Eric Lyon is the owner of the farm, for some time he was a chairman of the National Jersey Association of the USA. For a long time, the farm was engaged in breeding business — the breeding of pure-breed jersey.

The farm has been producing milk for 90 years. They grew from 50 to 400 heads of dairy cows. Eric (63 years) belongs to the third generation of owners and farmers. His children do not plan to return (2 pilots, landscape designer and programmer of Microsoft), so they sell cows. Herd from 400 heads dropped to 300. Now the dairy herd is 250 cows. They plan to change milk for beef production — red angus.

They have 485 hectares of land. Crop rotation: corn, soya, alfalfa. A year before sowing alfalfa, sow barley or oats. Seeds of alfalfa are used for 3−5 years. They have 3−4 yields for the season. Irrigation/irrigation is not used, only natural moisture. Yield is 12 t/ha. The cost of land is 20 thousand dollars.

There are 12 people on the farm.

Reproduction

Calving interval is 13 months.

Cows are fertilized artificially; the price of sperm dosage is $15. Uses very little sexed sperm. Why? In summer, there are problems with fertility, and sexed semen has a lower fertilizing capacity.

The herd has very good genetics, therefore, due to the fact that they are selling cows, and for better economy, bulls are selected and bred in a natural way.

Feeding

The diet for dairy cows consists of corn and alfalfa silage, corn grain, rapeseed meal (has a slightly better amino acid profile than soya), corn gluten, cotton seeds, fat, and fried soybeans.

The diet is developed by a nutritionist.

To feed one cow 6 dollars are spent for a day. Hired workers are very expensive. The margin is 4.5 dollars per 100 kg of milk.

Milking

Milking parlour 2×12 is used twice a day. Each month control milking is made. Silicone lids on glasses are used. Pre-dipping is based on chlorine, post-dipping — based on iodine.

Total milk bulk is 7264 kg of milk per day.

There is a cow in the herd that is 8 years old and has produced 545 kg of fat for 300 days of lactation.

Calves growing

It's a little hard to grow jersey calves. The main problem is diarrhea. There is pneumonia sometimes. Calves are intensively vaccinated.

They drink milk and replacer for 60 days. After 2 portions of colostrum during the week they are given a dry milk, and then a commodity unpasteurized milk from cows.

Manure management

Manure from dairy cows is removed twice a day. It is assembled on one site and stored in a simple and almost ancient way without a lagoon. During the year, manure is exported to fields, even in winter. The herd is small, so there are no strict regulations for the disposal of manure (regulation is effective when the herd is 400 cows).

Comfort of cows

Dairy cows are kept loose on sand bedding. The sand (fresh river) began to be used 40 years ago. Before that, there were straw and corn stalks. The cost of sand for a week is 15 tons of sand at 300 stalls. The newest cow is 12 years old.