that is not near enough acres for 12K cows

we have one here that is 5K and it needed to find and contract farms over a 15 mile radius to get enough acreage to actually drill their manure in

no they don't actually truck it that far , so they are probably spreading a lot heavier than they stated to get their license

you know exactly where they hare trucking it too because it is a steady stream of semis with specialized side dump gravity slurry trailers they get 6-8 of those running and they run sun up to sun down , they have a big slurry tank they can park in a ditch they drive up next to it hit a button or lever in the cab and it starts dumping into the tank
back at the facility not really a farm the grow nothing on their 100 acres , they buy from others or lease crop land to grow grain , silage and hay.


so expect 250 acres of buildings , bunkers and lagoons supported by 12000 or more other acres

they don't even advertise jobs for this place in English.

It wouldn't even surprise me if the same guy is building the one your talking about , he owns 8-10 of them already spread over the midwest

 

I know it's a different species, and the manure application is different, but this made me think of one of the factory hog operations that was run by a Hutterite colony near where I used to live.

As a colony they had a much larger landbase, several thousand acres. But they had a huge holding tank in a central location, and they put in distribution lines radiating out like legs of a giant spider so that they could pump manure directly to various fields without having to truck it. It's still industrial agriculture, but it seemed a good solution to both make it more efficient and less of a nuisance. It seemed to me that I noticed the odour a lot less than when other farmers pumped out their earthen lagoons all at once.

 

they pump out as far as the can but you eventually run into other peoples land or a road you can't get a hose under around here

it is probably more other peoples land that won't let you cross it as there seems to be a culvert under most roads someplace they will snake a hose through but they need to own or have permission on both sides of the road to do that

a diesel lift pump about every mile and a half or so

it is part of the issue with owning 100 and needing many thousand

could have picked a different location where more land would have been available but that wouldn't have put them a few miles from the cheese plant that buys their milk on an almost exclusive contract

so it is a balance truck milk further 6 days a week or truck manure 2x a year

 

Wonder how many "locals" will wind up working there and how many of the workers will be illegals or "guest workers".

 

Most are looking for employees. Most huge dariies are in very rural areas. So, few workers available and no one seems willing to move nearby just to keep a job. Even $20 an hour in an area with low costs of living, most prefer to get onto the welfare hammock instead.

 

Sounds like the operation that was in Dimmitt Texas.
They had a herd of 20,000 cows until a fire in April killed 90% (18,000) of the herd.

 

I work for one of those operations. It’s great if you like working 70-80 hours a week with no overtime, no vacation or sick days or any other benefits. They play the exempt for ag to the limit.

 

so you really like farming but can't afford your own , there is nothing else for work any better in your area or you have too many felonies to work someplace that treats you better?


I suppose there could be another reason .

my hunting partners brother works for a similar place , all he knows is farming and it secures him a place to hunt he and one other employee are the only English speakers he started right out of high school 30 years ago and is the field manager.

 

There are farms like this around Casa Grande, Arizona. One of them milk 30,000 cows in three shifts. When I first saw them I thought they were feed lots. The manure dries in huge ponds only a few inches deep. It is trucked off, but I have no idea where it goes. The smell has to be experienced to be believed.

The milk trucks run at night because it's cooler. The milk all goes to California.

 

Many large dairies in western Kansas where I grew up. Not many people there really so it doesn't matter much. Does provide jobs for a rural area.

 

We have huge dairies here and it's such a travesty. That's not farming, it's industry. Thousands of cows jammed side by side standing on concrete their whole lives, stressed and fed drugs to keep them calm. Infected hooves, disease, it's terrible. The cows only last about 3 years. Then there's the death tankers. Pulled behind high speed tractors and noisily drumming by, one after the other, from before dawn til after sunset. It didn't used to be so bad; a few weeks every summer after the wheat came off. Now it's year-round, spreading that concentrated waste contaminated with drugs on the fields so thickly that it will actually pond several inches deep. It's enough to drive one mad, between the sound and smell. And one can only hope they'll bother to incorporate it before the rains wash it all into the Great Lakes. Jobs? I should laugh. They put trailer homes out between the sheds and the waste pits, and the ilegal immigrants live and work there. They also drive without a license and cause accidents and run away. Not too long ago one assaulted a local cop. When I remember how it was as a kid, with my neighbors small dairy farms and the care they took of their animals, I want to cry.

 

I have no idea if such facilities exist. But every large dairy that I have seen (I've seen many as a part of a former job) have sand beds for the cows to rest on and have plenty of space. They aren't fed any drugs. Never any drug to make them calm. The floor surface is designed for cow comfort, rinsed every 10 minutes, or regularly scraped. Cows are bred at 2 years old, so start milking at 3 years of age. So, no one is culling at 3,4 or 5 years old. It is in the dairy's best interest to keep the cows healthy and in milk for many years.
I cannot imagine what is meant by death tankers. Dairy uses a lot of manure and liquids. Sometimes it is pumped to fields, sometimes it is pumped into tankers and hauled to fields. The fields may be owned by the dairy or the dairy may contract with other farmers to take the slurry. Michigan has a Right to Farm law and it protects farmers from lawsuits, only when they follow safe, standard farming practices. That includes plowing down all spread manure.
Dairies have always required employees. But like every other employer today, they have to compete with the government pulling millions out of the potential work force, by welfare. Milking cows is a messy job that requires quite a bit of labor. Often hard to find workers that will work such hours, weekends, even on Holidays.
It is illegal to hire workers that are here illegally. I know of at least one dairy farmer that went to prison for employing illegal immigrants. That seems unfair when I hear about the thousands of Tyson employees that are here illegally. Seems like another two tier justice system to me.

Sometimes I think about the dairy where \my Uncle Hank worked. I loved to visit there. But he had no vacations. They had to leave early from family Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners. They had to maintain a big garden and butcher their own pigs and render the lard. Not for the nostalgia. The did it to keep from starving on the meager wages farmers made.
Yes, the cows were well cared for. But if you could see the thousands of dairy cows in a large modern facility, you'd see they are well cared for, too. Just not in the same way as 70 years ago. But back then, farm workers accepted that there would be long hours, hard physical labor and little pay. Farm communities thrived when 88% of the population toiled in agriculture. Today, it is 3% that work to produce all your food. So, labor saving methods are required.

All it would have taken was a single crop failure, a broken leg, a lengthy illness and the family would have been out on the road with no money and no where to go.

Don't just long for the day, build a 40 cow dairy and set the example of what you remember. The reality will crush you.

 

Michigan has several dairies of that size. It is quite different from what we grew up thinking a dairy is. In most huge dairies, the owners run the dairy. They contract the manure removal, contract the delivery of hay, contract the delivery of other feed, contract the pickup and delivery of bull calves to the weekly livestock auctions, contract the growing of heifers until ready to freshen.
Everyone has their jobs to do. Each day a set amount of feed is delivered. Each week, the calves are picked up and the manure either pumped to the fields contracted to take it or transported in tanker trucks.
Mostly, they don't need any more land than the few acres the buildings sit on.
Some large dairies raise their heifers, some grow some of their feed, some haul their own manure.

 

Big is bad

I cannot think of anything big that is good.

Big Government
Big Religion
Big Military
Big Pharma
Big Ag
Big Media
Big Energy
Big Music
Big Finance
Big Manufacturing
Big Retail
Big Healthcare
Big Money
Big Ad infinitum

 

Well Haypoint all I can say is your experience has been much different than mine. My job has taken me to these dairies and I know what I have seen.
I grew up on a farm and wholly understand the difficulty and complexity of the life. Yes, it would crush me now, I'm too old to work that hard anymore.
I didn't say the cows lived three years, but that they wear out after three years of being treated like a commodity instead of a living creature.
My argument is we have lost the ethic of stewardship and these large corporations have no thought for the land or the future, only profit. EGLE is too understaffed to actually go out to disposal sites or monitor lagoon construction on a regular basis and the corporations take advantage of the right to farm act. It was meant to protect farmers from city folk who move to the country and then try to shut down farming because they don't like getting behind a tractor on the road, but these giant companies use it as a way to do whatever they want.
In my county alone we've had so much of that concentrated lagoon waste poured on the fields that it's run off and contaminated a river and run right out to the lake. Twice EGLE was able to take the company to court, at a huge cost to taxpayers, and that's just what they could pursue. It actually happens constantly, it's just not documented or reported. Attempts to enforce the rules about loading rates and incorporation within 24 hours are met with little success.
I call them death tankers because that is what they carry. That sludge isn't honest manure, it's concentrated, drug-filled industrial strength waste that doesn't even smell like cow crap, just an eye-watering sharp chemical smell.
Just like giant pharmacuetical companies, brokerage firms, retailers, etc., giant dairies do what they like in the pursuit of profit and devil take the hindmost.

 

I call them death tankers because that is what they carry. That sludge isn't honest manure, it's concentrated, drug-filled industrial strength waste that doesn't even smell like cow crap, just an eye-watering sharp chemical smell.
Just like giant pharmacuetical companies, brokerage firms, retailers, etc., giant dairies do what they like in the pursuit of profit and devil take the hindmost.

"drug filled"? What drugs? Dairy cattle rarely are given any drugs, then just to treat an illness. It is the pursuit of profit that drives everyone, every business, big and small. Profit is only evil in a Communist society. All modern dairies use soaps to clean the milking plumbing. But it is a tiny part of the waste when compared to the manure slurry.

I see large enclosures, with modern air handling equipment, modern manure removal equipment, nutritional experts blending a high quality feed, dairy employees careful to insure every load of milk passes sanitation and drug residue tests, that the cows can freely move about and go to be milked when they chose to.
In general, small dairies lack the funds to keep up with building maintenance, much less cow beds and timely manure removal. It isn't unfair, it is simply an economy of scale.
I don't love the huge dairies. I'd just love for every county to have a few dozen 40 cow dairies. I just try to be honest about the big dairies. Pretending that 40 cow dairies of a hundred years ago was somehow wonderful, just isn't true. Maybe we need to re-read James Herriot's books again.

 

Well Haypoint all I can say is your experience has been much different than mine. My job has taken me to these dairies and I know what I have seen.
I grew up on a farm and wholly understand the difficulty and complexity of the life. Yes, it would crush me now, I'm too old to work that hard anymore.
I didn't say the cows lived three years, but that they wear out after three years of being treated like a commodity instead of a living creature.
My argument is we have lost the ethic of stewardship and these large corporations have no thought for the land or the future, only profit. EGLE is too understaffed to actually go out to disposal sites or monitor lagoon construction on a regular basis and the corporations take advantage of the right to farm act. It was meant to protect farmers from city folk who move to the country and then try to shut down farming because they don't like getting behind a tractor on the road, but these giant companies use it as a way to do whatever they want.
In my county alone we've had so much of that concentrated lagoon waste poured on the fields that it's run off and contaminated a river and run right out to the lake. Twice EGLE was able to take the company to court, at a huge cost to taxpayers, and that's just what they could pursue. It actually happens constantly, it's just not documented or reported. Attempts to enforce the rules about loading rates and incorporation within 24 hours are met with little success.
I call them death tankers because that is what they carry. That sludge isn't honest manure, it's concentrated, drug-filled industrial strength waste that doesn't even smell like cow crap, just an eye-watering sharp chemical smell.
Just like giant pharmacuetical companies, brokerage firms, retailers, etc., giant dairies do what they like in the pursuit of profit and devil take the hindmost.

What Heartbroken said. I work for one of them. You think you didn’t have time for anything growing up on a mom and pop dairy? Try 75-80 hours a week. Working weekends and holidays and yes it’s a farm so all straight time with no benefits. I can’t wait to find my way out. It’s all about profit for them.