New Mexico dairy finds success in numbers

By Lindsay West

Randy and Jenise Vander Dussen not only have a large family of six sons, but they also have one of the largest dairies in the southwest.

Located in the booming dairy region of eastern New Mexico, the Vander Dussen's Rajen Dairy produces an average of 330,000 gallons of milk a day from a herd of 4,600 milk cows.

While owning and operating a large-scale successful dairy may be a daily challenge, it's something Randy knew he wanted to do from the beginning.

"I grew up in the dairy industry, and that's basically how I got started," Vander Dussen said. "It's something I've been around all my life."

The son of Dutch immigrants, Randy worked on his father's dairy and other neighboring dairies from the time he was old enough to work. When his father offered to lease a dairy to him after he graduated from high school in 1974, Randy jumped at the opportunity.

Starting with 240 milk cows on leased California land, the Vander Dussens partnered with Jenise's father and brother and built up a herd of 3,200 cows. Twenty years and two large dairies later, Randy decided to start his own dairy operation while his children were still young. In 1992, Vander Dussen sold his half of the partnership and moved his family to Clovis, New Mexico, where he built the Rajen Dairy from scratch.

"What I liked about the Clovis area was that the property values were quite a bit cheaper than in California," Vander Dussen said. "Plus, there's a good availability of feed and it has a great dry air climate, which is conducive to building these large outside dairies."

Today, the Rajen Dairy operation, which got its name from the combination of "Randy" and "Jenise", encompasses 1,500 acres around the Clovis area.

Using only a few existing corrals from a dairy that was previously at the location, Vander Dussen designed a dairy farm layout that would accommodate his style and a large number of milk cows.

New facilities

Sporting Spanish-style architecture complimentary of its southwestern surroundings, the Rajen Dairy milking facility is immaculate. Two wings containing a total of 96 milking units are conjoined by a central building that houses the herdsmen's office, power center, milk silos and a glazed terra cota tile-lined breezeway.

A little over 11,000 Holsteins make up the Rajen Dairy's total herd, including milk cows, dry cows and growing heifers. On average, 4,600 cows are milked twice a day in two "Double 24" herringbone parlors. Each day at 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., cows begin the milking process with a stop in the wash pen where they are rinsed off to rid their udders of any mud and grime, and then move to the drip-dry pen. An automated crowd gate then pushes 48 cows at a time into the parlors where they are attached to air-powered milk claws. Once milking is complete, cows' teats are dipped for sanitation, and return to their respective pens.

"We have 250 cows per pen, and those run along three feed alleys that are each about a half a mile long," Vander Dussen said. Each pen is sloped 5.6 degrees to provide optimal runoff during rainfall.

The Double 24 parlors operate 20 hours a day milking about 200 cows per hour. The remaining four hours are set aside for cleaning pits and milking units, and scraping cow traffic areas.

Vander Dussen said the Wisconsin-built automated milking machines used at the dairy allow quick and easy maintenance so that no time is wasted during the tight schedule of the milking process.

"None of the milk stays here very long," Vander Dussen said. "We store milk in four 8,000-gallon silo tanks and ship it out on a daily basis. We will usually ship out about six and a half semi-truck loads every day."

Rajen crew

In order to effectively operate a large scale dairy operation, Vander Dussen relies on a team of 45 full-time employees who are divided into five different groups: milk hands, herdsmen, a feed crew, a calf-raising crew and a farm crew.

"We have a crew of four herdsmen here, and they look over herd health," Vander Dussen said. "We don't have a full time vet, so we try to take care of all of our sick cows here on the farm. We test cows to see what their production is and do a lot of work with the first cows and transitional cows to keep them healthy."

All cows at the dairy are bred by artificial insemination year round. The herdsman keep careful record of heat dates, dry cow numbers, culls and pen changes, which are then given to the dairy office manager who enters the data into a computer system. A daily printout is given back to the herdsman, reporting the cows that should be coming into heat.

"Keeping an eye on every detail is important when you want to get the most out of your cow production," he said.

With 20 to 25 cows calving each day, a full-time crew of five calf raisers wean, feed and monitor calves as they develop.

Once calves reach three months of age, they are moved to the "heifer ranch", a separate location 200 miles away in Estancia, New Mexico. Due to limited space when the dairy was first built, Vander Dussen decided to lease extra land to raise his heifers. Nearly 3,800 heifers are now housed at the heifer ranch, some of which are used as replacement heifers for the dairy.

Four feed crew workers strategically feed a total mixed ration to each cow group at the dairy.

"The concentrates are mixed prior to feeding with silage, hay and corn," Vander Dussen said. "We'll feed approximately 30 loads a day when we feed milk cows, dry cows and heifers, and its all fed out of feed trucks that are weighed and monitored on the computer."

Cost effective feeding is something Vander Dussen gives close attention.

"We work with a dairy nutritionist, so we can get the biggest bang for our buck by balancing the rations based on what we have available in storage," he said. "Getting the most milk production and the best herd health in the most inexpensive way is our main goal."

Over 20 storage bays on the west side of the dairy house a variety of commodities that are used for feed rations. Alfalfa hay is brought in from neighboring states.

Vander Dussen hires a full-time cropping systems worker to manage the 1,100 acres of corn, Wheat and alfalfa that are grown at the dairy location and nearby areas.

Although the dairy could produce its own, high quality alfalfa hay, Vander Dussen says double cropping Wheat and corn allows for more dry matter and fiber production per acre. The alfalfa produced by the dairy's farming segment is used as haylage for feed rations.

"Our feed costs make up about half of what it costs to produce milk," he said.

Because the dairy and farming operations compliment each other, the Rajen Dairy owner is able to produce a portion of his own feeding rations, while utilizing composted manure from the dry lot pens as fertilizer on his crops.

"About four or five times a year we scrape up manure in the pens and haul it out to the back of the dairy where 100 percent of it is turned into compost," he said. "It's either used on my farms or it will go to other dairy farms."

Precious commodity

Like most of the southwest region, water is a precious commodity in eastern New Mexico. Vander Dussen said water conservation is an important part of daily operations at the dairy and on his fully irrigated crops.

"Water is an asset," he said. "We will use water three or four times here on the dairy before it's applied to the crops. It is something we have to conserve and reuse as much as possible."

Vander Dussen says the stiff state and federal regulations contribute the biggest challenge of running a dairy operation.

"I think our industry is more regulated than oil and gas," he said. "We are state and federally regulated environmentally, on the quality of milk, on what we're allowed to feed to our cows and on our pricing by way of the federal market."

Constantly changing environmental regulations make dairy farmers a moving target, Vander Dussen said. "You just have to learn to work with it."

"We have to be careful to be very agronomically correct," he said. "We can't apply too much manure water on the crops, because it can provide more nutrients than what the crops can uptake."

Other environmental measures taken at Rajen Dairy include lining lagoons to prevent infiltration of excess nutrients into the soil, as well as soil and water sampling four times a year.

"There's a lot of government paper work that has to be done every month and a lot of reporting back to the state and the feds about what we do environmentally."

In a market that has seen its ups and downs over the past few years, Vander Dussen says you have to make adjustments with changing milk prices.

"Milk prices are always an issue," he said. "When prices are good, it gives you the opportunity to make improvements to your dairy all the way from equipment to expansion. The last six months milk prices have been depressed, so you have to hold back for a little while."

Future plans

With six sons to carry on the Vander Dussen dairy dynasty, Vander Dussen has optimistic plans for the future of Rajen Dairy.

"I'd like to eventually build some more dairies in the future, especially if my sons decide to come on board."

"The older sons seem to be interested in staying on at the dairy and have actively worked on the farm all of their lives," he said. "My oldest son, Sybrand, graduated from Eastern New Mexico and is now a full-time herdsman at the dairy. I'm pretty sure he wants to go into the dairy business."

Sons Jonathan and Daniel are each pursuing agriculture degrees at Texas Tech and New Mexico State, while the youngest three sons, Bryan, Cody and Jared are in high school and junior high.

Raising six sons and operating a large-scale dairy may seem like a lot of work, but for Randy and Jenise Vander Dussen, its just another day on the job.

Date: 5/25/06

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