Dairy Efficiency, Carolina Style

Houston Honeycutt (left), field sales and technical representative for Southern States, regularly consults with Mickey Clayton

At Cross Creek Dairy, located at Hurdle Mills, N.C., efficiency is foremost among the owners’ buzzwords.

Because Mickey and Scott are the primary family members running the 1,200-acre farm and dairy operation, efficient operation and expert advice is critical.
(Mickey’s father, Thomas, 78, is basically retired, but he occasionally pitches in to lend an extra hand when needed.)

For help from outside sources, Southern States plays an important role. “We rely on advice from Houston Honeycutt and many of our inputs from Southern States,” Mickey notes. Honeycutt is the co-op’s area feed sales technical representative based in Burlington, N.C.

“We’ve worked with Mickey and Scott to develop a nutritional program that fits their herd,” notes Honeycutt. “We’re always looking for ways to make improvements.”

The results of nutritional refinements as well as a host of other steps the Claytons have taken are improvements to the bottom line. These include more milk production and higher profits.

As evidence of the operation’s success, the Claytons were recently named “Farm Family of the Year.” This award is presented by the North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Districts. They were given the award in part because of the cumulative effect of conservation efforts they developed on the operation during the past several years.

Above: Scott Clayton (right) shows Honeycutt the young heifer they will use as an egg donor as they begin an embryo-transfer program. Right: These cows are examples of the upgraded quality of their cow herd, but the Claytons still believe there’s room for improvement

But more important than any award, improved returns have enabled the Claytons to take the following significant steps to improve the efficiency of their farm:

• Produce balage for a better ration. They have geared up to produce balage to use as part of their dairy ration. That meant two purchases: a round baler that chops the forage as it bales it and an inline bale-wrapping machine.

The round baler allows the Claytons to use the forage in their feeding program without additional processing. In turn, they can better determine how much hay the cows actually eat.

Their harvester, a John Deere Silage Special, also allows them to cut forage when it’s wet, which eliminates the normal harvest delays experienced during wet weather. They can harvest their balage crops—usually wheat and oats—at their highest levels of nutrition because they don’t have to wait for the crops to dry.

The inline bale wrapper leaves bales of silage in long, plastic-covered tubes. This preserves wet forage while it’s still in the field.

• Keeping a cool dry-cow barn. The Claytons have rigged up a barn for their dry cows and equipped it with fans. This allows them to better control the environment and reduce stress. Since they started using the enhanced dry barn system, they’ve had fewer problems associated with calving cows in the summertime.

Scott Clayton says this young heifer represents a future trend for the dairy as they move to an embryo-transfer program. They purchased this highly regarded heifer to serve as a donor cow for herd improvements.

“We are still relatively new to the idea of heat abatement for dry cows,” Honeycutt notes. “But it’s something we need to deal with, because freshening a Holstein cow in the kind of heat we get in North Carolina is extremely stressful. A controlled environment obviously will help.”

• Developing a high-tech strategy for improving herd genetics. Scott uses high-quality bulls that rate at least two points above type to incorporate into the herd pedigree. Soon he’ll start an embryo-transfer program to further upgrade the herd. The feet-and-leg and the udder components are areas he most emphasizes.

The 200-cow herd has a rolling average of 24,000 pounds of milk per year on twice-a-day milking, and the Claytons aren’t content to stop there. When the dairy started 15 years ago, the average was about 19,000 pounds per year.

This was basically a tobacco and grain farm with a beef cow/calf herd until 1990, when Mickey decided to get into dairying. But then tobacco began its precipitous decline. The Claytons compensated by bringing in more milk cows. That process sped up when Scott returned to the farm full time three years ago.

“We needed to generate more income,” says Mickey. “More milk cows were the answer.”

But they still run 120 beef cows to harvest forage that isn’t suitable for the dairy cows.