Cows + Grass = Milk

When supplying local farmers with their feed for dairy and beef cattle just isn’t enough to satisfy your obsession with bovines, you venture out on a limb. That’s what Tyler Perrigo, Gouverneur, New York, did once he recognized that all he talked about was cows.

“For 15 years, I was side by side with my dad in his feed store and worked his beef herd with him,” says the North Country father of three. “I really enjoyed that.” Step by step, he mapped his course to becoming a dairy producer.

First, he established his own beef herd, then he and his father pondered an exit from the feed store business and Perrigo needed a steady income. He milked 18-20 certified grain-fed organic cows at his childhood home in a small stall barn while he looked for the next opportunity.

In 2006 he caught wind of an abandoned conventional farm for sale and despite a decrepit old-fashioned barn and a condemned house, Perrigo made the leap to ownership. Since no one had applied pesticides or fertilizers to the land for many years, it wasn’t too difficult to bring the farm up to standards so it could be classified as “certified organic.” Further, you can transition grain-fed organic cows to grass-fed in about 90 days. He burned down the unserviceable barn to build an efficient, new-style facility, and totally remodeled the home. Two years later, the cows moved in and the Perrigos opened a fresh new chapter in their farm life story.

Laci was a Pre-Kindergarten teacher until she and Tyler married in 2012, then she managed rentals in an apartment complex they owned until they sold it in 2020.

Having purchased a marketing contract along with the cows, they supplied Horizon Organic with milk for a year and a half. But they kept an eye on another emerging company, Maple Hill Creamery. At the time, both companies were associated with the Dairy Farmers of America.  

“We just felt that the co-op would provide us with a safety net,” says Perrigo. 2025 will be their 5th year with Maple Hill, a family of 150 100% grass-fed dairy farms. 

Milk price bling. 
There’s no denying the allure of a pay price that can reach $40 or more per 100 pounds of milk. Conventional dairy prices haven’t made it out of the $20s.  Still, the challenges of an organic grass-fed dairy are many.

First, the milk price does fluctuate by season, market demand, and milk quality and volume. On average, Perrigo’s herd of 50-70 head averages 32 to 44 lbs. of milk per day, but the cows don’t hold their lactations very long. It takes more time to build a frame on the heifers you want to breed, so some of them are two years old before you turn them in with the bull. This pushes first calving out closer to 36 months of age. After the girls cycle out of their lactations, Perrigo gives them 90-120 days dry because they need more time to replace fat on their backs.

Though managing cows this way applies little stress, animals can still get sick and there are restrictions on what you can use to doctor them. The best approach is to be proactive, says Perrigo.

“We can hyper vaccinate them, and we do it heavily twice a year,” he says. That, and the herdsperson’s vigilance in watching for even the slightest change in a cow’s behavior and health status. This is why farming with cows is both a science and an art.

Maple Hill exercises strict oversight with its farms to ensure the shipped milk meets their organic certification standards. For example, as Perrigo feeds out the baleage he must document the field it came from. Members of the processor staff stop in occasionally for random inspections, join Perrigo for pasture walks quarterly, and eagerly welcome calls whenever their farmers have questions or concerns.

Weather worries can loom especially large for a dairy farmer who must rely solely on grass for his herd’s feed. However, Perrigo’s investment in high quality field equipment and his “get to it” attitude go hand in hand to tamp down the anxiety. On the owned and rented meadows that aren’t pastured--about 300 acres--Perrigo starts spring haymaking as early as mid-May. He follows up with successive cuttings about every 30 to 40 days.

Using a New Holland ProCart™ 1225 12-wheel rake, he’s able to handle a 28-foot wide windrow of finely cut hay in a hurry. Adjustable individual floating rake wheels follow ground contours independently to gather every bit of the swath to cause less stubble damage. 

He follows up with a New Holland Roll-Belt™ 450 round baler that rolls and tightly ties 52-inch “wet” bales at about 55% moisture content. He hauls them back home where he surrounds each one with net wrap and a plastic seal. Technology built into the baler keeps Perrigo current on moisture, bale size, and density on the go. The durable pickups and smooth feeding systems on the RB450 give Perrigo increased capacity to bale faster than ever.

What’s the hurry? 
Slow and steady may be the best approach for milking cows, but when it comes to putting up the highest quality baleage for their feed, Perrigo aims to harvest hay with the highest energy and protein, squeeze the air out of the wet bales, and wrap them quickly so they can begin to ferment right away. Commonly called “hay in a day,” this process takes Perrigo about 12 hours to go from mowing the hay to sealing the bales. His goal is to average 100 bales per day, but he has ranged from 25 to 300.  Often, he appreciates a few hours’ help from his dad, his brother, or a couple of close friends.

So far, it’s not often been equipment breakdowns that gum up the works. “In the five years I’ve owned the baler,” says Perrigo, “I’ve run 11,000 bales through it and only had to replace two bearings.”

Best practices for ensuring an adequate, top-quality feed inventory include soil testing and applying lime where needed, frost seeding, frequent new seedings in meadows, and rotational grazing in roughly 200 acres of pastures—sometimes twice a day when grasses are growing vigorously. Some of the most bulletproof advice Perrigo ever received was to make extra bales in the good-weather, highest-quality feed years to carry over into the next year just in case of calamity. On his scale, this means a carryover of an additional 400-500 bales, dressing up the roadside at their farmstead with long rows of gleaming white feed insurance.

When Tyler and Laci went into farming fulltime, they agreed that it’s never good to put all their eggs in one basket. So, along the way, they’ve bought and renovated a couple of houses, renting them out for a couple of years and then moving on. Income generated helps them pay down debt. “It meshes with the farming and it works for us,” says Tyler.

Laci now homeschools their boys, Parker, 9, Elliott, 7, and Dutton, 2. She and Tyler spend plenty of time around the dining room table hashing out their strategies, brainstorming, and “getting real” about their future. That future may hold increases in herd size, or a hired employee. Certainly, this young family works to increase equity and reduce debt.

“It would be so fun if there was $10,000 leftover in the month,” Perrigo adds, laughing. For now, grass-fed organic milk products are in exceptional demand reflected in attractive milk prices, organic cows are scarce and expensive, and there are grant monies available to incentivize growth.