ROYALTON — Roger White, one of Niagara County’s leading dairy farmers, thinks there’s a future in his livelihood. Farming 1,200 acres of land and milking 600 cows on Mountain Road, White and his wife, Beth, are in charge of Gasport View Dairy, a farm White’s father, Raymond, bought in 1945.
White’s son, Scott, now has joined in the business, and White, 58, even has a grandson, Emory Seefeldt, 5, who declared, “I’m going to stay here every day and all night.”
“My grandson told me I can’t retire,” White said.
Five barns, 10 employees and eight tractors also are part of the operation, which is all dairy; the cropland is used only to grow feed for the herd.
White and his wife recently were honored by Cornell Cooperative Extension with its Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award, recognizing activity in farm and nonfarm organizations. He has been a director of the Niagara Milk Producers Cooperative and the later Upstate-Niagara Co-Op, and now is director of O-ATKA Milk Processing Co. in Batavia, a subsidiary of Upstate-Niagara.
We visited the farm a few days ago and got Roger White’s views on farming’s present and future. (His wife also joined in the conversation, and some of her comments also are below.)
Milk prices paid to farmers vary a little, but somehow they never seem to rise that much, and as time goes on you lose more and more ground to inflation. Is that still the case?
I’d say yes. There was a spike last year, a world shortage of milk, and the price to the dairy farmer went up to $22 [per 100 pounds of milk; a gallon of milk equals 8.6 pounds]. They’re forecasting between $13 and $14 for January and February. We’ve got milk slips downstairs; my dad started milking in 1960, and they were getting $3.60 a hundred.
What’s the average milk production for one of your cows?
I think right now it’s about 23,000 pounds a year. That’s through a 305-day lactation. We’re on what they call 2X milking [milking each cow twice a day]. We’ve got what you call a double-10 parlor; you milk 10 cows on a side. The latest technology now is a completely automatic milker, robotics. The president of the co-op, who lives in Lyons, just put in four of them. Each one is good for 50 cows. The cows go into it by themselves. You might build three of these, and then you build a barn for 150 head. It’s an entirely new concept. The cow needs to relieve herself just like a person needs to relieve himself. That cow’s udder fills up with milk, and she wants to relieve it. A cow will learn after a while to go to it to be milked.
How much forage do you think you go through in a year?
You’re feeding them 80 pounds a day of forage, said Beth, which would be haylage, corn silage, dry hay, and then we’re feeding them an additional 30 days of the high-moisture corn and the concentrate. . . . [using a calculator] Twenty and a half tons [per cow per year].
We have a nutritionist, said Roger, who comes out from Cargill [a feed company] and figures out a ration. Between the haylage and the corn silage that you have, they figure out what the nutrient value of it is, what the cow requires for so much milk, and then they add the concentrates, the corns and the high-moisture corns. It’s a lot different than it used to be. We try to feed them consistently every day. They don’t like change.
Are these Holsteins, mostly?
Mostly. They give the most milk. If you were going for butterfat or protein, you’d probably go with a Jersey herd.
Is there a long-term future in dairy farming?
I think so, yes. That’s why our son, when he graduated from high school, he went to Alfred State [College] and took two years of animal science. Now Scott’s come home to the farm. I think there’s a future in the dairy business. People are going to need to have food. Milk is a very good product.
What do you do for manure control?
We have two slurry-stores. You see that one blue tank out there? That one holds a million gallons, and we’ve got another one that holds 400,000 gallons. That holds it for about six months. We spread it in the spring and the fall. The State of New York says that if you have over 300 cows, you have to get a CAFO [confined animal feeding operation permit].
Beth said, Anyone having more than that many cows, you have to keep records of where you put the manure, how much manure you’ve got, and you have to do things with a consultant, who says, “OK, you have 100 cows that produce X amount of manure, you need X amount of storage.” And they check your fields and say, “This one’s got a slope on it, so you can’t spread that during the spring so it runs off into the stream.”
You have to come up with a nutrient management plan . . ., said Roger, where you’re going to put these nutrients that you have, what crops you’re going to grow and what nutrient each crop can use. Then they tell you what you can spread and when you can spread. We try to put it in in the spring as far as corn, just before planting, and you’re going to get most of your nutrients out of that. We cut our fertilizer costs, hopefully, by using the manure. With fertilizer costs escalating like they have the last year, it makes the manure a lot more valuable. The faster you can get that into the ground, the more value you’re going to have. The odor you smell with manure is usually the nitrogen that’s leaching off. If we can capture that . . . the next step we’re going to do is get an injector for the back of the spreader.
How long does it take to spread a million gallons of manure?
It depends on how far you’re hauling it. I’d say in the spring of the year, in a 12-hour day you could probably spread 200,000 gallons. Our spreader holds 7,000 gallons. We have one person spreading manure first thing in the morning, and we’ll have somebody following him with either a disk or a chisel plow to work it in.
Is it pretty much mandatory that you have to have a big herd to survive today in the dairy business?
No. There’s fellows that have got 50 cows that are making it work. If your debt load is low, you can probably do that.
Source: http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/546096.html
White’s son, Scott, now has joined in the business, and White, 58, even has a grandson, Emory Seefeldt, 5, who declared, “I’m going to stay here every day and all night.”
“My grandson told me I can’t retire,” White said.
Five barns, 10 employees and eight tractors also are part of the operation, which is all dairy; the cropland is used only to grow feed for the herd.
White and his wife recently were honored by Cornell Cooperative Extension with its Distinguished Service to Agriculture Award, recognizing activity in farm and nonfarm organizations. He has been a director of the Niagara Milk Producers Cooperative and the later Upstate-Niagara Co-Op, and now is director of O-ATKA Milk Processing Co. in Batavia, a subsidiary of Upstate-Niagara.
We visited the farm a few days ago and got Roger White’s views on farming’s present and future. (His wife also joined in the conversation, and some of her comments also are below.)
Milk prices paid to farmers vary a little, but somehow they never seem to rise that much, and as time goes on you lose more and more ground to inflation. Is that still the case?
I’d say yes. There was a spike last year, a world shortage of milk, and the price to the dairy farmer went up to $22 [per 100 pounds of milk; a gallon of milk equals 8.6 pounds]. They’re forecasting between $13 and $14 for January and February. We’ve got milk slips downstairs; my dad started milking in 1960, and they were getting $3.60 a hundred.
What’s the average milk production for one of your cows?
I think right now it’s about 23,000 pounds a year. That’s through a 305-day lactation. We’re on what they call 2X milking [milking each cow twice a day]. We’ve got what you call a double-10 parlor; you milk 10 cows on a side. The latest technology now is a completely automatic milker, robotics. The president of the co-op, who lives in Lyons, just put in four of them. Each one is good for 50 cows. The cows go into it by themselves. You might build three of these, and then you build a barn for 150 head. It’s an entirely new concept. The cow needs to relieve herself just like a person needs to relieve himself. That cow’s udder fills up with milk, and she wants to relieve it. A cow will learn after a while to go to it to be milked.
How much forage do you think you go through in a year?
You’re feeding them 80 pounds a day of forage, said Beth, which would be haylage, corn silage, dry hay, and then we’re feeding them an additional 30 days of the high-moisture corn and the concentrate. . . . [using a calculator] Twenty and a half tons [per cow per year].
We have a nutritionist, said Roger, who comes out from Cargill [a feed company] and figures out a ration. Between the haylage and the corn silage that you have, they figure out what the nutrient value of it is, what the cow requires for so much milk, and then they add the concentrates, the corns and the high-moisture corns. It’s a lot different than it used to be. We try to feed them consistently every day. They don’t like change.
Are these Holsteins, mostly?
Mostly. They give the most milk. If you were going for butterfat or protein, you’d probably go with a Jersey herd.
Is there a long-term future in dairy farming?
I think so, yes. That’s why our son, when he graduated from high school, he went to Alfred State [College] and took two years of animal science. Now Scott’s come home to the farm. I think there’s a future in the dairy business. People are going to need to have food. Milk is a very good product.
What do you do for manure control?
We have two slurry-stores. You see that one blue tank out there? That one holds a million gallons, and we’ve got another one that holds 400,000 gallons. That holds it for about six months. We spread it in the spring and the fall. The State of New York says that if you have over 300 cows, you have to get a CAFO [confined animal feeding operation permit].
Beth said, Anyone having more than that many cows, you have to keep records of where you put the manure, how much manure you’ve got, and you have to do things with a consultant, who says, “OK, you have 100 cows that produce X amount of manure, you need X amount of storage.” And they check your fields and say, “This one’s got a slope on it, so you can’t spread that during the spring so it runs off into the stream.”
You have to come up with a nutrient management plan . . ., said Roger, where you’re going to put these nutrients that you have, what crops you’re going to grow and what nutrient each crop can use. Then they tell you what you can spread and when you can spread. We try to put it in in the spring as far as corn, just before planting, and you’re going to get most of your nutrients out of that. We cut our fertilizer costs, hopefully, by using the manure. With fertilizer costs escalating like they have the last year, it makes the manure a lot more valuable. The faster you can get that into the ground, the more value you’re going to have. The odor you smell with manure is usually the nitrogen that’s leaching off. If we can capture that . . . the next step we’re going to do is get an injector for the back of the spreader.
How long does it take to spread a million gallons of manure?
It depends on how far you’re hauling it. I’d say in the spring of the year, in a 12-hour day you could probably spread 200,000 gallons. Our spreader holds 7,000 gallons. We have one person spreading manure first thing in the morning, and we’ll have somebody following him with either a disk or a chisel plow to work it in.
Is it pretty much mandatory that you have to have a big herd to survive today in the dairy business?
No. There’s fellows that have got 50 cows that are making it work. If your debt load is low, you can probably do that.
Source: http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/546096.html
