Grazing ⋅ Page 1

Dairy and Creamery Sees Positive Changes with Pack Barns

More milk production, lower SCC and low-cost fertilizer among benefits

Brothers Dwight and David Fry remember the day that they decided to build bedded pack barns for their dairy cows. They visited neighbor David Gray’s barns on a winter day when sleet was pounding down. “His cows were lying there in the barn chewing their cud and making milk,” said Dwight. “Ours were humped up and cold.” Gray’s experience, coupled…

MU Grazing School Key to Edgewood Dairy and Creamery

June is Dairy Month

Twenty years ago, Charles Fletcher of Edgewood Dairy and Creamery attended a University of Missouri Extension grazing school. It would change the future of the family dairy operation. Fletcher’s father started the dairy farm in 1966. His father milked cows by hand 365 days a year, morning and night. In 1993, the Fletcher family formed a partnership that included poultry…

Grazing School provides hands-on learning opportunity

On a warm fall morning, aspiring ranchers and agricultural professionals gathered near Linneus, Mo., for the 2011 Management Intensive Grazing workshop. Participants headed to the pasture after only an hour in the classroom. After looking at five red Angus cross heifers, they estimated the average weight of their five-head heard. Their task was to allocate an area of pasture that their herd would graze to three inches by the next day.