Chief executive, Gary Corbett, who spoke at the Australian Dairy Conference in Geelong was chief executive of Dean Foods and moved to the farm between Chicago and Indianapolis in 1998 after 15,000 acres of land was purchased from an insurance company which believed an airport might be sited there. The first rotary dairy was built the following year with another 10 added since along with a further 17,000 acres of land.
About 60% of the cows’ feed is grown onfarm, mainly corn and alfalfa hay which is cut by contractors. It’s mixed with dried bakery products and cottonseed to a total mixed ration diet, fed in freestall barns adjoining each dairy.
“We always have some portion of two years’ worth of feed on hand,” he said.
“We try to have a big, strong, healthy cow with feed in front of them 24 hours a day so they can regulate what they eat.”
Sand is used for bedding and being inert it doesn’t promote bacteria. As part of the farm’s advanced manure management plan pre-treatment and separation of effluent from the dairies and feedpads the sand is regularly removed. It can later be re-used as bedding, put back in the soil or rested for a year.
Due to the heat in summer fans and misters have been added at a cost of US$1 million, meaning little drop in milk production over summer. The total construction cost of US$2100/cow had now risen to US$4700, Corbett said. The business has a permit to build a further dairy which could increase cow numbers to 41,000.
The cows are milked three times a day with the dairies all operating 23 out of 24 hours. Pedometers are attached to each cow’s collar to flag if they are taking more or fewer steps than usual. Screens beside the cows on the turntable give milk production figures as well as a comparison with the previous milking.
Before each milking teats are dipped and wiped and at one milking every day udders are stripped to avoid mastitis.
“We aim for a quiet, sterile environment,” Corbett said.
Workers in the dairies switch positions every 30 minutes. A total of 450 workers are employed, all of them Hispanic.
“They don’t speak English but they’re very reliable and very hardworking,” he said.
“We have some third generation workers and that’s the key to our success. It makes us.”
They will earn US$35,000-$40,000/year and are provided with a home or apartment, insurance payments and a generous retirement plan.
“Our turnover is zero.”
Five vets are also employed as managers and nutritionists.
Fair Oaks Farms relies totally on artificial insemination with sexed semen used. Being milked three times a day, we don’t miss much when it comes to heat detection, Corbett said. The calves are placed in one of their 12,000 plastic hutches each with their own fenced run. They are fed only whole milk with no replacer used. While bull calves are kept for just three days, heifers are kept on the property for 12 weeks then sent to other farms contracted to rear them. They will return to the farm to get used to freestall feeding before giving birth.
The cows’ somatic cell count level averages 140,000 compared with almost double that number in all US herds.
The milk is rapidly cooled down, passing through a flash plate cooler which releases heat which is captured to run the farm’s boilers. There are plans for it to heat greenhouses in the future.
The company carries its own milk, all 70 loads a day, in CNG-powered milk tankers. Corbett said while other large dairy farms milked directly into tankers, Fair Oaks Farms wouldn’t do so unless it could better control the process.
Only fluid milk is supplied, the highest earning class under the US payment system, which ends up in south-eastern states where it’s hard to supply enough for local demand.
Shortly a farmhouse restaurant will open, a crop production educational building is planned, a layer hen operation will open next year, and a pick-your-own orchard and a hydroponic set-up growing plants and fish together are on the drawing board.
“We’re like kids in a candy shop,” Corbett said.
“We get carried away.”
Telling it like it is
There’s one question the agricultural industry needs to ask itself, Gary Corbett says. “Can we afford not to tell our story?”
He said that in the mid-1990s Fair Oaks Farms identified six threats to its future, one of which was the green lobby’s impact on the entire dairy industry.
“They’re who they are and they’re not going to change,” he said.
“They’re passionate, they have a big audience and only 1% are involved in agriculture. They simply don’t understand 21st century agriculture.”
The decision was made that the best defence was to open up the farm and ask people in, which was exactly what happened in 2004 when Fair Oaks Farm opened its Dairy Adventure.
“We weren’t certain people would come, “Corbett said.
But it concentrated on three messages revolving around the environment, animal welfare and farming being compatible, and milk being good for humans.
Now the facility is the number one destination of its type in the country with 550,000-575,000 visitors a year. They can choose to sit in an amphitheatre and watch calves being born, go on a bus tour around the dairies or sample cheese, yoghurt and ice cream made on site.
“99% of people come with no agenda,” he said.
“They have a willingness to learn. They want to recapture some connection with their roots.”
Fair Oaks hosts a range of events to boost visitor numbers such as concerts, polo matches and an airshow with 150,000 people attending every year. With 30 million people within a 150 mile radius it’s strategically located to keep drawing larger numbers.
It has been so successful that a Pig Adventure, which cost US$15m to build, was opened this year featuring 3000 sows. While it now uses gestation pens, crates which were there for a short time.
Protesters have printed posters with Corbett’s face on them accusing him of cow and pig rape because of the farm’s use of AI. But at the farm itself there’s never been a negative comment from visitors.
“We assist 10% of births and show pulling with chains and jacks,” he said.
Activist groups had toured the farm but it had never been picketed as a result. Corbett said Fair Oaks Farms realised it had to start a dialogue with these groups.
“They’re not the enemy and we’re not the enemy,” he said.
“We have two full-time social media experts so we’re very, very engaged. Some people are pretty brave online but they don’t get onfarm.”
