Volatile commodity markets, whether for grain or for milk, are too uncertain for members of the VanTilburg family, who farm in Mercer County.

The family’s search for better marketing options led them to a dairy farming partnership with the McCarty family of Colby, Kan. Together, the partners built a new farm business, MVP Dairy, which sells milk directly to the Dannon Co. using a cost-plus pricing model. Now, instead of selling their crops, the VanTilburgs are feeding cows that make milk that’s processed into Dannon yogurt.

“Everything we produce is used to feed the cows,” explains Kyle VanTilburg, one of the partners in the new dairy.

When VanTilburg explains the financial strategy for the dairy, he uses a baseball analogy. “Do you want to hit a home run once in a while, or are you OK hitting those singles every day?” he asks. He’s convinced consistent singles are more likely to win the game. Instead of following the highs and lows of the milk market, the arrangement with Dannon is based on a budget that establishes the cost of production plus a profit above costs.

Besides sidestepping market volatility, MVP Dairy’s arrangement with Dannon allows the VanTilburgs to carry the value of their conservation practices from their fields to consumers. Kyle, along with his parents and brothers, have been using cover crops and other conservation practices on their farm ground for years. Those practices add to production costs, but commodity grain markets don’t reward or recognize investments in conservation, he explains. Dannon, on the other hand, recognizes the value of conservation.

Consumers are becoming more interested in how their food is produced, and they want to see traceability, says Brock Peters, general manager for MVP Dairy. “It used to be from the cow to the cup,” he says. “Now that’s changed, and it’s from the soil to the cup. It’s our job as suppliers and producers to give them that traceability.”

The dairy verifies its practices through the third-party certification company Validus. Validus will use random audits to check the dairy’s animal care, employee training and policies, environmental practices and the chain of custody of non-GMO feed, VanTilburg explains. “We’re ultimately showing the consumer we’re running the dairy the way we say we’re running it.”

Dairy partnership
Before joining forces with the VanTilburgs in Ohio, the McCarty family was already running four dairies in Kansas and Nebraska, supplying milk to a Dannon plant in Texas. The two families got together when they were both considering the purchase of an existing dairy in Ohio, says VanTilburg. “We started talking and realized we had similar goals,” he says.

It turned out that the farm both families were thinking of buying wasn’t a good fit, but they realized the McCartys’ connections with Dannon and dairy expertise were a good match with the VanTilburgs’ expertise in crop production and conservation. The families formed a partnership and bought 82 acres in Mercer County near the VanTilburgs’ existing land to build a new state-of-the-art dairy.

Construction of the dairy began in 2017, and the first cows were milked Nov. 13, 2018. The farm is permitted for 4,500 head, and currently has 4,200 cows and a staff of 35. The dairy ships more than 300,000 pounds of non-GMO milk every day to the Dannon yogurt plant about 16 miles away in Minster, Ohio.

Cow comfort
The new dairy’s facilities are set up for cow comfort, says dairy manager Brock Peters. “It’s designed to just let cows do what cows do.” The cows are housed in six tunnel-ventilated, freestall barns that have translucent polycarbonate siding to let in natural light. The animals are always sheltered from the weather as they eat, rest and walk to the milk parlor, explains Peters. The facilities haven’t been tested through the heat of a summer, but the dairy came through January’s snows and subzero temperatures with few problems, he says.

Cows are milked in an 80-stall rotary milking parlor. It takes about eight minutes from the time a cow steps into a stall for her to be milked and for the parlor to make a revolution. Currently, the milking parlor requires four people to clean udders and attach milkers, plus another person to guide cows in and out of the milking stalls. Eventually, the farm might add robotic equipment for attaching milkers and for dipping teats, but people will remain important in the process, says Peters. “Automation is fine, but you still need people to interact with the cows.”

If a cow needs extra attention for health care or breeding, the work is done when she is returning from a milking. That way, cows aren’t disturbed when they are in their freestall pens. “We keep them on schedule, and it keeps them happy,” says Peters.

Milk is pumped through a cooling and filtering system directly into 7,000-gallon tankers parked in an attached building. Throughout the day, the filled tankers are hooked up to semis and hauled to the Dannon plant. There, the tankers are cleaned and sealed with security tags before being returned to the farm.

The new dairy also includes silage bunkers, covered hay storage, and an enclosed feed storage and mixing facility. Cows eat total mixed rations based on their nutritional needs. Within the six freestall barns, the cows are divided into 12 groups: nine groups of milking cows and three groups of dry cows. They’re sorted based on size, age and stage of lactation, explains Peters.

As cows freshen, bull calves are sold to area farmers as day-old calves. Heifer calves are shipped off every few days to a heifer development ranch in Texas. Then, at about 22 months, two months prior to calving, some of the heifers return as replacements for the herd. The climate in Texas helps give the heifers a healthy start, which improves their longevity, says Peters.

Manure management
Although the dairy is not far from Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio, water flows the opposite direction toward Lake Erie. To protect the local watershed, as well as the water downstream, the dairy was built with a sophisticated manure handling and treatment system. “Basically, what we have here is a municipal waste system,” says VanTilburg. To start, manure from the freestall barns is flushed from the aisles into a sand lane outside the ends of the barns. There, the sand bedding settles out and is rinsed, so it can be reused. Next, liquid manure is pumped over sloped, stainless steel screens that separate out manure solids. At the bottom of the screens, the manure solids are pressed with a roller to remove more liquid, and then are augured outside to a composting area. Meanwhile, the manure liquids flow to a settling lagoon where more solids settle out. Then, they move on to a three-stage anaerobic lagoon, where microbes break down the manure. Next, treated water will flow into a 26-million-gallon irrigation pond, where it will be stored until it can be irrigated onto crop ground. By that time, the water won’t contain many nutrients, but those nutrients will be applied at crop removal rates, explains VanTilburg. The plan is to install center-pivot irrigation on 500 to 700 acres of cropland and to use the water in dry summer months, when it can improve crop production. “One inch on 500 acres is 13.5 million gallons, so 2 inches will empty the pond,” he explains. Liquid is also recycled through the system to flush barn aisles, he adds.

Community engagement
Even before the dairy began milking cows, community interest in the farm was obvious, VanTilburg says. The dairy was included in a drive-it-yourself farm tour coordinated by the local soil and water conservation district last summer. They expected to see maybe 1,000 visitors, but saw at least 4,000. Even before that tour, plans for the dairy included a visitors center — but the response to the tour showed how important it is to let people see how the dairy treats cows, employees and the environment.

“A lot of the general public is too many generations removed from the farm,” he notes. “We want to do it right, and be open so everybody can see that.”

The visitors center is still under construction but is expected to be open late this spring. It will include a balcony overlooking the milking parlor as well as interactive displays.

For additional information on the dairy or on arranging a tour, visit MVP Dairy on Facebook, or check the VanTilburg Farms website.

Keck writes from Raymond, Ohio.