Country Aire Farms, LLC, Dedicated to Milk Quality

摘要

Here's a little history about our dairy. Country Aire Farms began in the 1930s with my grandfather Edward starting out with nine cows and working his way up to 60 by the early 1960s. My father Budd Gerrits purchased the farm in 1969 after returning from Ag Short Course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As my mom, lone, and dad continued to grow the farm to 200 cows, my brother Mike and I became very interested in taking over the family dairy farm after high school. Mike and I knew the future would be to milk more cows and proceeded to form our own L.L.C. in 1996, in which we bought our first 380 cows with the help of our dad. In 1998, the first stage of expansion began with a green site across the road from the old farm with a new BouMatic 40-stall rotary parlor and 700-foot (213 meters) milking barn, which allowed us to milk more than 800 cows. We further evolved by adding one milking barn in 2006 and a special needs barn in 2008 to help us focus on better management of cows in their most critical time. Then, we decided to add another barn for dry cows and steam-up heifers in 2012. In 2011, two farmers approached us about the possibility of buying their farm that came with 540 cows close to our main dairy and nice land base, so we decided to pull the trigger on it. Today, we have four sons who are in business with us. They specialize in areas of the dairy, including finance, herd management, maintenance and cropping. Currently with both dairies, we milk 3,500 cows and harvest of 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) of alfalfa, corn and wheat. Our rolling herd average is 33,297 pounds (15,103 kilograms) of milk, 1,292 pounds (586 kilograms) of fat and 995 pounds (451 kilograms) of protein. Our somatic cell count (SCC) at the home dairy averages 107,000 and the standard plate count (SPC) averages 2,000. At the Fox Ridge farm, which took home Platinum in the National Dairy Quality Awards program in 2016 and 2017, the SCC averaged 66,000 and the SPC averaged 1,000 over the last year.