Milking system designed for efficiency

AgriNews will follow Ken Ropp throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

NORMAL, Ill. — The Jersey cows are lined up waiting their turn for the afternoon milking as Ken Ropp and Brett Yoder readied the parlor equipment.

“We’re milking 52 cows, 14 at a time in a Parabone parlor, with seven on each side. It has automatic takeoffs on it. Everything is computerized and calibrated to keep track of weights. We’re in and out of here in an hour from set up to spray down,” Ropp said.

“For the barn side of things, we’ve got Brett as my main guy out here with feeding and caring for the animals, taking care of the breeding program and such. I’m that go-between. So, when he needs help, I’m the person that he points to. I’m kind of the jack-of-all-trades guy, but it keeps us hopping out here.”

The dairy barn at Ropp Jersey Cheese was built in 1986 and originally set up for four cows on each side.

The parlor was updated in 2005 and a Westfalia milking system was also installed.

“We raised it up about six inches, turned the cows a little bit, and you could fit seven in the same amount of space we could fit four before, and then milk them from the rear, not from the side. It makes a big difference and time-wise it’s worked out great and is more efficient,” Ropp said.

“It’s a slick system and we really don’t have problems with the system. It’s just keeping an eye on things, make sure the cows are milked out well. Even the sensors can make mistakes from time to time.”

The Jerseys are milked twice a day.

“We get down here at 4 to 4:30 a.m. It’s no later than 5 a.m. when we get the first group milked. For the second milking, we start getting set up at about 3 p.m. So, it’s on about a 13-hour, 11-hour schedule, but it’s OK. It works out alright. As long as the cows adapt to it, that’s the main thing,” Ropp said.

“The night milking is going to be less milk, of course, than the morning milking. Cows are making more milk while they’re laying down, which makes a lot of sense for any mammal.

“Our average production per cow right now is about 45 pounds per cow per day. It’s not a push system where we’re beating them up to get as much as we can.

“The longevity is the main part for our animals. A heifer that’s born here will probably pass away here. Our average age is about 6 years old. I think the U.S. average is a little under 3 years old, so we keep them around.”

Feed Production

The cows are fed with corn, silage and hay produced on the Ropp farm.

“Everything that we do goes right back to the cows. There is some abundance, so we take that overflow crop to the elevator each fall,” Ropp said.

On June 3, the first hay was cut, producing 193 round bales. The farm also stores about 800 feet of silage in bags each year for feed, produced from a 25- to 30-acre field that’s been corn-on-corn for about 40 years.

The Ropps grins corn as part of the feeding program, as well.

“We also get a pelleted grain to put on top of that because with silage you have the whole stalk with the ears of corn in there with that good alfalfa. We’re mixing feed about once every 36 hours. We’ll add to it if necessary, bring that into the bunks, feed them on the bunk line,” the farmer said.

“The pellets that we add are to make sure we get enough protein balance in their diet. We call it the cereal wagon when we drive the feed wagon out there and the cows come running. It’s been a good mix and we’ve got good help, and that’s the main thing.”

The Jerseys have access to the pasture 22 hours per day, as well, not only for an additional feed source, but also to provide a healthy environment for the cows.

“I think that’s really important because feet and legs are a big component of the longevity for an animal. We know what it’s like if we’ve got friends that work in manufacturing plants; cement’s hard on us. Well, it’s even harder on the cows. They’re not wearing anything but their raw hoof, and so it can be hard on an animal,” Ropp said.

The feed storage system to provide enough feed through the winter has worked out well.

“We always get down to that little nip and tuck on the hay situation. I think we had four bales left before we got first cutting done, but nothing went short and everybody’s good. We’re in good shape there,” Ropp said.

Growing Season

All of Ropp’s corn and soybeans are planted.

“The only thing that we’ve got left to do is we’ve got a 27-acre hayfield that’s in its fourth or fifth year, and after we got the first cutting off, we’re going to seed that back into soybeans. I’ve got a neighbor that’s going to come in and no-till that in and then it will be sprayed to knock it down,” he said.

Manure is a primary piece of the fertilizer program.

“We’ll pack the manure. We’ll make a pile of it out by the silage field. Of course, that’s always the first corn out and we’ll start spreading immediately once harvest starts.

Normally, Labor Day is about the weekend that you start harvesting silage. This year, depending on what the weather does, it should be about the same again,” Ropp said.

“We will continually spread manure throughout the winter. We use a tractor skid along with the manure spreader. It’s just a conventional, old-fashioned spreader.”

Pasteurizer Fixed

When AgriNews last met with Ropp on April 29, the pasteurizer failed. Shutting down the production of Ropp Jersey Cheese curds that are distributed to numerous restaurants and other customers throughout central Illinois and beyond.

“You got to witness about as rough of a day as we can have. When that pasteurizer went down, Darlington Dairy Supply of Darlington, Wisconsin, got down here as quick as they could, and we ended up in total losing about five days of milk,” Ropp noted.

“And the hard part for us was it was just before Mother’s Day weekend, and for the restaurants, it’s make it or break it on Mother’s Day weekend. So, I got to see a lot of my chefs that weekend as we were trying to get caught up after we were down for a while, but we made it. That’s the hard part.

“Darlington got down here that Thursday afternoon, April 30, and then it was just trial and error once we got through that.

“We had a few skips, and that cost us another day’s production. The nice part is when you’ve got somebody like John Wansley of Darlington who can visualize everything while on the phone. It’s amazing to me how he can walk you through on, alright, do this, do that, because there’s so many little moving parts to that pasteurizer, but we made it through.”

The root of the problem was the small pinholes in the pasteurizer plates became plugged and started backing up the flow.

“When you were here and saw that milk hitting the ground and all the curdled stuff, it wasn’t flowing right. Instead of being ejected, it was overcooking it, and then it would curdle up and we had a mess,” Ropp said.