Starting a small dairy -- questions!
 

If you were starting a small (10-20 cow) dairy from scratch, how would you lay out and set up your operation? (Milking in stanchions.)

What equipment would you want/need right off the bat; what could you do without or pick up as needed as time went on?

Now that I own five cows :eek: I'm seriously thinking of going this route ... hubby and I are undecided as to whether to build on here, or buy land elsewhere and start from scratch.

All suggestions are welcome and very much appreciated! :)

How long have you been working at the dairy you work at? Keep working there and I suspect that your questions will be answered as you gain experience. It will also give you some income during the learning curve (when you make big mistakes that cost lots of money :))

I think it is usually much cheaper to find existing facilities than building new. That might not be true of equipment, but it is for barns and fences.

Jena

[QUOTE=willow_girl]If you were starting a small (10-20 cow) dairy from scratch, how would you lay out and set up your operation? (Milking in stanchions.)

What equipment would you want/need right off the bat; what could you do without or pick up as needed as time went on?

I think it depends on what you intend to do with the milk; on farm proccessing, bulk pickup,raw milk sales,etc. Your states milk handling regulations should give you an idea on needs. Tom

Jena, I've been working there just under a year, but it's a bigger operation, milking in a parlor, although you're right, I have learned a lot (basically, everything I know about the business, which still isn't much! :haha: ) and yes, I intend to keep working there.

I have checked a bit into what the regs are here. I know I'll need to add a milkhouse and maybe an additional barn to house the cattle, if I convert what is presently my cowshed into stanchions for milking. This is basically part of a pole barn with a cement floor.

I already have stanchions, Surge milkers sans the rubber, and a vacuum pump that needs a 1 hp motor to power it. I know I'll need a bulk tank, a big sink for washing up and a small inspector's sink (have that already) for the milkhouse.

Someone told me that my well pump needs to be above-ground (they were required to switch their when they switched to being a Grade A dairy) but my husband says other farms around here have submersible pumps? :confused:

My biggest fear about building here is that we don't have a lot of land to begin with, it's already crowded with outbuildings, trees that I don't want to cut down (i.e. fruit trees), garden, greenhouse, etc.!

Eventually, if I wanted to grow the size of my operations, I'd be forced to start over elsewhere. So I don't know whether it would be better just to start from scratch ...

There is 20 undeveloped acres for sale nearby that hubby and I have had our eyes on for over a year now. We would have to finance it, of course, as well as the buildings, and I don't know if I could stay as small as I'd to (at least to start out) while being able to pay the overhead.

I suspect there also are some small dairies that are no longer in operation, and it might be possible to rent facilities (the farmer I work for is doing this, actually). Again, I don't know how big I'd have to be to cover the cost.

Lots of decisions!

Debt has it's time and place, but....

going into heavy debt to start a business that you are new at is not a good idea. It's much easier to survive the learning curve on a small scale and without a large debt looming over you.

Trust me...I know this one.

Use what you have until the business forces you to expand...don't expand to force the business. You'll have a hard time catching up.

Renting sounds like an excellent idea until your business forces you to buy.

Jena

Thanks Jena! :)

Hubby also is strongly in favor of keeping our operations here, and buying that other property for cropland, if at all!

Realistically, I should probably get rid of some of my goats and sheep (which would free up the barn for calf pens) but ... I really like my goats and sheep!

I want it all, damnit! WAHHHHH! :waa: :haha:

Every time that I get it in my head that I want to start a new project; money making or otherwise I’m reminded of a story I once heard.

It seems that there was this fellow in a New England community who just couldn’t hold a job, or couldn’t do a job without messing something up for his employer. Now, being it was New England where folks like to take care of their own, the town folk pulled together and put him to work polishing the town Revolutionary War cannon, they found him a room in the back of the hardware store, arranged for his meals at the town restaurant, and paid him a small amount of money each month as a salary to keep the cannon in good shape. He had a place to live, food to eat, work to do, and money in his pocket; they figured he’d be happy and out of everyone’s way.

Well, as the months went by and he didn’t spend any of his salary, and then one day he bought a train ticket out of town. The good town folk figured they were shed of him and then a few days later when the train rolled into town, there he was and in the process of unloading a very large wooden crate from the train.

The whole town gathered in to see what he had bought with his “hard earned” salary. As he began to pull the boards from the crate it became clear that he had bought a cannon of his own. The town selectmen asked what he intended to do with the cannon and he replied, “After seeing what it was worth to the town to have their cannon polished, I went and bought one of my own and intend to go into business for myself.”

Ohhhhhh Haggis! That's a cautionary tale, alright! :haha:

Hmm, too bad I already have three cannon, err I mean cows, here! :haha:

Willow, definitely check out grass-based seasonal dairying. Don't get hung up on conventional systems. If I were going to start out with a small herd, this is the way I'd go - grass and Jersey cattle. Low input is the name of the game! Why buy lots of tractors and equipment when the cows can do most of the harvesting for you? Electric polywire is a whole lot cheaper than hay equipment, corn planters, silage choppers, etc. If there wasn't already a parlor on the property, I'd go with a flat barn- basically tie stalls and a short pipeline- a parlor without a pit. Don't you live where the weather is relatively mild? If so, then your cows may not need much shelter, either. There are ways to get into dairying without getting in debt up to your ears. 20-30 cows and little debt would probably yield you a decent paycheck, not so sure ten is worth the effort. Another thing to check into is the milk hauler's stop charge and if they will even consider a very small dairy.

Thanks Shakey! :)

Nope, I'm in Michigan, and it's colder than a titch's wit here in January! ;)

We don't have much in the way of pasture, but we have a kind neighbor who trades us hay in exchange for help in putting his up. My husband also makes repairs to his equipment in exchange for hay.

I do like the idea of less intensive feeding, even if it means less output ... I believe it is kinder to the cows all the way around. I think those high-nutrient diets burn them out too quick, and the increased acidity of the manure and urine rots their feet. :(

My girls get good grass hay, and a bucket of 16% protein grain at milking time. (The drawback to this program is that as soon as they see me, they start bellering, thinking it's milking/feeding time! :o )

I do love my Jersey, and I'm even thinking of breeding my Holsteins to Jersey bulls!

If I keep my operation small, I don't think I'll need a pit ... we just bought a manure spreader, I know that's how some of the small Amish dairies eliminate "emissions"!

Right now all the manure goes right back into my gardens, and I'm sure my neighbors would let me spread their fields, too. (The neighbor with the hay was getting spraying manure from the pig farm up the road before it closed up. Boy did that make some beautiful hay!)

I think I'd be able to get the milk hauler to pick up; we live in dairy country with numerous farms in the area (a big one just a mile up the road). There also is a small homestead nearby where the folks have been milking about a dozen cows for more than 20 years. I am trying to work up the courage to go talk to them and get some pointers! :)

A lot of the research of the seasonal stuff comes out of Wisconsin- they have an extensive list of Cooperative Extension bulletins, including subjects like starting a small scale dairy. They have an excellent one called "Pastures for Profit" that is worth the 3 bucks of so that it costs. Check out Michigan's C.E. as well and also Cornell University Publications. All are cold states and you might dig up some interesting info.

Get a subscription to Stockman Grass Farmer magazine. It usually has an article or two on small-scale dairying. 800-748-0908. Listen to Shakeytails.

Ken Scharabok

Believe me, if I had pasture, I'd go that route! In fact, one of the advantages to buying that other piece of land would be the fact I'd have a 20-acre hayfield to divvy up however. :)

Thanks for the suggestion about the Extension, come to think of it I believe our county office (or it could be the next county over) has a dairy specialist on board. (There are dozens of dairies in our area.) Maybe I can get the dude out to our place to give me some advice!

Keep the suggestions coming; I am pasting them into a Wordpad document so I can save them on my computer long after this thread ends up on page 47! :)

A cautionary note about renting another farm. In practice, I never saw an operation that was well run when it was not located where the farmer's home was. There are so many things that need constant checking on - cows calving, milk fever, mastitis, power outages, frozen pipes.... There's a lot of enthusiasm at first, but it's hard to keep following up on all the little things that need doing when it keeps you away from home at all hours.

That's a good point, Mary! The farmer I work for now is renting ... I have seen ways in which it is detrimental ... I could never go home at night and leave a cow in labor, not knowing whether she made it thru OK or not. :(

And in the winter, we lose a lot of calves born at night when it's cold ... so many mornings I'd come in and end up wrapping them in my flannel shirts and burying them in straw to try to warm them up! Sometimes they pulled through, but it's certainly not the way to get them off to a good start ...

Also, I like having my girls around ... except the drawback to only giving them grain at milking time is whenever they see me out in the yard, they start bellering at me! (The sheep do the same thing!) Eat Eat Eat ... there isn't a skinny critter on this place! :haha:

You may want to talk to the state dairy inspector and get suggestions on how to bring your barn up to standard since he would be the one who has to approve it before you can sell your milk.
Also, don't be afraid to talk to the homestead folks. I'm sure they have a lot of wisdom to pass on to you.

Another way to go, if you don't have much land, is to establish a "hay and grain" herd. I knew of one farm where they only had maybe 10 acres and a about 60 cows(can't remember). It was a tie stall barn and about the only equipment they had was a tractor and spreader. All feed was purchased, no silage- just hay and grain. On this particular farm the cows never saw the light of day, there was no turnout at all :( . Does the place you work do DHI testing? You might talk to the DHI dude and mention your ideas. He may be able to direct you to different types of small-scale dairy operations in your area and give you his thoughts on production vs feeding systems.

10 acres with 60 milk cows on it your going to have a big stinky mud hole !!!!!!!!

Umm, coso....It's a total confinement herd, as in- they were never out of the barn. No big stinky mud hole, in fact, you couldn't tell by looking that it was a dairy farm.

Gotcha, Shakey tail. When you posted that I thought it almost had to be a confinement type operation. Sorry if I came off snippy. edit Reread the post above "It is a total confinement operation" Sorry my Bad !

Hmmm, well not if the cows are kept on concrete, I guess. Not much of a life for them though, eh? :no:

Yes, the place where I work does DHIA testing, but my boss always works on testing day, probably because quite a few of our cows aren't tagged, and only he knows the numbers assigned to them.

I guess we already have a hay-and-grain operation. I bought a gravity wagon awhile back; I get a custom blended 16 percent protein ration that we feed to everything (although the horses get grain mostly as a treat, except for the really old ones who need a little more intensive nutrition, especially in the winter!).

What is a tie stall? Would that be something equivalent to a box stall for horses? I hate to confine anything ... right now my girls have a small grassy pasture, not really big enough for grazing, but it gets them out in the sunshine, and the back half of a pole barn to sleep in (they can come and go as they please). It has a concrete floor, but I bed it with old carpeting and straw or spoiled hay. I muck it out daily and give them fresh bedding, and take a wheelbarrow around their pasture about once a week. They seem pretty content, although they would always like more grain, of course! ;)

My husband says on the farm he worked at as a teenager, the cows were kept in stanchions when they weren't turned out ... seems like that would be hard on their feet, though, if they were on a concrete floor? :confused:

Willow, a tie stall is pretty much the same as a stanchion, only rather than having their heads clamped in stanchions, the cows wear collars and are snapped in place with a chain long enough for them to stand up and lie down comfortably. Usually there is some type of divider between the cows, pipe is probably most common, though I've seen wood in older barns.

I didn't think you'd much like the total confinement idea. I don't think it's a very nice way to treat livestock, either. I just thought I'd mention it to show what can be done.

Thanks for filling me in on what that is, Shakey!

I didn't grow up in farming country, so really all I know is how things are done at the place where I work, which is much bigger than I want to be, so a lot is not really applicable. :(

If I took the goat pens out of my barn :( I'd have room for about 10 freestalls and a big calf pen (already existing).

That would probably make more sense than trying to jam another barn into the equation, but ... I luv my goats! :waa:

Green chop is where forage is cut on a daily (sometimes more often than that) basis and brought to the herd. On a small scale it might be done with a riding lawnmower and pull behind catcher.

Is there any way to not be a little fish in a big pond? Is there a way for you to direct market your production through perhaps cheese with the whey being used to raise hogs on the side? Even if you can sell to a cheese plant it would make you a Class B dairy with far less regulations.

You might consider milking sheep instead. Really. Here their milk is usually frozen for shipment to a processing plant via overnight delivery. Milking is seasonal and you get wool and lambs besides. WI and MN are the leading sheep milking states I believe (with VT in there also). Not far from MI.

Ken Scharabok

As far as I know, the last Grade B plant (cheese, Clare) in our area went out of business a few years ago, and dairies all had to switch to A or fold. :(

The sheep idea is pretty interesting; I do have 1 ewe and she has quite a bag! :D

Was doing s'more thinking this morning, and it occurred to me that my neighbor has a barn on about 5 fenced acres just up the road from me that isn't being used. He does use the corrall and chute to run his beef cattle through to preg-check and sort for market in the fall. He stores hay in the barn, but wants to build a bigger barn further up the road. When he does, I wonder if he'd rent the old barn to me?! I'm guessing it may have been used for milk cows long ago ... it even has an old silo (probably not sealed, though). I might have to add on a milkhouse, but the cost would be minimal. I know there's a well over there already, because there's a stock tank.

The location certainly is great ... I could use my existing cow pen/shed for calves, which it would be perfect for!

I may go snoop around over there today and see what it looks like before I say anything to him and his wife. :)