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From beef, to dairy, to a full-time living

Cows on pasture

Hudsons learned first, purchased later

Dublin, Virginia—When George and Julie Hudson took the Hoard’s Dairyman dairy knowledge test not too long ago, they both failed. Maybe that’s because milking cows is their means to an end, rather than the be-all, end-all of their existence.

“We’re not dairy people,” admits George, who actually did grow up on a confinement dairy. Shortly after high school graduation, at a time when other young men with agricultural backgrounds were studying pick-up trucks or fancy-uddered cows, George was taking classes in accounting and real estate. When others might have been trying to make a go of milking cows or working in town, George was driving a school bus, leasing land, and learning how to make money grazing a commercial cow-calf beef herd. Continue reading “From beef, to dairy, to a full-time living”

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The economics of once-a-day milking

Farmer with cows

Can OAD and no grain combine to create wealth and happiness?

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania—Let’s talk about radical change and alternative dairy economics. A dozen years ago, Cliff Hawbaker was milking cows three times a day, housing them in freestalls, earning and burning a lot of cash, and just starting to think about getting his cows out on pasture for a few hours each day between milkings.

Today, Cliff has completed his third year of owning and helping to manage an entirely spring-calved, 120-cow satellite herd that was milked just once a day (OAD) in each of those three seasons, and which last year was fed no grain during lactation. In 2008, Cliff transitioned the 300-head home farm over to OAD, with the only grain for a herd dominated by large Holsteins coming from seven dry matter pounds of corn silage per day. Continue reading “The economics of once-a-day milking”

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Making do at the end of the easy oil era

Farmer with dog and cows

By Joel McNair, Belleville, Wisconsin — Talk of $200 per barrel crude oil and seven-dollar per gallon gasoline grabs headlines and earns sound bites, and indeed these things may be reality sooner rather than later. Or they may not.

History and common sense tell us the current oil price trend line will not continue unabated. My own guess, shared by others but still mainly conjecture, is that a severe global economic slowdown created by a nasty combination of U.S. fiscal problems and entwined energy/food price inflation will depress oil demand over the next few years. U.S. use is already dropping, and the rapid pace of growth in India and China will be slowed, although probably not reversed. Continue reading “Making do at the end of the easy oil era”

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Tips for strengthening the ewe-lamb bond

Lambs on pasture

By Janet McNally, Hinckley, Minnesota — At this writing I am smack dab in the middle of lambing, so please forgive me if I’m having a difficult time writing about any other subject. I had planned to finish a second article on crossbreeding, and will get to that in the next issue, but I would like to address lambing while it is fresh on my mind.

The subject here is bonding, which is of tremendous importance to lamb survival in pasture lambing programs where there are no pens to keep newborns with their mothers. The bonding process occurs from birth through the first few days of life. The dam may reject her lamb if they are separated for as little as 30 minutes after birth. The more lambs in each litter, the more important it is that all of them remain with the ewe at all times. Continue reading “Tips for strengthening the ewe-lamb bond”

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Methods for calculating marketing costs

Beef cows on pasture

By Jim Munsch, Coon Valley, Wisconsin — Take a stroll through the meat market, do some math, and your first inclination is to say that direct marketing of beef will pay a producer.

We farmers have been basically saying that for years. Ever since I can remember, I’ve heard uncles, cousins and neighbors complain about store prices for food, and the fact that the “middleman” is making all the money. Behind this emotional observation is an acknowledgement of a real economic truth: Middlemen tend to be a small number of for-profit organizations with considerable economic power compared to individual producers of much smaller scale and with feeble economic power. In some cases their performance can be inconsistent, resulting in equally inconsistent demand and prices for your products. Continue reading “Methods for calculating marketing costs”