Colorado dairy farm runs like clockwork

“It has to run like clockwork, and that’s not optional, it’s mandatory,” said Chris Kraft, who, along with his wife Mary, owns a dairy farm in Morgan County, Colorado.

The farm has grown significantly from 120 cows in 1985 to an operation with two dairies milking in the region of 5,800 cows and totalling more than 11,500 females. In 1985, they bought 120 cows form Mary’s uncle and, in time, this enterprise grew to be Badger Creek dairy.

Chris told me that 1,500 cows is the maximum that you can manage in an outdoor open free-stall system. All of the cows are outdoors and there are limitations to this outdoor penning system that restrict you to 1,500 cows.

In 2006, the Krafts cleared a greenfield site a few minutes down the road from their Badger Creek farm and built Quail Ridge Dairy from Scratch. Chris said they “moved 450,000 yards of dirt, poured 22,000 yards of concrete, and laid 13 miles of water pipe during construction”.

The Quail Ridge Dairy has 13 acres roofed and is home to 4,300 milking cows divided into 10 groups. Cows are milked three times a day in a herringbone 50-unit double-up parlour. The facility has the capacity to milk 600 cows per hour and is producing between 330,000 lb and 350,000 lb (140,500 to 164,000 liters) of milk per day. This effectively means that every three hours they fill one of the seven milk trucks which leave the premises daily. The unit computer system can automatically email the processing plant to request a truck to collect the milk as soon as a tank is getting full.

This is a highly capital intensive system and did require some borrowing. “Debt is a tool just like a shovel, you use it when you need it. If you don’t need it, don’t use it,” Chris said.

Judging by the efficiency of the system, and the focus of those involved, this tool is being used close to perfection. But that doesn’t happen by accident. “My wife is the chief financial officer; I spend the money but it’s her job to keep it. We have a lot of financial parameters that we keep track of,” said Chris.

Management

Control involves more than just the financial parameters. The management team meet every Tuesday morning and goes through all aspects of the dairy. Everything is recorded in detail from across the 75-strong team employed in the operation, all inputs and activities. Going back 10 years, Chris can give you any figure on a weekly basis referring to milk output, calf births, fuel costs, electricity, medication, water, the list goes on. “My records are like an electronic umbilical cord for the farm,” said Chris.

To give an example of this and the extremes that management go to in order to ensure good cow health, Chris buys all of the cows drinking water. Natural wells in the area have high sulphate which acts as a lactate and would result in the feed going through the cows too quickly, according to Chris. Drinking water is tested every month as this can be an indicator of how to adjust vitamins and minerals in the diet. Chris opened up his record sheet and was able to show me monthly water costs going back for years. He was able to identify warm months and cold months, depending on how water costs went up and down.

Year round milking naturally requires year round calving, 20 to 30 cows calve every day. The farm doesn’t employ a vet. The reason for this is that Chris has a classroom on the farm and a vet provides training for staff every three to five months. Another interesting statistic to note here is that only one C-section has been performed in the last 12 months and is due to the selection of easy-calving sires.

Sexed semen is used, mainly on heifers, for a number of reasons: “the higher conception rate than with cows; they will give the smallest calf by calving a heifer on a heifer; and they have the best genetics which helps to maximise genetic improvement,” said Chris. Heifers are calved at 21 to 22 months, “with rearing costs you need to get them producing milk as quick as you can,” he said.

Buildings and breeding

The five cow-barns are 880 feet long and 110 feet wide. They hold 430 cows on each side of the feed passage. Feeding starts at 4am every day. The feed barriers are designed to restrain all 430 cows in the feed rail at the same time. At 5am, every cow that needs to be topped up is re-chalked to help identify cows in heat. Year round calving requires to year round breeding. Cows are generally rebred after 70 days and heifers rebred 90 days after calving.

Every cow and heifer that calves goes through the purpose-built calving unit. They are only passed through the unit pre calving if there is a problem during process. Heifers are given a collar for recording milking stats, colostrum is milked, tested and stored for calves.

Calves are vaccinated, tagged and taken from the cows straight away. Female calves are put to the left-hand side of the shed and males to the right. Male calves are sold and collected once every morning and go to a beef producer. A male calf today is worth $120 (€90). For an animal showing any Angus breeding, they are worth $40 more (€30).

When asked why the dairy doesn’t breed more Angus animals, given the additional price for calves with beef breeding, Chris said: “We make our money with milk, so that’s our focus. If they want more beef bred calves, they will have to pay a management fee.” The Friday that I visited Krafts, four men inseminated 300 heifers between 5am and 8am. Breeding for beef calves would mean adding another man to this crew and would require more breeding equipment. They would also have to identify the poorer performing cows to breed to beef breeds, which is an easy task given the strong record keeping on the farm. But this would still be another task for some of the team.

Challenges

When asked what his biggest challenge was, Chris said: “That’s a good question. I used to be able to answer that easily.” He thought for a while before he explained that input costs are very high, feed costs are high and the reason for that is globalisation, and the severe drought that they had in 2012. “At a higher level, the big challenge is to have a better understanding of the global business environment that we are all in right now. Reading the signals to guide spending is getting more difficult. ”

On a day-to-day level, “getting workers is one of the biggest challenges; good people are needed in all aspects of agriculture, not just for production. Most like it 75 degrees and fluorescent.” I hadn’t heard an office job being described as ‘75 and fluorescent’ before, but getting the right people to work outdoors is proving to be a challenge.