Can a new small dairy work?

[francismilker]

I was visiting with a lady the other day on a Milking Shorthorn dairy that commented on rising milk prices. She said that after the price of the milk there are add-ons for fat and protein content. At the present time, she is getting over $20 per hundred weight. While I only wish I could own a commercial milking herd, I still continue to hear of smaller, non-corporate farms folding up and calling it quits.

I can't help but think a person could make it work starting out. What's the opinion of this board? Could a person effectively start out with say, 40 cows and would they pay the HUGE expense of building a new farm. In Oklahoma, the water resources board and the EPA have gotten so involved with new farm construction, I'd be under the same strenuous building guidelines as a 10,000 head corporate farm.

I visited with an Amish dairyman last month that was able to build his facilities exclusively by himself (with the exception of digging the manure lagoon) and still had close to $100,000 in getting started. How can that be?
As a side note, the dairywoman that told me about fair milk prices accreditted it to the drought in Australia. (She said Australia had been the number one milk importer to China.) She said China was buying up all the milk that it could get it's hands on for their school lunch program. It appears their kids have only been intaking 1/3 of the milk volume that they would like them to have.

I know I'm rambling, but give me you thoughts on taking the plunge into the small business that still has 24/7/365 demands! Can it work?

[jerzeygurl]

local dairy ( 45 min from here) got tired of how little they got per hundred wieght and started doing start to finish

milking pasturizing bottling, they even use glass reusable bottles and rewash them.

they produce the milk with flavors and plain( root beer i think is thier most popular) and they do it hormone free. they also give tours which helps on the money end as well.

[Cat]

I actually think it depends on the area in which you live and your ability to 'sell' and 'market' your product. Ok...let's stop here by saying I'm talking raw, unpasteurized milk. I don't think a small-time farmer can compete with a corporation doing business their way. I think a cow-share program where individuals can buy a share of a cow for a certain fee & then pay monthly maintenance fees would work very well in certain environments and you could sell raw milk directly off farm for any who don't want to go the cow-share route. Grass fed dairy cattle raised as naturally as possible with an eye on the health and well-being of the cow rather than output would be a great marketing tool I believe. I have seen raw cows milk selling for $8 gallon off the farm on some of the websites I've visited recently in my search for a good milk cow. That'd make me happy.

[sammyd]

Unless you have the majority of stuff paid off I don't think it can be done.
Milk prices have been up and down and may look good at 20/hdwt but when you hit a dip and you're looking at 10 or even 9, life ain't so pretty.

Sweat equity is a must if you're starting new. If your Amish guy had 100,000 in it and did the work himself what would it cost to have it all done.

There are cheap and effective ways to dairy. Loose housing and a flat barn parlor was always one I liked. The cows went through the flat barn when they were done milking, didn't need to wait for a whole side to finish before switching out.
Open parlor New Zealand swingovers were popular for a while, but I haven't heard much about them lately, problem with swingovers is you wait for a cow to finish before you can use that milker on the other side.
Building a traditional 2 story barn with stalls wouldn't be my first choice. Very pricey, limited in the number of cows (unless you want the circus of changing out after each batch of 40.
Some sort of parlor adds flexibilty and if your base is 40 cows it doesn't have to be a huge setup. And loose housing can be cheap.

You can pick up used pipelines and vac pumps around which will work fine in a parlor.


With a 40 cow base do you need a lagoon?
How much land are you talking?
Rotational grazing cuts down on capital required for machinery, but ups your labor costs. A tradeoff I'd opt for if starting fresh.
Can you resist the John Deere salesmans pitch and deal with older equipment? Do you have the knowledge and ability to make your own repairs?
Would your family support your decision?

[Shirley]

Have you checked to see if the ag dept might have a program for helping farmers financially set up a dairy? Just a thought.
If a dairy is something you are passionate about then go for it. Too bad you can't find a small dairy already set up in operation and for sale.

[Up North]

There are many family size dairy farms sitting vacant or for sale. If you can find the right facility, it can be more economical to buy or rent an existing dairy facility rather than building new.
If you are willing to lower your standard of living enough, and replace recreation with work, yes, a small dairy farm can be viable.
PS, wise to base all business plans on $13.50-$14 average milk price. Then, if price is higher for a brief time, it will be a pleasant surprise, LOL.

[sammyd]

I pencil at 10, but not an optimist when it comes to milk prices.
May be why I'm not in it anymore....

[Ken Scharabok]

I suspect many small family dairies are going out of business due to a changing of the generations. Likely kids today aren't willing to do the 14/365 routine with milking twice a day, every day, with all of the other chores in-between.

Hiring reliable help - pretty well forget it.

[sammyd]

There's an idea. Check around and see if anyone is wanting to get out and would be willing to let you work in.
Opportunities are getting rarer but I still see them from time to time around here in the ag papers.

[Sunraven]

I think small dairies can make it. Sammyd has some good suggestions, if you're going to build you really don't need anything fancy for forty cows. I would build a loafing barn with a parlor on one end- even a single side three parlor like Grandpa has is a pretty decent setup for forty cows, the parlor stalls are individual arranged in a row with feeders so you can let each cow in and out separately and don't have to wait on a group to finish. You can find used milking equipment pretty easy.

But like Ken said, a lot of family farms aren't quiting because they can't compete with the big farms- they're quiting because the kids don't want to milk. I see that all the time around here. If you could find the right person you could work for them while paying toward the farm and cows. Good workers are hard to come by anyway, all dairies I've visited I've always been told that. I'm pretty confident I could find a job anywhere in the country on a dairy in a short amount of time. I was in Oklahoma a few weeks ago and stopped in a 200 cow dairy in Perkins, the man who runs it said he'd be tickled to hire someone who spoke English but you couldn't find anyone in that area willing to work on a dairy. That was a family farm, two brothers and their parents owned it, the one brother ran it, but their workers were Mexican.

[Ken Scharabok]

Go to the consolidated sticky list at the top of the topic list. One is on a organic dairy in VT which takes on apprentices for one season. They only milk from about March to November. Totally pasture fed (no purchased feed). All of the milk is made into cheese which they sell at a high-end farmers' market in NYC as I recall. They also have an on-the-farm bakery which makes products to sell at the same market.

A couple of years ago I visited a dairy in Western TN which had closed down. At one time they milked 100 head as I recall. 50/50 Holstein/Jersey. Their milking parlor was a long, narrow building. One end had the bulk tank. Other had a pit with elevated ramps on both sides. Could milk four cows at a time. As I recall they tried to put in a fast milker then a slow milker. Feed was dropped through the ceiling into a swing-out trough. As the first cow finished, the second was moved forward and a slow one brought in. Then slow/fast cycle again.

Closed more than anything else because they couldn't hire decent help. Guy said if they put a wanted ad in the paper, including free housing, every piece of white trash in four counties called. Average stay was a couple of weeks before they decided the work (not much more than milking one shift) was just too hard.

Back in the haydays of milking in WI I doubt any of the family dairies could have made it solely on the milk. Almost all raised feeder pigs (referred to as mortgage lifters as they helped pay the bills between milk checks). On the one my family had in Slinger I recall they raised sugar beets, feeder pigs, lambs and broilers. At that time as I recall most were passed on to another generation. Today like it is sold to a developer to provide retirement funds.

I suspect they typical family dairy farm is like the typical family business. They seldom survive three generations. The first builds it up, the second turns it into a solid business, the third runs it into the ground or cannot adapt to changing market conditions.

As noted plan on the average milk price, not a high one, and try to find a way to direct retail at least a significant portion of your output.

[Teacupliz]

I am looking to ship milk from 8 cows-
Not easy no big money maker but what I want to do-

Liz in NY

[Ken Scharabok]

Keep in mind a lot of work can be done with small equipment. For example, many accessories are becoming available for ATVs, such as pasture drags. With a riding mower and grass catching trailer it would be feasible to essentially green chop with bring the cut foliage back to the livestock, kept in a holding pasture, for a small herd. Beauty of this is they eat everything, not pick and choosing what they want.

[vickiesmom]

Please excuse me if I sound dumb! I don't have cows nor am I a farmer...but could a small dairy farm make it, if they contracted with a cheese maker..etc? It seems like on such a small scale they would have to focus who they are selling to, or am I wrong.

[Teacupliz]

Yes, Vicki you can make more sell to cheese or public, I have been selling raw milk to people- the goats milk is selling well but cow a bit slow. there are day i am tired of some people- So less money but selling to a co-op is what I am turning to. I have the cows and milk anyhow. I am using equipment I already have more labor intence but we will see hwo it goes- Liz

[francismilker]

The problem for me is getting licensed. In Oklahoma, I'm under the same licensing requirements to be grade "A" licensed as the big boys. There is no such thing anymore as using portable milkers and small vacuum pumps. (Unless you're Amish and I don't have a long black beard!) I have to have a pipeline setup and meet all the proper DEQ standards just like a 500 head dairy. Here, it doesn't matter if you're milking 5 or 5000, a lagoon must be permitted, regulated, and inspected by the DEQ. If I had the lagoon and a used pipeline setup, I could get my parlor and milk room certified without much hassle. I would however have to be very dependant on the feed mill as my 80 acres don't produce enough grass to feed 20 on a grass-based operation. (much less 40)
I'm still kicking the idea around. But, the key phrase mentioned above is family support. While my kids would be more than willing to help while they are still young and living at home, my dear wife is a born and raised "city-slicker"! She'll take her Data-Analyst Accountant job anyday over cow dung! She doesn't get too upset when me and the kids accidentally track some green stuff in the mud room at the back of the house. But, don't ask her to get that "nasty-smellin" stuff on her. She would support the financial decisions I make to get in to dairying, but she's not going to quit her day job.
I can't say that I blame her for it. You couldn't pay me a million dollars a year to do what she does. It all depends on where a persons passion is. And mine's out at the barn. I've been teasing her and telling her for some time that when she gets 40 with this attitude, I'm going to trade her in on two 20's. She just smiles and says that I'm not wired for 220!
Thanks for all your insight.

[JulieLou42]

As someone famous once said, "Follow your bliss." But I have to do that with nothing but negative inputs from DH, and that ain't easy. Even tho' he likes the milk...not butter or cheese or yogurt, he still would rather I get rid of the cow. He grew up in suburbia for his first fifty years!!!

I'm selling what we can't use through cowshares. Our market for raw cow's milk has been taken by goat milk, tho' it's been shown to be no better nutritionally for humans than cow's, tho' they say more easily digested. Maybe it's all in the propaganda that comes your way. Of course store milk might make some folks ill...it's not the full magilla...it's practically dead food! Any milk heated past 118 degrees loses its full complement of vitamins, minerals, and live enzymes.

I would really like to have a small-scale raw milk dairy with about 5-6 cows and provide milk locally, but I'd need lotsa help getting that up 'n' going, what with the anti-milk bias that's out there, some due to sanitation problems in the industrialized dairy world giving all milk a bad rap.

It's not about making money, but to re-educate people to the values of unadulterated cow's milk from pastured cows. If we don't make the effort to do this, the knowledge of the good health it contains will be lost to our succeeding generations. We have to make a stand. Without good, red meat and the milk those meat-makers have provided for THIS nation, it never would have survived at all. We must have nutritious food to feed our various workforces...that's basic to any economy...just ask the person in charge of supplying the military's food.

[Teacupliz]

With selling raw milk to the public the only way NYS allows it took tons of rules to wade threw- the goats milk sells well as people are just happy to find it, where there is a cow under ground sale market and the cow raw milk drinkers are picky asking tons of questions and drive me crazy-- that is why I am trying to ship- It is easier in NY then for Francismiker- we do not have to be fancey or have pipelines-
My husband works full time to pay the bills at this point. After 10 years of me goat farming and 4-h he is gettting into the whole deal of farming. I just added 5 springing heifers- what a job getting them loaded and home.. and we made out own hay this year- We cut others fields as we only have 22 acres.

teacupliz

[haypoint]

It depends on what you consider "making it" is. If you need $60,000 a year to live on and need to hire people to do the milking while you vacation, then the answer is no. If, however, you can get by on much, much less and have a way to insure the cows are milked two or three times a day without much cost, then you can do it. Those successful dairy farmers 50 years ago didn't have three cars, health insurance and a color TV, so if you want to copy part of their lifestyle, you got to eat the whole thing. The Amish can cover a $100,000 expence because their cost of living is so low. They are proof it can be done, but most are too weak to commit to such a lifestyle.

[topside1]

Excellent point, haypoint....thanks