.
Through Ideal Dairy leasing recipient dams to Cookiecutter, ET and IVF work has been used extensively.
The farm’s website says Cookiecutter began “with the purchase of MS KNGS-RNSM CHAMP HALEY, a champion going back to the Dellia family, as a 6-month-old heifer for $4,700. A flush to Goldwyn while Haley was a virgin heifer, resulting in eight full sisters, has perpetuated the family through varying branches and currently over 200 animals carry the Cookiecutter prefix, all descending back to Haley.”
“The Holstein Convention gives us an opportunity to showcase and market our genetics,” Grimaldi said. “It also provides a network of people sharing a common goal of making the Holstein cow the best that she can be.”
Source: Lancaster Farming
