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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

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>From tvoivozd AT infionline.net  Fri Oct  1 15:04:05 2004
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Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 15:21:27 -0700
From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
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Subject: [Homestead] Small dairy farmer
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tvoivozhd---Small dairy farming, especially small, seasonal dairy
farming with stockpiled forage accumulating from mid-August forward, can
make good money---if spring and summer grazing practices add more than
usual to the bottom line.



September 30, 2004

Agricultural Research Service <http://www.ars.usda.gov/> scientists in
Ohio are beginning a dairy grazing research and demonstration program to
help family dairy farms both in Ohio and nationwide.

The research at the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed
<http://www.ars-grin.gov/coshocton/> in Coshocton is part of an ARS
dairy grazing project being done in cooperation with two other ARS
facilities, the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center
<http://www.dfrc.ars.usda.gov/> in Madison, Wis., and the Pasture
Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit
<http://pswmru.arsup.psu.edu/> at University Park, Pa., as well as Ohio
State University <http://www.osu.edu> (OSU) and OSU's Ohio Agricultural
Research and Development Center <http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/>.

Ohio ranks fourth in the nation for number of dairy herds, but, as with
the rest of farming nationwide, dairy farms in Ohio are going up in size
and down in number.

This fall, ARS soil scientist Lloyd B. Owens and colleagues at Coshocton
are using simple electric fences to create small paddocks to rotate
cattle from one part of a pasture to another every day or two. They are
testing a system called management-intensive, or rotational, dairy grazing.

ARS scientists will monitor manure runoff and water quality. OSU
scientists will check on how different forage grasses and plants hold up
under intensive grazing, as well as how the animals fare and the quality
of milk from grass-fed cows.

The idea is to spread out the grazing so that cattle are always eating
only the freshest growing tips of forage grasses, which are the most
nutritious and tastiest parts of the plants. This could help make small
dairy farms more profitable by raising the per-cow profit margin.
Grazing eliminates the need to provide livestock feed to confined
animals, and grazing newly grown forage might also allow more cows per
acre, further lowering costs.

This could help alleviate economic pressures on farmers to convert to
mega-dairies with 1,000 to 2,000 cows confined to feeding barns. Such
large dairies face higher costs, including those associated with manure
storage. Rotational grazing may spread manure more evenly in fields,
lessening the chances of pollution.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture <http://www.usda.gov>'s chief
scientific research agency.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agricultural Research Service (US Department of Agriculture) home page
<http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/>