E26-Foraging Around, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 19, 2003
50 Cows,
(Continued from Pag* E 23)
Larry’s first move as owner
of the farm was to improve
the labor efficiency to ease the
physical demands of farming
and improve the family’s
quality of life. He toured a few
free stall barns with milking
parlors in Maine and Con
necticut and built the first new
set up of its kind in Massachu
setts for SO cows. The free stall
and parlor were important to
Lany it reduced the
physical a bum right
been injured in
a *pgMlpiSe accident. It also
chores to be
done by one person in a rea
sonable amount of time.
After a few years working
alone on the farm, Larry de
cided he needed a hired man
so that he could get more time
off with his family. The labor
efficient setup meant that
Larry and the hired man alter
nated weekends with one of
them having from Friday
night though Monday morn
ing completely off.
Larry decided to begin graz
ing on his farm to further re
duce the labor needs. In the
early 1980 s, he was green
chopping forage for the cows
during a particularly wet
spell. After the chopper had
plugged up several times in
one day, he decided the cows
could just as easily harvest the
forage as he could. He had
read a few articles about rota
tional grazing a turned a hay
field near the bam into pas
ture. He had such good luck
the first year, he decided to
turn another field into pasture
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50 Years
mid'has been grazing ever
since/
The next transition for the
farm was sparked by Larry’s
son’s experience managing the
farm one summer. Larry and
his wife took a two-month va
cation a drove across the
county the summer of 1988
and left the management of
the farm to his 18-year-old
son. When they returned, Lar
ry’s son informed him that he
was not interested in taking
over the farm because he
didn’t want to be tied down.
Lany had heard about season
al calving from a few maga
zine articles and decided to try
it to see if two months off
from milking would make his
son more interested in taking
over the farm.
For a few years, they re
searched it and slowly got the
cows and heifers to start calv
ing in the spring window they
were aiming for. In 1990, they
went seasonal and had the
best year ever for the farm be
cause they had 30 extra
springing cows and heifers to
sell. Since then, they have
shortened their calving win
dow from 8 to 6 weeks and
have continued to have some
extra cows to sell every year.
Larry turned the farm over to
his son in 1995.
According to Larry, season
al calving hajs allowed the
farm to focus their manage
ment. All of the cows are in
the same stage of lactation,
which means that they can be
fed the appropriate feed more
easily. In particular, Larry
says they noticed a big im-
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provement in their fresh cow
health owing to a better focus
on their dry cows’ needs.
Seasonal calving also is ben
eficial in calf-raising. They
raise the first 20 calves bom in
the spring and feed them ei
ther milk or milk replacer in
mob feeders outside. They
have found that calfhood ill
ness has been almost totally
eliminated because calves are
only around for a few months
of the year and then the facili
ties are empty for the rest of
the year, which breaks the dis
ease cycle.
At breeding age, the heifers
are synchronized with two
shots of lutalase and then bred
on standing heat for three
days. This results in 80 per
cent of the heifers being bred
and a clean up bull takes care
of the remainder. The lutalase
treatment has not worked as
well for the cows, which are
bred artificially for three
weeks and then bulls are
turned in to catch the remain
ing open cows.
Since adopting grazing,
Larry has been breeding for
cows more suited to pasture.
Larry believes that a smaller
cow is better adapted to graz
ing and seasonal calving.
After his first few years graz
ing, he began selecting sires
that were below average in
stature and above average in
percentage components for his
registered Holsteins.
More recently, Larry has
experimented with cross
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breeding with Jerseys and has
been quite happy with the re
sults. While they do not pro
duce as high components as
he had been expecting, the
Jersey crosses have been about
equal milk production to the
Holsteins and seem to breed
back more easily. Larry is
planning on following the ad
vice of Dr. Steve Washburn, a
professor at North Carolina
State doing research on cross
breeding, to continue crossing
Holsteins and Jerseys back
and forth to maintain at least
25% of each breed in each
cross. The herd currently av
erages 16-17,000 pounds of
milk sold per cow per year on
a ration of eight to 15 pounds
of grain, 20 pounds of com si
lage, and 20 to 30 pounds of
pasture or grass silage or hay.
One of the latest influences
in Larry’s thinking about pas
ture-based dairy farming was
a trip he took to Ireland in
1998. The trip was put togeth
er by the Stockman Grass
farmer. Larry was impressed
by the grazing management
and labor efficiency on the
Irish dairies they toured. He
became convinced that the in
tensive grazing they practice
concentrating 70-80 cows
on a one-acre paddock for 12
hours leads to better pas
ture utilization and regrowth.
He was also impressed by
the labor efficiency on. Irish
dairies. Larry described a
120-cow dairy run by a hus
band and wife where the wife
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set up the parlor, milked the
cows and cleaned up in just an
hour. That dairy had a swing
12 parlor and most of the
dairies had fairly large par
lors, by our standards, that al
lowed them to milk the cows
in a short amount of time.
Upon returning from the
trip, Larry has intensified the
pasture management on the
farm. Now cows are turned
into a paddock at six inches
tall and paddocks are grazed
on eight to 12 days of rest.
This has resulted in a change
in the pasture species from
mainly orchardgrass to mainly
Kentucky bluegrass and white
clover. Larry believes the in
tense grazing has led to less
forage wasted by the cows and
alleviated weed problems.
A third of the grazing acre
age had been seeded in 1997
to perennial ryegrass and
Larry is quite happy with the
results. There has been no
winter-kill and the ryegrass
seems to do well under the in
tense management Larry is
practicing.
Larry’s thoughtful ap
proach to farming has allowed
the farm to remain at 50 cows
and achieve the quality of life
that he and his family desire.
Along the way, he has been an
early adopter of several cut
ting edge practices that have
worked well for him in part
because they met his criteria
for both profitability and life
style.
readers
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