FOR the past 16 years Drumgoon Dairy in South Dakota has been steadily expanding but a recent major investment in robotic technology has helped boost cow numbers to 6100.
It's been quite a journey for farm owner Rodney Elliott and his family who emigrated from their Northern Ireland homeland to the US in 2006.
Rodney was milking 140 cows and ran a few beef animals back home, but with a lack of access to more land, it was impossible to expand the farm. With this barrier in his mind Rodney, wife Dorothy and their three children took the bold decision to emigrate to pastures new and are now running the successful Drumgoon Dairy near Lake Norden.
"When I reached 140 cows at home I couldn't see the next step forward that made financial sense," Rodney said.
"We started looking at other places to farm including France, New Zealand and Australia, as I wanted a system that meant our children were not going to have to milk cows twice a day every day for months on end as I did.
"There needed to be a better system in place that let us enjoy life too."
After Rodney saw an ad seeking dairy farmers in South Dakota he went on a fact-finding tour of the region to see if it was for them, and, as it turned out, two years later the region became their new home.
South Dakota is more popular as an arable and beef state growing predominantly corn and soya with two million beef cows. There are less than 160 dairy cow herds in the state running around 160,000 dairy cows, with the largest being home to 10,000 cows.
During Rodney's time in South Dakota, the dairy industry has grown. It also has infrastructure making it easier to source machinery, equipment, and supplies compared to when he first arrived there.
One of the big advantages to farmers is the access to capital in the US compared to Northern Ireland, an asset that has helped fund his own farm expansion.
"The banking industry here understands that large dairies can be profitable and growth-orientated and they are very supportive of that. The bankers understand the dairy industry very well," Rodney said.
When Rodney first arrived in South Dakota his farm was then just a soybean field along Highway 81 extending to 160 acres that they had purchased in 2005. The next year saw the family build a greenfield site dairy unit with a barn for 1400 cows. Rodney bought all the feed from local crop farmers and used outside farmers to rear his calves and heifers.
Today Drumgoon Dairy is still on the same site but is a different business model indeed currently milking 6100 cows in three barns. Two of the barns are cross-ventilated and use one milking parlour in each to milk the cows.
A new US$12million third barn called Drumgoon East was completed in 2021 which milks over 1400 cows using 20 DeLaval V-300 robotic units.
Milk from Drumgoon East is being processed into cheese by Agropur in Lake Norden, and the milk from the other two barns goes to Valley Queen Cheese in Milbank.
The cows are a mix of Holstein and Jersey breeds, with a number of crossbred cows, averaging a yield of 10,400 litres per cow at 3.5 per cent protein and 4.4pc butterfat.
The milk price averages UK 0.34 pounds per litre giving a margin over the total cost of production currently running at UK 0.27 pounds per litre.
The banking industry here understands that large dairies can be profitable and growth-orientated and they are very supportive of that.
- Rodney Elliott, US dairy farmer
All cows are AI bred from sexed semen to produce only enough replacements for the dairy herd with Aberdeen Angus used on the remainder of the herd. The cows are fed 44kg to 48kg per day of a TMR mix of maize silage, alfalfa haylage, soybean meal, ground maize, cottonseed, distillers byproducts, whey and a mineral vitamin mix.
The farm now owns 1400 acres, which grows around 30pc of its feed requirements. Rodney is also part owner of a large heifer calf development ranch in south-west Kansas in partnership with 40 other farms that raise 60,000 heifers per year.
One of the main herd attributes that Rodney is most proud of is that his lactating cows have been antibiotic-free for the last three years.
"Three years ago we were culling 1800 cows a year selling them live on the farm," he said.
"I thought we were doing a good job recording all the antibiotic treatments for the cows, as well as all the other data, but then suddenly we were receiving slaughter notifications that a cow had antibiotic residues in it.
"I was proud of all our records and the cow in question definitely had her withdrawal period but the veterinary service put us on probation for a year, and insisted we would be put on the public record if we had another case.
"It was scary to think the public or our buyers could refuse to buy our produce if that happened so we decided to go antibiotic-free.
"We spend a lot of effort training our 55 staff on how we can do things better for the cows in terms of bedding, ventilation, welfare and cow comfort. We do that with the view that we can probably fix more for the cows with a brush and shovel than with an injection needle."
Investing in the robots has been a game-changer for the farm but it's not the only technology Rodney is looking at.
"Using the robotic technology is certainly a different style of farming and it lets the cow make her own decisions. It's a more efficient system as the cows spend less than six minutes per milking in the box meaning they will spend more time eating and resting, which should increase milk production and help cows last longer," Rodney said.
"The data we are collecting is being used by the staff to educate them on how better to run the herd. It's a steep learning curve and we will get better at it as we go along.
"With the 20 robots, our goal is to milk a total of 1500 cows with them, 75 cows per robot."
Other goals are to get our turnover of cows below 25pc and to have only two milking staff on duty during each day and night shift and we are achieving that.
"I think the next three years will develop more technology than the past 10 years did. Future new tech development will be driven by the labour shortage and the desire to work differently, such as in our robot farm," Rodney said.
"Some new ideas that we have been looking at include needleless injections using compressed air instead to vaccinate cows, and looking at using cow brushes to administer the pour-ons to control parasites."
