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DAIRY ST R
Volume 23, No. 16
October 9, 2021
“All dairy, all the time”™
Wedded bliss on the farm Zunker, Kaufmann-Luft get married on Conrath dairy By Abby Wiedmeyer abby.w@dairystar.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF MAX LEE
Lexi Zunker and Pete Kaufmann-Lu� are newlyweds. The couple was married Sept. 25 at Zunker’s family’s 250-cow dairy near Conrath, Wisconsin.
CONRATH, Wis. – Lexi Zunker and Pete Kaufmann-Luft were married at Lexi’s family farm Sept. 25. It was a fairy tale wedding for Lexi. Lexi and her brother, Dallas, are the fth generation on the farm they own with their parents, Andy and Valerie, near Conrath. They milk 250 cows and farm around 1,000 acres of hay and corn silage. Preparations for the wedding began early in the year. Across from the main farm there is a 50-acre eld that has two big oak trees in the middle, approximately 200 feet apart. “Since I was a little girl, I said I was going to get married between those oak trees,” Lexi
said
Her brother came up with the idea to dig up some of the existing hay eld and plant corn around the trees. She was immediately on board and thought it sounded amazing. Her dad disagreed. The hay had only been growing for two years, and he was hesitant to dig it up. “One of my brother’s friends ended up convincing my dad it would be OK,” Lexi said. In March, Lexi and her dad went out and spray painted off the area they wanted to leave in hay. Her dad then dug it up and planted corn. It ended up like a corn maze that leads into a big, mowed space with the oak trees inside. The wedding and happy Turn to ZUNKER | Page 13
New parlor boosts efficiency at R-Acres Rademachers’ retrofit milks more cows in less time By Stacey Smart
stacey.s@dairystar.com
COTTAGE GROVE, Wis. – When a group of ve cows is done milking at R-Acres, they do not have to wait for their herdmates to nish in order to be released from the parlor. These cows can exit and a new group of ve can enter and begin milking. As a result, no time is lost. “If there’s a slower milker in the group, the whole side doesn’t have to be held up waiting for her to nish,” said Carlie Rademacher. “Letting out ve cows at a time versus twenty also prevents trafc jams.” The Rademacher family replaced their double-11 herringbone parlor with a double-20 DeLaval P500 parallel parlor in May 2019. The Rademachers increased cow capacity within the same footprint and still have room to grow. “(The new parlor) is a great t for us,” Rademacher said. “Our old parlor was running 23 hours a day. We’re saving a quarter of that time now and not every group is full to STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR capacity.” Rademacher’s grandparents, Keith and Joan, started Siblings, Carlie and Adam Rademacher, milk 1,000 cows and farm 2,600 acres with their parents, Brian and Nikki, and grandparents, Keith and Joan, near Co�age Grove, Wisconsin. Turn to RADEMACHER | Page 7