91,000 farm stops, millions of memories

THORP, Wis. — For 50 years, Jerry Micke drove into farm yards every day, testing milk. He watched families grow, farms change, milk testing evolve and the dairy industry propel forward.

Micke started testing milk part time in 1962, at the age of 22, with the Clark County Dairy Herd Improvement Association. He had recently completed the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course and returned home to farm with his father on their dairy near Thorp.

“Our milk tester said he was quitting and asked if I’d like the job,” Micke said. “I tested part time for Clark County for maybe a year before I got in full time at Central Wisconsin DHIA in Colby. That included Taylor, Lincoln, Portage and Wood counties — they chased me all over.”

Testing farms that were more than 100 miles from his own home, Micke developed relationships with the families he served.

“In those days, you tested both the night milking and the morning milking,” Micke said. “We would stay overnight and eat our meals with the families that were a long way away. We put on some miles in those days, if the farm was within 30 or 40 miles, I’d drive home. Otherwise, I’d stay.”

With the miles he put on and the roads he traveled, having a dependable vehicle was important, Micke said.

“We would buy a new truck every year, but you could buy a new truck for $7,000,” Micke said. “We didn’t have anything like GPS to rely on to find our way to new farms. We used plat books and maps to find where we were headed.”

Traveling up and down the rural roads of central Wisconsin for five decades, Micke amassed many farm stops.

“When I retired in 2012, I was at 91,000 farms tested and I think it was like 5.5 million cows,” Micke said. “That’s counting each farm and each cow, each month. The 91,000 farms was a record at the time. When I retired the closest guy was at 50,000.”

Micke ran an average of 20-22 official test farms each month during his career, plus his owner-sampler routes.

“The most owner-sampler herds I had was 200 in one month,” Micke said. “But most of the time I was at 150 or better. It wasn’t that I was any better than anyone else, I just had a good area with lots of small farms. When I retired, I turned over 120 or 125 herds to the new tester.”

Micke said a 50-cow herd was on the large side when he first started.

“The other day I was talking to some guys about the good old days, and I told them about a herd I had down by Wisconsin Rapids,” Micke said. “There were two bachelors who lived way back in the woods; they had three cows on owner-sampler.”

While the herd sizes grew some and the number of herds decreased, Micke said his home area of Clark County changed less than other areas.

“I only ever had one herd that was over 100 cows,” Micke said. “The large Mennonite population in the area has stayed with the smaller herd sizes. They operate a lot like my generation did, which is good. They help each other out, and they care for their community and friends.”

The differences in the number and size of dairy farms is one of the many dairy industry changes Micke saw.

“When I first started testing, we only tested for butterfat and recorded milk weights,” Micke said. “We didn’t test for somatic cell or protein or anything like that. We started doing somatic cell in the early 1980s.”

Only one of Micke’s official test herds milked with a pipeline.

“Even though he had a pipeline, he still milked with buckets when we tested,” Micke said. “We didn’t have meters.”

In the earliest days of his career, Micke said the association owned about three or four meters, all shared by the fieldmen.

“If I used them, I’d have to bring them back so someone else could use them tomorrow,” Micke said. “As more of my herds started putting in pipelines, it got so I couldn’t get them. I went to the board and asked if I could buy my own meters and rent them out when I wasn’t using them. They said yes, so I bought four meters. … At one point I had nearly 30 of them that I was renting out.”

Spending 50 years visiting central Wisconsin farm families on a monthly basis, Micke watched the people on the farms change and grow, too.

“One family I tested while three different generations ran the farm — first the grandpa, then the son and then the grandson,” Micke said. “Lots of them were two generations. I saw a lot of babies born, went to a lot of weddings and have gone to a lot of funerals.”

The farm families were not the only relationships Micke recalls fondly.

“A bunch of us older, retired testers all get together once a year,” Micke said. “We’ve done that for probably 10 or 15 years. There used to be 12 or 15 couples, we’d meet, go out to eat, stay at a hotel and sit around playing cards and talking. Then we’d go out to breakfast in the morning. There are fewer of us coming every year. Last year was the first year I missed it, but I hope to go again this year.”

Looking back over a half-century, Micke said the friendships made were special.

“There was a real personal relationship that developed with the farmers, especially when you’d spend the night at their home,” Micke said. “Those friendships and relationships I built meant the world to me. They still do.”