Cushman Dairy Credits Increases to Breeding, Forage Quality, & Team Effort
Monday, May 10th, 2010
Frequent interaction among the staff of Cargill Animal Nutrition and Cushman Dairy is paying off for the Franklin, Conn., farm.
Cushman Dairy is milking over 1,000 cows, with a short-term goal to reach 1,100 in the milking herd. The farm’s owner-management team is Nate Cushman, and his nephews, brothers Dave, Don and James Smith.
Founded in the 1920s, Cushman Dairy now has 18 employees and grows 850 acres of corn and 500 acres of hay annually, to feed the herd. The farm has worked with Cargill Animal Nutrition for close to a decade.
Since October 2009, Cushman Dairy has maintained a milk production increase of 10 lbs per cow, part of the farm’s overall goal to reach 85 lbs/cow/day production average.
“The production increases stem from a lot of things – improved breeding, better forages. We followed some of the Cargill experts’ advice in feeding and grouping strategies, and it made a world of difference,” said James Smith.
In addition to the upward trend in milk production, 2009 brought the farm a new freestall dairy barn. Half of the new facility has sand bedding, aimed at increasing cow comfort in calving. The farm owners hope to grow their milking herd by another 70 cows, to hit their targets for facilities’ efficiencies.
Periodically, a Cargill team that includes animal nutritionists, veterinarians and others visits the farm, tours the barns, and offers recommendations and identifies areas for improvement, a process that Smith said was invaluable to the operation.
The Cargill team has been a “huge benefit” in developing cattle grouping strategies and managing fresh cows, Smith said. The farms also appreciated that some Cargill staff are fluent Spanish-speakers and able to converse with farm employees.
“We always want to feed the cows better, and we are constantly working on feeding cows as cost-effectively as we can, and they have really worked with us on that, whether it’s forward-contracting our purchased feed, or looking at ways to improve forage quality,” Smith said.
As the farm is now in the new growing season, improvements to forage quality are a top-priority – “at least the parts that aren’t weather dependent that we can improve,” Smith said, adding that he anticipated drawing on Cargill’s expertise.
“We encourage them to come out to the farm often,” he said.
