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DAIRY ST R “All dairy, all the time”™
Volume 19, No. 22
January 13, 2018
Bigger, stronger calves raised with less labor
Liquid Coin Dairy enjoys benets of automatic feeders By Danielle Nauman danielle.n@dairystar.com
MILLADORE, Wis. – Labor issues sent Scott and Joyce Karl searching for other options for calf care on their family’s Liquid Coin Dairy in Wood County near the town of Milladore, Wis. The answer that best t their needs was building a barn to house an automated calf feeding system. Since October 2015, Liquid Coin Dairy has used an automatic feeding system to give its calves milk. The dairy is a partnership consisting of the Karls along with Joyce’s parents, Leroy and Leiann Altmann, and her brother, Pat and his wife, Jill. Scott and Joyce are in charge of the 500cow dairy herd and Leroy and Pat work together to run the crop and machinery aspect of the farm. Scott and Joyce’s children, Cheyenne, Tyler and Christopher, and Pat and Jill’s sons, Dylan and Noah, all work on the farm. The need to change their
DANIELLE NAUMAN/DAIRY STAR
The Karls (from leŌ) – Cheyenne, Joyce and ScoƩ – manage the dairy herd at Liquid Coin Dairy near Milladore, Wis., in Wood County. In October 2015, the Karls built a new facility to house an automaƟc calf feeding system. calf program came about three and a half years ago. Cheyenne left to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course, and another employee left to take a job off the farm. “It was going to be just me feeding calves,” Joyce said. “We needed to either do this or
hire more employees.” The rst calves were moved into the new barn on Oct. 2, 2015, and now there are over 150 calves on milk at any given time. Calves are kept in four groups. “We started with just bottle calves going on to the robots,” Joyce said. “The ones that were
on pails in the hutches stayed there until they were weaned.” The Karls had a smooth transition into using the new system, and they are now calving in the rst groups of heifers that were raised on the robotic feeding system. “We denitely see a difference in those heifers,
especially in increased milk production as young 2-yearolds,” Scott said. “They are bigger heifers.” The Karls attribute that growth to the increased feedings calves compared to when they raised the calves in the hutches. “We fed twice a day in the hutches,” Joyce said. “Now they can go to the feeder ve times a day.” Two Urban calf feeder systems were installed into the barn and four groups are raised on each feeder. There are 15 to 17 calves per group, all born within a two to three week period. Calves spend the rst ve to seven days of life in individual pens in the nursery before being transitioned to the group pen and trained to use the robot. “Each group is all-in, allout,” Joyce said. “When a group is weaned and moved out, we clean the entire pack out and the pen is foamed and sanitized. While the calves live in the pen, the packs are cleaned out weekly.” The calves spend about 63 days on the robots. Each calf has a button tag that the robot Turn to KARLS | Page 6
Why are some farmgate pay prices below class III? UW’s Mark Stephenson explains pricing, premiums By Brittany Olson
brittany.o@dairystar.com
RICE LAKE, Wis. – Between a well-documented surplus of milk putting downward pressure on milk prices, shrinking premiums and farmers being paid under class III federal minimum for their milk, many are scratching their heads and wondering what’s happening to their milk checks. Dr. Mark Stephenson, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Dairy Policy Analysis and Center for Dairy Protability, was on hand to explain this phenomenon at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College in Rice Lake, Wis., Jan. 3. In his presentation, “What’s
Happened to My Milk Check?”, Stephenson summed up trends in the dairy landscape stateside and abroad, offered his analysis as to how those trends affect farmers’ milk prices and gave some insight as to what may happen in the years to come. “Overall national milk price is more reected in impacts of trade, while regional changes in milk production give that price an upward or downward tilt with premiums,” Stephenson said. Production in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest as a whole continues to grow, leaving the region at a net surplus by about 32 billion pounds. However, milk production in the West, particularly California – whose Central Valley region is still at a net surplus of milk – is declining, as well as the Southeast and East Coast. “Not all the data from 2017 is in yet, but we are seeing substantial declines in the South and California, but growth
in the plains states and Wisconsin,” Stephenson said. “Milk is declining in [those] regions, leaving plants running below capacity and stimulating premiums.” In fact, the Southeast is in a milk decit by about 41 billion pounds of milk. Stephenson said it is becoming harder to dairy in the South Dr. Mark Stephenson as the infrastructure University of Wisconsin to support any kind of dairy farming activity begins to fade with a declining number of dairy herds in that region. “Milk is produced in all 50 states, but increasingly occurs in more isolated regions and pockets that are located further away from major population centers,” Stephenson said. “The task of the dairy industry is to send products to
the places that need them, and they tend to be in different places as dairy tends to move away from populated areas.” Wisconsin, in particular, is so awash in milk that it is taxing plant capacity, and processing capacity is not catching up with milk production. “We are running at the bleeding edge of what Wisconsin can process, and that puts downward pressure on prices,” Stephenson said. “Overall, we are producing an additional 7 million pounds of milk per day in Wisconsin.” Plants can be built to process that additional milk – with some signicant caveats. “We can build plants, but they’re expensive. A new plant can easily cost $250 million or more,” Stephenson said. “Where do we put the plant? What do we make, who are our customers, how do we get the product to them, and Turn to PRICING | Page 5