June is Dairy Month and two Kansas dairies share how they do it all, from upgrading their dairies with technology, sharing their dairy’s nutrition plan and the safety and storage of milk, and creating public awareness about the importance of dairy in meals.
On her family’s dairy, Rottinghaus Holstein Farm in Seneca in northeast Kansas, Stacy Rethman farms full time with her parents, milking 500 cows. The dairy was started in 1933.
“We sell all of our milk to Dairy Farmers of America, a milk cooperative, and they ship the milk to numerous locations most of it right here in Kansas. Then it ends up back in our local grocery stores,” Rethman said. “We are extremely focused on making sure the milk we ship out is of highest quality and maintained below 41 degrees when its shipped to the plant.”
The milk, which has never been touched by human hands, travels through a sanitized stainless-steel pipeline.
She also proudly shares that milk has 13 essential vitamins and minerals and that one glass of milk contains 8 grams of protein.
Rethman, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and the assistant farm manager, was also a middle school teacher for seven years and enjoys providing opportunities for children to learn about the dairy industry and her farm through the Discover Dairy organization’s Adopt A Cow program. When the school year starts in September, Rethman picks out a newborn calf for a class to virtually adopt and she takes pictures and provides stories about where it’s living and how it’s eating. The information is distributed to participating classrooms. Students are excited to learn about her calves and have sent her many letters and cards.
At the end of the school year, the students have watched their calf, which is now 6 to 8 months old, that is now part of the Rottinghaus milking herd.
Any teacher, home-school, 4-H or other organization can sign up to Adopt A Cow.
After years of hand milking their 500 cows three times a day, the Rottinghaus Holstein Farm has installed robotic milkers.
“We retrofitted our 224 free-stall barn with four Lely A5 robotic milkers in 2019. Forty percent of our dairy herd was milked by these robots until January 2023, when we retrofitted the other free-stall barn with four more Lely A5s,” Rethman said. The Lely A5s, a popular brand of robotic milkers, took the place of the Rottinghaus Farm’s double 16 herringbone parlor.
“Now, with the robot, all our cows wear an activity tracking collar, and the amount of real-time data we get on their milking performance and their health has been a big change for our farm,” Rethman said.
With the robotic milkers, Rottinghaus Holstein Farm can collect colostrum from their cows, which is the first milk that cows make after having a calf, and is invaluable for the calf’s nutrition.
Rethman’s favorite part of working on the farm is being with family and making sure the cows are happy and comfortable.
OHLDE FAMILY FARMS
Another Kansas dairy, Ohlde Family Farms in Linn, Kan., (with additional locations in the Kansas/Nebraska region) milks 4,000 head of dairy cows at their locations. The Ohlde’s have been milking cows since the family came to the U.S. from Germany. Ohlde Dairy’s history started in Linn on Sept. 4, 1955, when newlyweds Robert and Norma Ohlde started what is now Ohlde Dairy. In 2016, the first half of a cross-vent barn was added to make more room for the growing herd and the second half was finished in summer of 2018.
Also in 2016, they added Carter Creek in Linn, a heifer development feedlot to better monitor and care for the herd.
In December 2022, large crowds came out to the grand opening of the Ohlde’s robotic StateLine Dairy in Morrowville, Kan. Then, in February 2023, that location almost doubled to its current capacity. Cows meander up to the robots to get milked by 10 Lely A5 robotic milking units.
“A5s are maybe the fifth version, which updates like your phone. And at the end of 2021, a building was there at StateLine Dairy that wasn’t a milk parlor, but we retrofitted to milk cows. It was an opportunity for us to experiment with the technology there,” said dairy farmer Justin Ohlde of Ohlde Dairy.
At the dairy manure and wastewater are removed from pens constantly and recycled through a screw press to make bedding (green bedding) used to keep the individual stalls clean and comfortable. There’s also an automated feed pusher that moves through the barn several times a day so the cows always have access to feed.
The Ohldes also own and operate Prairieland Dairy in Firth, Neb., a 24/7 dairy operation, where their cows produce more than 137,000 pounds or 16,000 gallons of milk per day.
Regarding nutrition, their herd receives two different rations made up of a combination of corn or corn silage and different varieties of hay, plant-based proteins and vitamins and minerals. Each ration is specific to the cow’s requirements based on the amount of milk she is producing.
The Ohlde family also owns Prairieland Gold in Firth, a composting facility that combines dairy manure with other organic products and removes the total suspended solids from the slurry for composting. The water is cleaned for reuse in the dairy. The farm also makes pet food (wet and dry) and the composting facility uses waste from lunch programs at Lincoln, Neb., public schools and organic waste from area facilities.
“We get products in from food waste, and if it’s in an aluminum can we can pull that off, mix the product that would go to the landfill in with manure and compost it,” Ohlde said. They also recycle the packaging.
The process for the liquid manure from the dairy begins with moving solids. Larger particles are pressed to remove excess water, and relocated to the composting pad. Then, water is sent to a secondary screen, receives polymers to enhance clumping of solids, and the solids are removed for composting. The remaining water goes to the dairy barn for use in flushing the barns or land and applied as a crop nutrient. The extracted solids go to the composting pad, are stacked in windrows and mixed with a compost turner in a 12-to-16-week cyclical process.
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