When we talked about starting our own dairy farm we never
imagined milking 400 cows. We currently
milk 60 cows and that is definitely enough to keep my farmer and I
busy. I enjoy visiting bigger dairy farms
and learning how they operate, but it just isn’t for me. A lot of farms around us milk more than we do
so the question of whether or not we will grow seems to come up. With the trend being to grow I wonder, can a small farm exist? I want to believe they can, that they also have a place in this business. And for anyone who wants to know why I'm just not on the bandwagon to expand here are a handful of my reasons:
Our barn. Our barn has 63 free stalls and narrow alleys
so it comfortably holds 55 cows. Cow
comfort is an important part of good milk production and happy animals; our
cows don’t excel when we have more than 65 head in there. In the summer we do let the cows out onto a
small pasture which helps but in the winter months we don’t have that
option. To expand our herd we would need
to build an addition to the barn or (more preferably) build a new, more up to
date barn. At this time building a free
stall barn is not a possibility.
We are only 1 family. Many farms are still family owned, even if
they milk a large number. As the farm
continues through generations there are more family members involved and the
need to support those families grows. My
husband and I started our own dairy farm so at this time we only need to
support one family of 5. Also, I have
three little kiddos who are young and need us a lot. As our herd grows the labor involved to run
the operation grows and I would rather spend more time in the house with my kiddos than in the barn playing in cow poop.
Yes, I could hire a few employees to help with the workload but I'm not ready to go there.
Available land. The area in which our farm is located is
populated by other dairy farmers, beef farmers and cash croppers. As our herd increases we struggle to find
more land so we can feed the animals. We
could grow and just purchase the feed we are unable to grow ourselves but that is an
expense that needs to be considered as well.
We are young. We started our farm when we were 23 & 24 and jumped in with both feet. It seems crazy
to think that we could sell out and do something different but the option needs to
be there. I want to keep the farm small
so that if one of us decided to try a new career or if we chose to stop milking cows it
would be easy for someone to manage and grow as they desired.
I am tired of
growing. For almost eight years we
have been building and growing this business and at some timed it has felt
like we were sliding backwards. Our herd
grew from 6 cows to a total count of over 160.
We have converted an old barn into a milking facility, then started over building a new parlor & milk house, we have built a house &
pole barn, and we have built a cow barn.
We went from a newly married couple to a family of five in just 6
years which is full of exhaustion! I am tired of growing and expanding
and to be honest I just want a break.
If there is a farm that milks a few cows or a lot of cows
they all have their own struggles and accomplishments, heartbreaks and road
blocks. For us, for now; being a small farm that operates efficiently is the goal.
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