Growing for greater efficiency

CHILI, Wis. — When an opportunity that fit their business model presented itself to the Meissner family last year, they leaped. The Meissners added a second location to the family dairy farm to lay the groundwork for the next generation to join the operation.

“Jim Kusilek emailed me out of the blue the first of last year, asking if we were looking for an opportunity to acquire another dairy,” Josh Meissner said. “It wasn’t something we were actively pursuing too much, but the stars aligned and it all fit — what he was doing, what we were doing and cow numbers.”

Josh and his son, Emmett, represent the third and fourth generations of the Meissner family to operate Norm-E-Lane Farm, established by Josh’s grandfather in the late 1940s near Chili, in Clark County. Neither questioned coming home to join the family farm.

“I graduated from college in 1998 and as soon as my dad and uncles knew for certain I was serious about coming back, expansion talks started,” Josh said. “This was built in 2000.”

Emmett’s plans mirrored his dad’s.

“I always wanted to join the farm; there was never any question for me,” Emmett said. “I did a 2-year ag tech program at Western Technical College in La Crosse and then went to Texas A&M’s U.S. Dairy Education and Training Consortium in Clovis, New Mexico. I then worked on a beef and buffalo ranch in Bismark, North Dakota, for a year, before coming home to the farm.”

The second site, previously Kusilek’s Four Mile Creek Dairy, is located near Hillsdale, in Barron County and became part of Norm-E-Lane July 1, 2024.

The Meissners approached the addition as a way to increase efficiencies and better utilize resources. The cows in both facilities are milked three times a day in similar double-25 parlors. Milk from the Clark County facility is shipped to Nasonville Dairy Inc., while the milk from the Barron County facility continues to go to Burnett Dairy Cooperative.

Both farms are self-sufficient in terms of raising the feed needed to support the herds. The Meissners do their own cropping on 5,800 acres near Chili, raising corn silage and haylage, soybeans and some wheat that is fall-seeded with alfalfa. The 2,000 acres at the Hillsdale location are custom cropped, with Kusilek continuing to manage the cropping operation for the near future.

The home facility remains the hub of the Meissners’ operations, housing approximately 2,500 head, including 1,900 milking cows. The Meissners are utilizing the facilities there to house all the dry cows and pre-fresh animals, calving everything there.

“The increased efficiency has been the biggest benefit so far,” Josh said. “Part of it is scale — size helps us to make the best use of people and resources.”

The Meissners’ goal is to keep things simple at the Hillsdale facility, allowing them to conserve labor needs. The Barron County farm is home to nearly 1,700 head of milking cows, along with another 800 head of heifers. The remainder of the farm’s heifers are raised in northwestern Iowa.

To keep the facilities balanced for maximized efficiency, the Meissners transport cattle between the two sites every week.

“The numbers work out just about perfectly,” Emmett said. “We’re sending 33-35 animals a week each way, a pot load both ways.”

The Meissners utilize the Alta COW WATCH monitoring system to help keep track of their cows in both locations. Using that system, they can monitor how cows handle the transitions between the farms. They continually evaluate the data to make those transitions easier. The collars can store data for up to 24 hours, allowing the Meissners to closely look at how their cows react during travel between the two farms.

Cows are bred using double ovsynch protocols, and heat detection is done using the activity monitoring collars. The Meissners target for 135 heifer calves to be born each month to meet their replacement needs. All heifers are bred to sexed semen, then using that number, the Meissners determine what percentage of their top cows are bred using sexed semen. The remainder of their herd is bred to beef, capitalizing on the value-added calves produced.

The cows are mated by Alta, using milk production and longevity as their priority traits.

“We focus on high-quality genetics for the heifer calves we need,” Josh said. “We want a medium stature, strong animal that is going to last a long time.”

As they navigate their recent expansion, the Meissners plan to continue fine-tuning the two farms into a cohesive operation.

“We have been working on meshing the two teams, with different protocols and cultures,” Josh said. “It’s taken time, but we have great staff in both locations.”

There have been some positive surprises that the Meissners did not anticipate.

“One benefit has been an increased ability to compare and contrast different things,” Emmett said. “We have a control group to compare what is working up there, compared to what is working here. We can use that to make both sites better.”

The near future does not include expansion, Josh said, as the Chili facility is working at full capacity.

“This facility is 25 years old, so we have a pretty aggressive maintenance plan,” Josh said. “Our parlor is 25 years old. We’re looking at our best options to continue to improve and conserve this site into the future, as best we can.”

As they have increased their footprint into other areas, the Meissners remain cognizant of connecting with consumers, an area that Emmett has embraced, developing a website and increasing the farm’s presence on social media.

“If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will — and their version isn’t likely to be accurate,” Emmett said. “People love seeing it, there are lots of positive reactions. I show them what we do, keeping it light-hearted and informative, with cool, cinematic-looking videos and content.”

Keeping their eyes on the future, the father-son team works to continue building on what previous generations of their family laid the foundation for.

“For us, it’s about the long game,” Josh said. “In general, this has been a good move for us. It was kind of scary at first, but change usually is. Everything has worked out as planned so far.”