Once-A-Day Milking is Big Labor-Saver by Raylene Nickel

Once every day, and only once, cows on the Buchmayer farm near Purdin, Missouri, get milked.

In a startling approach to milk production that has traditional dairy farmers shaking their heads in disbelief, Barbara and Kerry Buchmayer say milking their cows just once a day saves them more in labor than it costs in lost milk volume.

Surprisingly, stress on the cows' udders from being milked only once a day has not been significant, Barbara Buchmayer said.  The cows have experienced no more cases of mastitis than what they had with twice-a-day milking, she reports.  It helps that calves run with the cows for a couple of months after calving.  The nursing calves require about two gallons of milk per day, enough to relieve potential stress and pressure in the mother cows' udders in the early months of their lactations.

Holstein Jersey Cows

The Buchmayers' Holstein-Jersey cross cows have not been bred for high production and, therefore, may adapt to once-a-day milking more readily than cows bred to produce 20,000 pounds or more milk per lactation, said Barbara.  The higher-producing cows, of course, could be expected to experience more discomfort than do the Jersey crosses. 

the Buchmayers process the milk from their 60-cow herd right on the farm, producing organic dairy products that are ready for the grocery stores.  From their small processing plant comes store-ready jugs of whole, skim, 2%, and skim chocolate milk, along with cartons of butter bearing their farm label, Green Hills Harvest.  The label tells customers the milk is organic and produced and processed on a local family farm.  The Buchmayers' farm and dairy herd are certified organic by the Ohio certifying agency Global Organic Alliance.

The Buchmayers operate their own refrigerated truck and distribute milk and butter to 35 stores within a 200-mile radius of the farm.  This is their fourth year of processing and marketing their own milk.

The Labor Connection

"We got the idea for once-a-day milking after reading an article about a trial in New Zealand where they were experimenting with once-a-day milking because farmers were having trouble finding help," said Barbara.  "Then we read about a couple in Illinois who had been milking their cows once a day for three years and were happy with it.  We visited with them on the phone.  We were wary of actually trying it.  But we started doing it in the spring of 2002, and the savings in time and labor have been wonderful."

When they switched to milking once a day, their cows were in the middle of a lactation.  Production dropped about 10 percent as a result of the change, said Barbara.  As the spring progressed, cows that had just freshened were added to the milk string, and these also produced less milk than they would have if they had been milked twice a day.  She estimates their present milk production average to be 10,000 to 12,000 pounds per lactation.

"Though we lose volume as a result of milking once a day, our research suggests that the solids are not lost.  That's important to us because we have a market for bottled skim milk and butter."  Besides, she added, their sales volume last summer nearly matched their production level, since they are able to market between 80 and 90 percent of the milk they produce.  Often the Buchmayers skim their milk, then dump the excess.  Sometimes however, they feed the skim milk to their chickens or pigs. 

Cows Adjust

It's possible, too, that over the long term the cows will adjust to the new milking schedule and increase their production.  "We heard about a dairy farmer from Ireland who had switched to once-a-day milking," Barbara said.  "His experience was that in the first year his cows gave 70 percent of what they were giving when he milked them twice a day.  In the second year of once-a-day milking they gave 80 percent of that amount, and in the third year they gave 90 percent of the previous amount."

The advantage of once-a-day milking to the Buchmayers really comes down to the labor saved.  It allows them to manage both a dairy and a processing plant with the help only from their 17-year-old son, Austin, and two part-time employees.

Psychologically, the Buchmayers' cows seem content with once-a-day milking.  "Our cows never developed the habit of coming voluntarily to the barn to be milked," said Barbara.  Even in winter, the cattle like spending time in the pastures, where they're fed balage, she added.

Need More Milk

Last fall, newly freshened cows were put back on twice-a-day milkings to help with an increase in demand for milk products.  Once-a-day milking was continued, however, with cows that had freshened in the spring.  To avoid confusion in sorting the cows morning and evening, the twice-a-day milkers are grazed in on pasture and the once-a-day milkers in another, with each group running cows through the milk parlor separately.  Cows milked only once a day are on the afternoon shift.  Heifers and dry cows together number 120 head.

Forages grown on the farm are the main source of feed for the cattle.  The herd grazes from March through December, as long as there is adequate forage for them.  In addition, lactating cows receive six pounds per head per day of organically grown ground corn or ground barley, with no additional protein.  All feed grain comes from organic grain growers.

The entire farm is seeded to forages and cross-fenced into 20 pastures.  Depending on moisture conditions and the growth patterns of the grass, temporary fencing is used to section these pastures into smaller grazing paddocks.  Cows are grazed rotationally through the paddocks.  Hay is taken from the pastures when grass grows faster than cows are able to consume it.

Mixed Forages

The pastures are seeded to red clover and a mix of grasses, including brome, timothy, orchard grass, the legume lespedeza, and bird's-foot trefoil.  "Kerry believes that if you plant a variety of forages when astablishing pastures, there's less chance of a crop failure because something in the mix is bound to produce, regardless of what the growing conditions are," said Barbara.

The legumes and broad mixture of forages help to subdue the lower nutrition fescue grass which likes to dominate the grasslands in Missouri.  "In pastures where fescue predominates we try to beat it back through grazing," said Barbara.  "We'll stock those pastures heavily with dry cows or heifers and hold them on the pasture until the fescue is grazed down.  We supplement those cattle with barley or corn."

Processing milk right on the farm requires specialized facilities and equipment.  The Buchmayers built a 24-foot by 40-foot insulated, wood fram building to house their processing equipment.  The facility has two additions: one houses an 8-foot by 12-foot walk-in cooler; the second provides a 24-foot by 30-foot storage space for semi-loads of supplies such as plastic jugs.  The building itself was a $50,000 construction project.

They purchased and refurbished used processing equipment, another $200,000 investment.  "Small-scale processing equipment is getting harder and harder to find because more and more people are starting to process their own milk," said Barbara.  "New equipment is quite expensive.  Ours is 1950s vintage, and we had it rebuilt, an alternative which is still quite costly."

Once-A-Week Processing

Each Tuesday the family processes and jugs 1,000 half-gallon containers of milk.  The job is a full day's work for three people.  Kerry runs the processing equipment while Barbara labels containers and places them on a conveyor from where they will be filled automatically.  An employee crates the containers and stocks the walk-in cooler.  Saturday is butter-making day.

Milk orders are taken by phone from their customer stores every Monday.  It is then delivered on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to stores up to 200 miles from the farm.

The Buchmayers' dairy is licensed by the Missouri State Milk Board as well as the Missouri Department of Health and as such may be transported across state lines.  Licenses are granted after on-farm inspections.

More Work, Higher Price

Green Hills Harvest organic milk retails for $2.89 to $3.69 per half-gallon, about double the price of non-organic milk.  The price varies by store because some retailers mark up the milk more than others.  Some mark it up by as much as 30 percent over the wholesale price they pay the Buchmayers.

Even though the wholesale price of organic milk is quite good, production costs are also high, Barbara said.  The cost of organic feed grain is also higher then the cost of non-organic grain.

There is also increased labor and expense required to market and distribute organic milk.  "Because there's such a small market for our milk at each store, we put a lot of work into distributing and marketing," said Barbara.  The Buchmayers estimate the two of them each put in 60 hours a week just to operate their dairy and run the processing and marketing business.  One part-time person is employed for five hours per week.

"I don't regret getting into this business of processing our own milk.  We are getting our debt paid down, and we can see that this business promises to be lucrative in the future.  But often doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done. it's not a business you want to take on lightly."