Top Performers: Joe and Mark Loehr of Loehr Dairy LLC

How many times a day do you milk, and what is your current herd average, butterfat and protein? We milk three times a day. Fresh cows and one group of mature cows are milked four times a day. Our current herd average is 33,098 pounds of milk with a butterfat test of 4.6% and 1,535 pounds of butterfat and a protein test of 3.3% and 1,101 pounds of protein.

Describe your housing and milking facilities. Cows are housed in a freestall barn with the milking herd residing on free stalls bedded with recycled solids and fresh cows residing on a compost bedded pack. We milk in a swing-12 parabone milking parlor. Calves are raised in groups of four in our nursery barn and fed with Milk Bar bucket feeders through a mobile pasteurizer. Heifers are raised until 4 months of age before being sent to a custom raiser and returning to the farm pre-fresh.

Who is part of your farm team, and what are their roles? My brother, Mark, and I own the farm and handle crops, machinery and administration. We have 12 full-time employees, including Luis, our herdsman; Uriel, who oversees machinery maintenance; Isael, our calf manager; and Jose, our bedding and night manager.

What is your herd health program? We do a herd health check every two weeks. We also do calf lung ultrasounds every two weeks. Our vaccination program for cows consists of the following vaccines: J-5 three times a year; two injections of 10-way post-freshening; and clostridium annually. Calves receive pinkeye, Inforce 3 and Pyramid 5 vaccinations.

What does your dry cow and transition program consist of? Dry cows are housed at the original farm on a compost bedded pack. They return to the freestall barn three weeks pre-fresh, where they are also housed on a compost bedded pack in group calving pens of 8-10 cows. We have one pre-fresh pen that is specifically for heifers. Cows are dry for an average of 54 days. We dry off first-calf heifers one week earlier than mature cows. We feed two different diets to the dry cow group — a far-off diet and a close-up diet. Far-off dry cows are fed a high-forage, corn-free maintenance diet to prevent them from gaining or losing weight. Close-up animals are fed a dietary cation-anion difference diet containing corn silage, wheat straw and a mineral mix. It has more energy than the far-off diet, balanced for cations with straw in there to keep energy density balanced correctly to fill cows up. There is no haylage in the close-up diet. The far-off diet contains a little haylage, but we try to have as much variety in forages as we can. We feel like it makes a difference in cow health and performance. We don’t move cows or do a lot of intervening around calving time. For 10 straight years, our dead-on-arrival rate has been less than 3%. We don’t assist calving unless absolutely necessary, such as an abnormal birth position. We attribute our low DOA to this. We prefer to be hands-off and let nature take its course. After calving, cows reside in our post-fresh pen for 10-14 days on a compost bedded pack.

How long is your voluntary waiting period? 70 days.

What is your average days in milk? 162.

What percentage of your herd is in their first lactation? Currently, it is 32%. Normally, this number is a little lower than that (we like to be at 26%-28%), but we sold a substantial number of cows for dairy this year. Many were second-lactation animals that we replaced with first-lactation heifers because we knew we had a lot of heifers coming up.

What is the composition of your ration, and how has that changed in recent years? The lactating cow diet contains corn silage, haylage, protein mix, snaplage and sorghum or triticale seasonally. We make a winter triticale in early spring and plant a sorghum blend we harvest late in the fall. There is usually one of those in the diet. We also add high-impact, small-inclusion nutritional ingredients — such as choline — to the ration. One change to the ration in recent years is that we added snaplage to the diet four years ago. Now, the majority of our corn grain  is fed as snaplage. When we switched from corn to snaplage, we saw increases in components. When we saw that cows did well on it, we kept increasing the amount we were feeding. At first, we just added a little bit; then, it was seasonal; and now, it’s close to 100%. We’ve been trying to plant corn with a white cob as it is our understanding that it’s a little more digestible. When we plant corn, we plant beans with it. For the past 10 years, we’ve been trying to put a big focus on soil health. We transitioned to no till in the last 5-7 years. It’s something that’s hard to substantiate, but we feel healthy soil makes healthier feed and cows and maybe even healthier milk. You are what you eat, and cows are the same.

Tell us about the forages you plant and detail your harvest strategies. Our haylage is never straight alfalfa. It is a hay blend that usually has at least two varieties of grass and 1-2 varieties of clover in addition to alfalfa. We try to match each variety of grass and clover so their maturity aligns with alfalfa. We are on a 28-day cutting schedule. Our corn silage is made as shredlage. Other than a small sample, we’ve never done brown mid-rib corn. Instead, we do more dual-purpose corn. The sorghum blend we feed is usually a combination of soybeans, peas, sunflowers, sorghum, BMR pearl millet and buckwheat. It’s a blend of a lot of different plants harvested directly with the corn head of the chopper in late October.

What is your average somatic cell count, and how does that affect your production? We started bedding with separated solids in June. Before that, we were under 100,000 SCC for three straight years — in the 70,000-90,000 range. We’re dealing with a learning curve right now, and our SCC is therefore averaging 215,000 for the year. We’re confident we’ll get back in the low 100s, but it’s going to take some time. There are a lot of variables with separating solids and learning how to groom stalls, understanding the machines and what they produce each day, while going through the different seasons with the cows. It has been a big challenge and learning process this year, and we’re still at it.

What change has created the biggest improvement in your herd average? It has been a slow climb. Increasing the frequency of feed push-ups has helped. Post-fresh cow care is another area that has contributed to a higher herd average — trying to do as little as possible, but whenever something is necessary, we try to do it as quickly as possible. We are attentive to the needs of post-fresh cows without being overly aggressive. Healthy soils and healthy plants have also helped grow production.

What technology do you use to monitor your herd? We have had SCR collars for a long time. They are most beneficial for monitoring fresh cows. A secondary benefit is heat detection, but they are not the greatest for that. We still use double ovsynch for the first breeding. Conception rates are 8%-10% higher on double ovsynch and 5%-7% higher with resynch off of open herd check than with finding heats through SCR collars. The collars have helped us be hands-off with fresh cows. We see the rumination minutes of every fresh cow for the first 10 days and can focus on 2-3 cows that might need something that day and leave the rest alone. It’s made a big difference and probably reduced antibiotic usage. When we know cows are ruminating well, we don’t intervene.

What is your breeding program, and what role does genetics play in your production level? We breed off of a double ovsynch program and use bulls with high Net Merit Dollars, positive components, positive strength and udder cleft and strong mastitis resistance. Component increases are correlated to genetics. Ten years ago, our butterfat was around 3.9%. This year, we’re averaging 4.5%. That’s a big jump, and genetics played a significant role in our component increases.

List three management strategies that have helped you attain your production and component levels. Quality genetics and using double ovsynch to keep the herd “fresh,” minimum fresh cow interaction and quality feed/highly digestible forages.

Tell us about your farm and your plans for the dairy in the next year. Our farm was established in 1880 and has been in the Loehr family for 145 years. Mark and I are the fourth generation. Between our two families, we have eight children. In addition to our dedicated employees, we also receive help from our siblings, extended family members and neighbors. We farm around 1,000 acres and ship our milk to Sargento. We plant cover crops on all our acres. We also raise a few steers we sell locally under the name Holyland Beef. We put in a solids separator building this past year. We are always looking for opportunities, but we do not have a big growth plan. It will be interesting to see where things go. Next year, the goal might be to keep expenses down and see what the markets do and whether the milk price becomes more favorable. We will continue giving the best care we can to our animals and making quality food. We always strive to keep improving.