Largest Dairy Farm 1972

Ran across a group of New Holland magazines from the 1960's and early 70's an article on what they said was the biggest registered Holstein dairy farm in the USA at that time 1200 cows.According to other articles in the magazine with the equipment I have now I'm one of the top equiped farms anywhere since I have several duplicates of their
ultimate machines.Looks like the featured farms are doing pretty good with the equipment but these days the story line is no one can get anything done with the same equipment.

It?s funny how times change.

I have a Gleaner L3 now. And hard to get done on my few acres in fall.

When I think back, that was a big machine back in the 80?s....

Paul

One thing that has changed from 1980?s to now is that the corn and grain yields per acre have increased so older machines may have to run slower to handle the yields.

And they had how many employees? What did they pay them per hour? Tom

There was a farm in my county- Wern Farm in Genessee, that had 1100 head of Guernseys back in the 20's. Multiple barns and farmsteads, all painted yellow. The biggest had a stanchion barn with cows on two levels. Anyway, they had a bunkhouse there, and the kitchen served 90 hot meals, 3 times a day. Also shipped their own milk to Chicago, and had their own rail siding to load the milk. Today the farm is a pheasant hunting reserve, the biggest barn burned a few years ago. The rail siding is still there, with some old grain bins next to it. Times change.

I'm curious as to who the biggest registered herd was in 1972. My guess is Green MEadows in MI. Or Maddox in CA. Big and registered were not all that common paired together.

In 1976 there were 35 small dairy farms in the county where I live. Population was close to 13,500 people. Today there is only 3 dairies left. One is the largest producing herd left in the state. One of the others is organic. Population is still close to 13,500.The milk used to be hauled less than 50 miles to be processed, now it is hauled hundreds of miles across 3 states. Farming is hard work.

Article says it was Green Meadows Farms.

Just the other day I drove by a local Dairy farm. Well it used to be a Dairy but now all I seen looked like black angus or angus cross ?

Green Meadows Farms. Elsie Mi. Not too far from me. In the 70's they tried running generators with methane. It worked except for the corrosiveness of the methane caused engine trouble. They eventually gave up on it

Back in the 60's on our bus route,I think every farm but 4 had milk cows, 11 farms had dairy. Now if you take that route there are no dairies at all and only a handful have any livestock, but there are more homes. Times change.

Back in the late 70?s a average dairy in my area had about 100 cows and no row crops. Few were even cutting hay. Everything was hauled in.

Today you don?t know the dairy business if you think the a 100 cow business plan can work.

Growing up in the 60's we had 26 cows total. I remember when dad had the milk can route one of the customers had enough cows for 2 cans of milk every day. Things have changed.

Thinking of how things have changed, we had our first farm in Joliet in 1926 with 8 cows. That was enough to bring in a little money, make butter to sell and still manageable with 40 acres. We didn't get a tractor until 1966 using horses for the first 40 years. Every crop that was planted went to feeding the cows, a handful of pigs, a team of draft horses and 40 or so chickens every year. It was basically subsistence living. The house didn't have power or running water. We had a gravity fed spring house to keep things cool and a true root cellar about 6 feet down with tornado doors. We moved to our new farm in 1971, and there were 66 dairies within a 5 mile circumference of our place. In 2014, the last dairy closed and all the old barns, homes and equipment were left to either rot, sold in auctions or bulldozed to make way for row crop production. It is sad to drive by locations where you can see barn foundations still present and driveway entrances overgrown with weeds. I think of all the families that lived in these places over so many years. People who had tough living, worked harder than most can fathom and endured a time in history that was much more uncertain than the present. I think of all the farms that were close together compared to today. Having real neighbors, helping out when a hay crop had to come in and everyone pulling together when things got tough. My grandfather will be 100 this year. He remembers the Depression, the War, the mechanical revolution and everything since. I remember the early 80's going with him to town to watch people drive white crosses into the ground in front of the banks. I remember the drought of '88 and how it finished off so many people who barely survived the earlier part of the decade. I remember '97 being a bumper crop year with so much grain production that they were using gravel rail cars for storage. The ebb and flow of farming is unlike anything else. I consider farmers to be the ultimate optimists. We have to be in order to every attempt this way of life.

We now have several large dairy operations near us which is about thirty miles west of Phoenix and there was a article in the local paper recently that stated that they were milking twenty two thousand cows at this one operation. Hard to imagine keeping your arms around an opperation that size. I had no idea how many cows that they had but I have seen a semi load with milk at least four times a day and that was when I happened to be driving by. They said that they chop twelve semi loads of alfalfa a day 365 days a year.

I can?t imagine what kind of power requirements it would take to cool that much milk in Arizona!

Not many dairy farms anywhere near that size here in Canada. There are some 250-500 cow farms, but the average is still around 80 cows. Our numbers are a little less cows than the average size dairy in Canada. We have zero employees. Lots of farms are going to robotic milking systems. When I started dairying 40 years ago the average farm was 30 cows and there were 15,500 dairy farms in Ontario. Now there are some 3,400 dairy farmers in Ontario, and they produce about twice the amount of milk per cow. A farmer milking 50-100 cows can still make a decent living dairy farming here, but few want the commit to the work, or want to invest the capital into a business that gives a rate of return that isn?t much better than bank interest, yet still leaves you with plenty of work and risk. In other words, there is many easier ways to make a buck than milking cows.

In 1972 the vast majority of farms locally would have been well below 100 lactating cows. Right in the neighborhood herd size would have been 30-50 lactating cows. The Cornell Research Farm in Harford, NY was probably one of the largest in the region at that time. I don't remember the herd size anymore but probably several hundred cows not counting young stock. Four Harvestore silos. Empire Farms Days was held there during the early 1970's so the opportunity was there to see a portion of it.

There is a dairy farm abt 35 mi south of Chicago. Supposedly they have 17 - 18,000 cows on the farm , so they must be in 2nd place in USA behind the one in Arizona. Think there is a restaurant there where you can have a glass of milk .One would think they have robotic equipment in a facility that large, then hire workers to watch and repair the robot equipment when needed.That land is good farmland ,they could grow anything the cows needed to eat.

Might as well sell your stock if you are going to use a sickle mower and new Holland 56 rake

(quoted from post at 11:43:05 05/20/20) There is a dairy farm abt 35 mi south of Chicago. Supposedly they have 17 - 18,000 cows on the farm , so they must be in 2nd place in USA behind the one in Arizona. Think there is a restaurant there where you can have a glass of milk .One would think they have robotic equipment in a facility that large, then hire workers to watch and repair the robot equipment when needed.That land is good farmland ,they could grow anything the cows needed to eat.

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n southern Idaho there are two dairies milking 26000 cows per day, then the big one runs at 50,000 cows per day. they do not store the milk just run it thru a chiller and pump it directly into tank trailers.

Exactly. L3 was an 8 row machine, it handles 6 real good now.

Paul

I think that power requirements are one of their smaller problems as the largest nuclear power plant in the country is just west of the opperation. A lot of huge grid lines in the area that also have power coming down from the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams. This place is also very dependent on the Central Arizona Canal System as they have several thousand acres of the nicest irrigated alfalfa that I have ever seen. I told my wife that if those cows don't give milk on that quality of alfalfa they deserve to be McDonald burgers.

in the mid to late 60s my dad was dhia field tech. his largest herd was something over 100 cows. he would get all worked when it was time of month to go there to take milk samples. but then he could get all lathered up about almost nothing.
when it was time for me to go to junior college he went off on me yelling about this is going to cost lots of money aren't worried about it boy? I said why should I be worried about it you are worried enough for both of us, I thought he was to blow a head gasket!