Partnership, barn developed to last

WATERTOWN, S.D. — Near the Hamlin and Codington county lines, two families have come together to build a new dairy farm aptly named County Line Dairy. The barn includes a 100-stall rotary parlor which they started milking in Dec. 26, 2024, near Watertown.

County Line Dairy is operated by two families, the Czechs — Jim and Angela along with their three sons, Theo, Sam and Andrew — and the Elliotts — David and his dad, Rodney.

“There’s a great sense of accomplishment … getting them in and seeing the parlor going,” David Elliott said. “Seeing how the cows interact in the barn (and) getting the barn full of cows is always a rewarding feeling.”

The dairy is milking 2,500 cows with hopes to be up to 4,200 by June.

The process started when the Czech family received their permit on the land for 5,000 cows.

During that time Elliott said Valley Queen Cheese was looking for more farmers due to their expansion, which interested Rodney. Rodney had seen that the Czech family had received the permit and approached them about potentially having a partnership dairy on the site.

The barn design started about two years ago. The partners were able to start construction in fall 2023. By spring 2024, they were pouring concrete and by December it was habitable. Elliott said it will be another two months to completely finish everything in the barn.

“We’re 95% of the way home with it,” Elliott said.

The barn houses both milking and dry cows. Calves are shipped to a facility in Kansas and return to the home farm when confirmed pregnant.

The barn is 500- by 1,000-feet with tunnel ventilation and sand-bedded stalls. There are 16 pens in all, including the maternity pen. They also have an additional eight individual pens for calving. They have two milk silos, which hold 60,000 gallons of milk each and a sand-settling lane.

Many fans are utilized in the barn, from stir fans above the cows to fans on the back wall to pull air through the barn. There also is a thermostat on the curtains that will adjust them based on the temperature.

“The build went very good,” Elliott said. “(There was) great weather for it. (It was a) late fall, which always helps.”

Next to the entrance and exit to the rotary is a veterinary deck. This allows employees to administer medicine while the cows are on the rotary. There also is a screen above the rotary to allow the employees to know which stall the cows are in.

Elliott said there is a two-lane alley for receiving into the holding area and a return from the rotary, which enhances the flow of cattle on and off the rotary parlor.

“They can flow off the rotary way faster than they would in our other barns,” Elliott said. “They can be back in their pens in 20 minutes.”

Additionally, the barn has a flush system. These are located on one end of each pen and the holding areas. This system flushes water to clean the alleys and saves on labor.

“You can flush with the cows in the pen, which is very nice,” Elliott said. “(The flush) keeps (manure) from building up.”

The dairy has roughly 10-12 employees on-site per day.

“Everything was designed with labor efficiency in mind and (we) tried to eliminate flow issues where people have to walk excessively,” Elliott said.

Though the building process was relatively smooth, there were a few challenges in construction of the barn Elliot said, such as the wait time for the silos and the rotary.

“We were pretty happy with getting it online before the end of 2024,” Elliott said.

When they started, they brought 600 cows from the Czech family’s Drumgoon Dairy to County Line Dairy and have been bringing animals into the new barn every week since.

A majority of the current milking cows were housed and milked at Drumgoon Dairy. The partnership also have been purchasing animals to grow the herd.

Elliott said the first 2-3 days of milking they had to encourage the cows to go on the rotary, but it has been getting better since.

They can milk about 400 cows an hour but are working up to do 500 cows an hour. The ultimate goal is to be able to milk 600 cows an hour.

“Getting the cows to go on, that is the challenge,” Elliott said. “The pace in which they go on, it takes time.”

Both families have put in work to accomplish what they have with the dairy.

“It definitely doesn’t happen without a lot of people making a lot of effort,” Elliott said. “A majority goes to my dad and Jim Czech. ... There was a lot of reward in getting it done and … they started two years ago really as acquaintances. … They’ve worked very hard together and worked very well together to build a partnership between our two families.”