John Richmond’s journey as a dairy grazier started in junior high school watching grazing videos. His dream of owning a grazing dairy is now being realized with the purchase of 150 cows and a lease of 500 acres of mostly-permanent pasture. He recently showed it at a pasture walk sponsored by the River Country Resource Conservation and Development Council.
“In a time of high land prices with fickle milk prices, it’s hard for young farmers to jump into a million-dollar business,” said Mary Anderson, president of the council.
So after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Richmond applied to the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship program. He was linked with Charles Flodquist of Colfax.
Richmond said he spent a lot of time with accountants and lawyers creating a unique paper trail tailored to the needs of both farmers. Knowing where he wanted to go with a grass-based dairy was a big help. He keeps a notebook and sits down with a navigator once each month to discuss all aspects of the business in a structured and basic manner. He said it’s not been perfect; he and Flodquist don’t always agree. But they work out the problems.
He started with a seven-year lease on the land and equipment, and then began paying for the cows and buying equipment. That lease ends this year. He said it will take another three years to finish purchasing equipment before he looks at a land purchase, or continues with renting.
Flodquist’s land is a good fit for Richmond because most of it had not been sprayed or tilled, and was already a permanent pasture, Richmond said. Along with the Flodquist land he rents additional nearby land. Of those acres 350 to 400 are permanent pastures; they’re divided into 30 paddocks surrounded by high-tensile wire. Poly wire is used to divide those into daily paddocks; shale lanes are used between the barn and fields.
Richmond said alfalfa works better for him as part of a pasture blend than as a mechanically harvested crop. The animals will pick off the leaves and then it recovers within a week – whereas cutting it results in a month for regrowth. Impressive rain through this past summer allowed him to cut hay on most of his pastures for winter feed.
This year he grew 63 acres of corn for silage that he mixes with the alfalfa baleage in his winter ration. He purchases a minimum amount of grain to supplement, he said. Lately he’s been experimenting with cereal rye followed by sorghum for a feed source.
A big change for Richmond was removing his calf hutches, instead using outdoor group pens for his calves. He had observed a couple of calves that were routinely escaping and stealing milk from the others. He realized they gained better than the other animals without side effects. So he started allowing all the calves to drink as much milk as they wanted – and noticed an immediate improvement in overall health. He ensures milk temperature is at 100 degrees, and they have access to water, grain and straw.
He grows his bulls, which he said saves time compared to artificial insemination. He picks his bulls by production of the dams, commenting that “numbers say it all.” He leaves his bulls with the herd from July 1 to Jan. 15 to avoid winter calves, because of his lack of good facilities for handling them.
Richmond summed up his farming enterprise when he said, “I love grazing.”
Visit www.dga-national.org and www.rivercountryrcd.org for more information.
This is an original article written for Agri-View, a Lee Enterprises agricultural publication based in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit AgriView.com for more information.
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