|
|
Long Live The Cows
|
Article by Raylene Nickel
Photos by Rick Mooney
|
|
Comfortable
cows and prudent updates can mean success for a small dairy.
The future is on Tim Demaray’s mind every
time he makes an improvement to his farm.
At 31, he has no desire for his 80-cow, 500-acre
dairy farm, near Melvin, Michigan, to become larger. He just
wants it to be there and in good shape for the next generation.
Success on his farm, Tim says, is the result of the extra effort
he puts into controlling interest debt, keeping facilities and
equipment up-to-date, and seeing to his cows’ comfort and
health.
Tim and his wife, Jan, an Osteopathic physician,
have a two-year-old son, Jesse, and a daughter, Ann, 1. If,
in time, Jesse’s choice is to follow in his father’s
footsteps, he will become the fifth consecutive generation in
the family to do so on this same land. “I want the farm
to be here for him if he wants to farm,” the father said
|
|
Michigan dairyman Tim Demaray follows a policy
of managed debt, high-return farm improvements, and cow
comfort.
|
|
Tim Demaray believes his relatively small dairy farm
can be economically viable long into the future, even though many
Michigan dairies are trending toward herd sizes of 500 to 1,000 cows.
He sees debt management as the key to long-term success of the farm.
“It’s usually debt that makes or breaks a
dairy,” he said. “I’d like to keep debts under control
and have the operation in good financial condition for the future.”
He credits his late father, Robert Demaray, for teaching him the importance
of debt management.
Control Interest
“I don’t think you can farm without debt,”
he said, “but the important thing is you have to have your money
working for you, so if you’re going to incur debt, your cost
of borrowing money has to be in high-return areas such as dairy cows.”
|
Sometimes, debt is best managed by investing prudently
in equipment and facilities to save both labor costs and ever-increasing
remodeling costs in the future. He has done this in the milking
parlor by installing weight meters and automatic take-off milkers.
By keeping the farm up-to-date, Tim believes he is helping to
make it profitable and therefore easier for his son or another
successor to avoid unnecessary debt in years to come.
Investment That Pays
“We’ve also installed a liquid manure
system that permits us to collect and hold waste,” he said.
“With large dairies coming into Michigan, nutrient management
is going to be a growing issue. It seems we have to take a pro-active
approach and stay a half step ahead of the regulations.”
|
Just last year, he and Jan decided to tile all the land
in their ownership, a total of 240 acres. He said it will improve
the productivity of the land because it improves drainage. Even though
the tiling cost more than $300 an acre, he explained that it is still
“cheaper than buying a new farm,” and the benefits will
last well beyond their own lifetimes.
But not everything on this farm is oriented to the future.
Tim puts credit for the farm’s present success on the cows themselves.
“We’ve been blessed with good cows,” he said.
Low Cull Rate
In his view, milk production is a component of profitability,
but not the most important thing. “A key to profitability is
a low cull rate,” he said. “A cow doesn’t have to give
nearly as much milk if she’s going to be in our herd for six
or eight years. But if a cow is only going to be in the herd for a
lactation and a half, for instance, you really have to work her to
get enough milk out of her to get back the investment you have in
raising her.
|
“I would rather see lower productivity and
longer longevity in a cow,” he said. Tim has a number of
cows already in their sixth or seventh lactation. One cow in
particular is not his best milker, but Tim says she is valuable
because she breeds first time every time and always has heifer
calves. Cows remain in the Demaray herd, on average, for about
four lactations.
Tim believes cows live longer and produce more
when they are kept comfortable. Careful attention to fresh water
along with quiet, gentle handling, he said, are significant
to cow comfort and production. He uses energy-free stock tanks
to avoid stray voltage problems that plague some farms.
|
|
A modern cloth-covered barn houses dry cows.
|
|
Fresh Water Advantage
Fresh water continually trickles into the tanks which
are cleaned every week. He also makes sure every cow has ample access
to water by keeping the number of cows accessing each tank lower than
what is recommended.
“When it comes to care and comfort, cows return
what you give to them,” Tim said. First he watched his cows,
looking for trouble spots. He watched them getting up and down. When
they attempted to stand up, it was not uncommon for a leg to get caught
under the stall divider, causing injury.
|
|
Weight meters and automatic take-off milkers are
labor-saving investments Tim Demaray has made recently.
|
|
So he renovated the free-stall barn, putting in
narrower stalls and vulcanized rubber cow mattresses. The new
stalls are 46 inches wide, just two inches narrower than the
old ones, but what a difference two inches can make, he said.
In the 48-inch stalls, the cows would lie down in angled positions.
The two-inch narrower stalls encourage the big animals to lie
down straight and therefore enable them to get up on their feet
without injury.
While he would prefer sand in a free-stall barn,
Tim said it didn’t work with manure, so he uses the tough
rubber mats and spreads shredded straw over them for cleanliness.
|
Family Labor
This farm continues to depend solely on family labor.
Tim’s grandfather, Frank, at 85, is still working in the farm’s
dairy parlor a couple hours each day. Tim’s sister, Beth, handles
most of the milking chores. His mother, Vi, lives on the farm.
|
All the feed for their cows is raised on the farm.
There are 100 acres of alfalfa for haylage and 120 acres of
corn. Half of the corn crop is harvested for grain and half
as silage. They also grow about 240 acres of soybeans as a cash
crop.
When Tim considers the things he’d most like
to pass on to his children, a major one is his conviction that
a person deserves to work at an occupation he or she enjoys.
“Many people farm to make a living,” he said, “but
I’m just the opposite: I live to farm.”
“My father taught me to work hard and to
enjoy what I do,” he added. “People who don’t
love their work should look for other occupations.”
|
|
Tim Demaray and his wife, Jan, with son, Jesse,
and daughter, Ann.
|
|
|
