Virginia dairy farmers struggle to keep business afloat

BEDFORD, Va. (AP)--Billy Turner's family dairy stands at the edge of a cornfield, deep in the patchwork of farmland in Bedford County, a collection of stalls and paddocks stitched together by strips of concrete flooring.

Here, dozens of milk cows lumber about in the midday heat, munching on nutrition-rich grains and lounging on mounds of sawdust, hooves tucked under massive bellies. Giant ceiling fans whirl above and a cool, dusty breeze gusts through the cavernous barn structure keeping their coats cool.

Belying this seemingly leisurely setting are dairy cows hard at work--turning hundreds of pounds of feed into thousands of gallons of milk.

For in the last several years, boosting milk productivity has become a key tactic for Virginia dairy farmers such as Turner struggling to keep their businesses afloat amid sagging milk prices and rising fuel costs.

"Years ago you were doing pretty well if your cows averaged about 40 pounds (of milk) a day," said Turner, 56, a second-generation farmer whose family founded the dairy in the 1940s. "Nowadays you can't survive on a 40-pound-a-day average."

That's the irony of the genetic miracle that is the modern milk cow.

Along with increases in milk production have come an excess of supply and flattening milk prices that erode farmers' profits and threaten their livelihoods. Milk cows are becoming more efficient and dairy producers are relying on fewer of them to keep production steady. Today the average dairy cow produces about 60 percent more milk than it did 25 years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

For a dairy farm, even the slightest increase in milk production, say an extra pound a day from each cow, translates into thousands more dollars in revenue a year. But farmers are awash in their own product and pursuing still higher volume to make up for feeble profits.

This production treadmill is wearing. The number of dairies in Virginia has dropped dramatically in the past two decades with the state losing about 100 farms every three or four years. As of January, the total number of dairy farms dipped to 796--roughly half the number operating in 1980, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

"In a lot of ways we're our own worse enemies," said Dale Gardner, executive secretary for the Virginia Dairymen's Association.

Smaller dairies that fall behind on new technology and fail to develop cost-cutting measures will gradually find themselves weeded out of the business, said Bennett Cassell, a professor of dairy science at Virginia Tech. "It is the equivalent of what Wal-Mart did to retailing," he added. About 70 percent of milk produced in Virginia comes from small dairy operations with herds of fewer than 200 cows.

Some Virginia farmers are adding more cows to expand their operations, but are increasingly finding themselves boxed in by rising land values and encroaching development, Gardner said. The cost of adding more land--a necessity if a farm is to expand its herd--doesn't make sense with milk prices sinking.

"When land becomes available at $10,000 an acre, you can't afford to buy it to pay for a little more milk," he said.

Meanwhile, the cows, with repeated nudges from science, keep on doing their part better all the time.

High-producing cows have hit close to 30,000 pounds a year, Cassell said, a staggering figure considering that the average dairy cow in Virginia was producing only about 9,000 pounds annually in 1970. And with the march of technology stomping ahead at an ever quickening-pace, it's difficult to say if there is an end in sight.

"I heard people say 30 years ago that this cow can't produce any more milk, that we've reached a point where she's physically overfed," said Wayne Dudley, a spokesman for Select Sire Power, a bovine genetics company with a branch in Rocky Mount. "Yet we have doubled production for that animal since then."

For generations, dairy producers have bred cows to be more efficient, selecting those with traits favorable for high milk production--sturdy legs, udders suited for milking machines--and breeding them with other high-producers, Dudley said.

Better barn management and herd lifestyle adjustments--such as better feed and cooler barns--have also played a crucial role in boosting productivity.

The term "cow comfort" has become the latest buzz phrase among farmers hoping to maximize milk production by providing their herds with cozy work environs, applying the old adage--a happy worker makes for a productive one.

Like many dairy farmers, Turner keeps his cows off grass for the majority of the year, opting to feed them a protein-rich mixture of grains or so-called "total mixed rations"--the bovine equivalent of an energy bar.

He kneels down by a wooden trough, scoops some earthy-sweet-smelling grains into his palm and lets some seep through the crevices between his fingers. With his thumb, he rubs the leftover mound, revealing its pulverized ingredients--corn, silage, cottonseeds, malt barley and soybean.

Behind him dozens of cows line up on both sides of the trough, their snouts buried in the flaky, gray mixture. The heat is unforgiving and some of the cows pant and heave for air. Turner shakes his head. Such discomfort is not good for the dairy's bottom line.

"Milk production goes way down when the weather's hot," Turner explains. "You take bodies as big as theirs with hair all over them, they suffer. And they don't eat."

And a loss of appetite could mean less output, dairy farmers say. Most milk cows eat about 100 pounds of feed a day.

Some dairies have installed elaborate sprinkler systems that spritz the cows when temperatures rise above a certain temperature, said Sue Puffenbarger, a Virginia Tech cooperative extension agent and dairy specialist in Franklin County.

Padded stall beds have also become popular among farmers looking to ease the leg strain of a cow carrying nearly a half-ton in body weight. Some dairy supply companies even sell cow water beds, rectangular sleeves of rubber, filled with water and touted as alleviating swollen knees and hock abrasions.

"We do everything we can to tweak things to increase production," said Dale Boitnott, 43, a second-generation dairy farmer who runs a 175-milking herd farm near Boones Mill.

Boitnott's dairy recently renovated its milking parlor as a way of cutting labor costs and reducing the time spent milking the herd. The updated parlor, a 24-cow chamber with stainless-steel panels, digital screens and automatic gates, reduces the milking time from 14 hours to 6 hours a day and has upped per-cow milk production by about 10 pounds a day, he said.

But with wholesale milk prices rising little in the past 25 years--hovering around $12 for every 100 pounds of milk--dairy producers in Virginia are dubious that such slight adjustments will boost production enough to cover the operating costs.

"You might get a few more pounds of milk per cow--you might go from 59 pounds to a 65-pound average, but if all your input costs went up and the price you receive went down, then you can't get ahead," Boitnott said, adding that his dairy farm is already experiencing a "negative cash flow." "When your cost of production is higher than what you're getting, you got to really stop and think, 'Why am I doing this?' It's a vicious cycle."

Animal protection agencies are also worried that the pressure to perform at such peak production levels can wear on cows' immune systems, making them more vulnerable to infections and reproductive problems.

In 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug administration approved a synthetic version of a hormone called bovine somatotropin that stimulates milk production by injecting a greater number of proteins into the pituitary gland. The hormone, which a cow's body produces naturally in small doses, has become a rallying point for animal rights advocates and even many consumers.

Injections of the hormone might lead to increased risks of mastitis, a type of udder infection, said Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States. It can also cause cows to metabolize their food at such a rate that their bodies are not able to absorb the proper nutrients, he added.

Injections of the hormone boost milk production by about 10 pounds a day on average, which is "a good bit of money," Puffenbarger said, adding that about 30 percent of dairies nationwide use it to increase production. "It's another tool," she said, but not a magic bullet.

Dairy farmers say they are well aware of the delicate balance that comes with working with a biological creature. The harder a cow is pushed, the more problems she has in the long run, which is why careful barn management and a watchful eye are key tools in keeping cows profitable, farmers say. They are also wary of pushing their livestock to the limit. Ultimately it could end up jeopardizing business. "You take as good of care of them as you can," Turner said, eyeing his herd of black-and-white Holsteins. "They pay the bills."

Date: 9/21/06

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