NFO-269 (AV10771): US Farm Report: Recovery From Tragedy

hi everybody and welcome to us farm report this week u.s. farm report originates in upstate New York and our first guest mr. Jack Murray nfo member from Herkimer County earlier today our u.s. farm report crew traveled out of Syracuse New York to Herkimer County where we have been visiting on the dairy farm of Richard Yule meaning us that the turn off point on the Thruway was Jack Murray jack is state vice president of n fo and incidentally a right good navigator because you got us here Jack with no problems well we know the area pretty well we've traveled there pretty good and you've lived here all your life at night I was born and raised right and sent from New York here well you know this is quite a story here that dick you'll tells about n fo now although you and your good fellow n fo members of Oneida County are not within Dick's County at least you neighbor wealth County don't you what we do is we kind of rub off the goodwill just blends the cross there's any boundary lines really the only reason got a boundary line is so they can keep the record straight in the national office but outside of that it just kind of runs together well tell me about membership through New York State how's it going it's going pretty well really I mean generally during the summer you live a slow down because the farmers have to get back the field but we've got a few more paid men and we've had a on the attitude of willingness and and winning this I might say that everybody feels that now finally the processors are ready to accept collective bargaining and outside whenever we talked to farmers who aren't in NF oh we don't get any more of the radical attitude they sit and listen and we're getting members to join even with the increased duals it's changing yes changing all over the country we find that and you've just expressed that that change in general attitude through this part of the can right I think one of the one of the reasons that we find this change is the we're willing to get in the middle of a fight it doesn't make any difference of of local thing or helping a guy build a barn or any little any little problem or challenge we're always willing to help and and be there in fact you've just gone through a pretty good fight here involving some twenty seven thousand dairy farmers covering two entire states in part of a third New York New Jersey and part of Pennsylvania tell us about this well this this fight that we were talking about was when our four major co-ops in federal order to which covers these states petition the Secretary of Agriculture to the lower class to milk by eighteen cents now this would have meant about a nine to nine and a half to ten cents rather off of all farmers blend price in New York and New Jersey in this order to area so in other words you're taking ten cents off twenty seven thousand farmers and we've been talking about a little over nine million dollars to these people and this is right out of their paycheck and we felt that since the co-ops are the people that the farmers are paying and these are hired men are going down if to deduct this from our paychecks the only thing left to do is rent fo to be done and telling the full story that the farmers back here that I remembers these coops aren't willing to take this cut that's the hired men are going down there on their own and this is what we proceeded to do and we had bankers and feed machine farm machinery dealers and feed grain dealers and all of these fire grab is nassif we stir these people and they wrote let its Secretary of Agriculture we got nine members to write letters and anyways uh finally the decision has been rendered by selective agriculture that there'll be no cop well that's wonderful you know we're getting success stories in in marketing all over the country what are some of your recent success stories and marketing in New York State well one of the prime ones in central New York through the area here we have a number of counties and some stuff coming out of Maine that's going into our meat on marketing arrangement we have with a with a packer and this is working real well we get paid above any other market and if part of it's because we deliver it to him and there's no competition there I mean we just take it in and put it right through the plans we have a man in the plant to watch it kill and we have very few files we worked on this non for about two and half years and it's working real smooth I mean it's got down now to where the farmers got something that's got a go he calls us up and we got a week or so to get it ready for him or you can pick it up within the next day whatever it has to be in and we move stuff right out like this mm-hmm in a local area here we pick ups our calls and kids go Mondays and Thursdays and all the farmers know it and we got everything moving pretty well what about you jack what kind of farming do you do your dairy farmer oh yes oh yes this is uh I'm a dairy farmer I raised most of my own replacements and no feed grains I just raise the roughage to feed these cattle i milk 42 melkor's and altogether I got around 65 head I plan to expand just a little bit in order to make a living but not nothing no it's tremendous expansion though well you're finding I guess that more farmers are discovering that they can't do it alone oh yes this is the attitude that we found as well like when I go up to work for nfo I run into people that have expanded they've gone through this period they've doubled the size of their dairy in less than 10 years they doubled this the size of their debt they doubled their investment and they're still them got any more cash and they're working twice as hard and they say why what's wrong and this is where nfo comes in and says okay let's get together and get the price we deserve let's cover our bills and pay our bills in 30 days like we should that's what our problem is our problem isn't in any more efficiency everybody else mean I think it works less hours we have to work more after visiting with Jack Murray in Herkimer County New York our entire US farm report crew moved to near Seneca Falls and talked with Bud barbae who's renewed dairy operation exists there but how you doing all right good to see you man you know this has been a real pleasure for all of our US farm report to creat a day to come out to your place and see the great comeback that you've accomplished now we haven't mentioned to our audiences yet the disastrous fire that really sets you back and I'd like for you to tell us about that the fire in general yeah well it was a year ago May 30th or at March 30th dead of the winter almost the dead of the winter 1:30 in the morning and it was a very fast thing 45 minutes we lost 121 head of cattle good 75% of our machinery and just about all our buildings I didn't come out with a hammer oh boy I understand from Charlie in our visiting that had the wind not been blowing away how she would have lost the home - we would have lost everything I don't think we've to come out with anything and we'd have been darn lucky if this if the family to walk out of the house no that was a year ago year ago March March March now do you have any idea of what your dollar loss was this is awful hard I know it is cause I can tell you how much I'm in debt now let's put it that way that might just tell the story better than what the loss was at that time but you lost the heard you'd been building on for a long long time well we left we left Jersey with the thought that we could come up here and build another heard within a year and we were doing pretty darn well at it and we were just boy things were just looking up and really looking nice heard wise mm-hmm and this catastrophe had to come along and hit we had 147 and we lost 121 have it and we buried all that machinery and everything out behind the present barn that we have now and oh it's it it's a funny thing it did be surprised how this brings you close to people the people around here in general they literally came out of the walls to help you bulldozers trucks people fire departments everything it was it was something of an experience of its own of how people can go to another person's help I mean oh and above my catastrophe you know what I mean I don't know what else to tell you though you ask questions and I'll try okay well let me just ask this bud after the shock of this thing of course you had this set about to go back into business how long were you without income nine months and what did you do during that time did you just start out and rebuild and we we first of all it took we had to think how we wanted to rebuild and and plain English we had to look for a little extra money I was going to ask but if insurance covered at all it never dies does it between 65 and 70 percent around in there roughly anyways you take an overall of all the insurance mm-hmm but in this period of time now with a year and three or four months having gone by at what point are you in your in your dairy operation I mean how we yeah or where are you today in terms of your cow herd your replacement program well we're now approximately at 200 head and pretty rough to get this many animals together of course we hear the bankers holler all the time that money is tight so we can't of course finance all these cattle in one place and we have to let's say we let's talk about farmers in general we have to finance cattle like somebody would a new car televisions such tremendous interest rates it's ridiculous but at a low period of time in other words these things should be long-term loans and things like this to help the farmer because of the overhead and everything we had now I'm gonna blow my own horn here because it's a problem I had here a year and three months ago I wish the devil I had a little bit longer term loans but this two or three different banks chipped together the money and during two or three different loans and we finally got a heard put back in here and a lot of my been buying myself a turning light no checks back into cattle so that they would grow and and it sort of mushrooms and gets bigger and bigger as we can get more animals in here and get more production so that we can cover the overhead because I don't forget I think I've got overhead that I left behind me before the fire that I'm trying to catch up well you have overhead on top of overhead that's right and we we had to catch up with it and you spoke about when I decided to go back into this it was the night we had the fire and the fire was about two hours old and I stood up on a ramp there by the farm and I said that night I said I was gonna go back into it this this is what I know and this is what I want to do and I knew if if I could keep my health I'll make it mm-hmm there's been a lot of people who have been helping me of course you've got that 2% all over that you know might like to pull you under something like that right yeah go ahead with your question I just want to say this but that when you decided to rebuild you know the barn for example physical facility you really did it exactly the way you felt it should be done in terms of your future growth dinner yes I think I've been up to about the 75% of what I you know wanted to do I was held back a little bit on financing I can see now that it needs a little more polish at few changes here and there and it has to grow gradually as the money comes in because it's it's just nil as far as being able to borrow any money to you know to expand anymore or anything what kind of square footage do you have in the structure you know roughly oh now you're getting nasty with 80 by 204 so let's do a little simple multiplication you got me too nervous well it's a great-looking structure I tell you that your dad says you're kind of a perfectionist so when you talk about maybe some sophistications it lacks in your opinion yeah we can blame that on your perfection attitudes okay oh yeah so this guy it looks like a great barn and then great my facility it bugs me you know you did do one thing the right way and I don't want to say I don't want to do it but so this is what I have to put up with how many how many acres are you farming very close to 800 and what are you growing you you're drawing some corn and it looks my 300 acres of corn your dad the most the 200 acres a hey there's a some pasture around the buildings and things it was close to close to 40 acres a week 45 acres of oat and of course I had a little retirement land here to get into some of these government payments like some of these rich fellows do yeah you know I have to get that point in very well we went down and watched you doing a little field work today on a great piece of equipment that cuts your alfalfa right it also crimps it and the condition didn't put them right in a row in a row ready for a field chopper or baler right now in this particular instance this alfalfa is down pretty much because of some heavy rain it's also kind of full of a weed or two yeah it has a wild some appear call it a wild carrot home in Jersey where we came from I believe some of people down there called it a Maiden's lace or something like that I forget the actual name my mother had a good name for yeah a mating place or something like that I think butch Swain who's accompanying our crew says back in Iowa it's called something like a bird's master well there you go now we got three names think about at any rate that's the white flower the weed with the white flower that that is in your alfalfa but I don't think it's gonna hurt the TD in as far as the cow if it doesn't cows gonna enjoy that right not know that she's eating it right well by the way Maynard I true your your dry chopping this aren't you it's about half dry yeah I don't like to feed it to sloppy and wet mm-hmm and it goes right through them they get more out of it you know I keeping it along the haylage line I'll put it this way earlier in the day we saw one of your hands dry chopping right in a field close to your dad's house this was some alfalfa that I think had been cut about a week ago and was in pretty good shape pretty dry ya know this would cut Sunday afternoon oh that well then it hasn't been a right by any person we're talking today is Wednesday and yeah I believe I'm right yeah and well it dried pretty well in three days yeah but if you'd have turned over the road you just seen it's pretty wet otherwise we've been going out together back into the baler instead of that chopper well now are you chopping all your corn and putting it into the silo for feed no no no we hope to put some internet what I'll give you a farm terminology is high high moisture ear corn you know it's to sort of stem off the overhead of the farm by it's a way of producing at least 75% of the grain goes in the cow and then by only buying a concentrate to mix with it you can stem off quite a bit of your overhead and keep a little more of your own money without keeping everybody in the community rich well you uh you have accomplished a great thing here but with automation the way you're able to feed is is really outstanding and I'd like for you to just explain that to our viewers what your automated setup is well it would be hard to explain it without saying it but roughly we feed approximately 200 head and I would say 13 to 15 minutes and this is about four or four and a half tons of roughage and which laggin you saw hold we know because we've weighed it at this point and that's do you oughta make sure it's done with elevators do modern automation methods well with this with this control equipment you have you can really control the amount of feed going to the cat oh yeah right in the in the milking parlor would you join that to us yes as I explained to butch before mr. Swain these feeders you can take your feed weights from your IBM records and keeping the cattle in lactation or groups we can therefore feed some cows that are high producers morphine at the same rate of speed at Macau that's giving maybe 40 pounds and has lesser amount of feed we consider the same amount of feed in the same amount of time with these dribble type methods when you say automatic or electronic feeders there in the milking parlor it's it's something to see I suppose next year the year after this will be obsolete and they'll come out with something else or at least for now it's probably the latest thing and it's it's just a system of dialing and yeah I've been pushing a button that's right but do you use some kind of a special technique in keeping your herd records no I developed them all myself I'm not there's something that I had and I I it's a funny thing I developed this from a I saw a camp down in New Jersey it used to keep track of their children when they were in swimming with the little attackers little tags like you you write each one in each child or so was in each different swimming area whatever group they were in whether they were beginners or what have you they've moved these animals they'd move these children to different groups so I got this idea because I had to keep the cattle in my barn in lactation no groups and I wanted about four groups fresh animals hi producers middle lactation into lactation dry animals either the best way to do these is all category these animals and put my little tags and I said I move them around in the barn I can keep track of because I found I found it every month I was making out new lists and you don't get up over 100 cows and now close to 200 or 200 it's you're constantly making out new list well I don't have a blonde secretary near the but up for me sorry I do something where I can keep it up well it looks it looks like a very efficient system we're good now if you find any patents or anything on just let me know I'll let you have all the financial math they go ahead I need it yeah let's go inside the barn for a minute and talk about some of the very expensive equipment that you have in there for example in the tank room yeah what is your capacity in the two tanks there well one it's more the two is a 500 count holding 5500 pounds of milk I think I'm right on that yes they're larger tanks a thousand gallon holding nine nine thousand six hundred and some pounds of milk what is your current capacity in terms of production from this herd of two hundred how much milk what am i making now well now we're off in production number one because of this crazy brother course you can't foresee or do anything about that and then of course you have nature to contend with as a cow because a lot of them right now are their peak of pregnant run and of course I'll say peak of pregnancy for the people that don't understand our cow lingo and it's at the real juicy time of their lactation where they're gonna all start rushing in and we try and maintain this to come back in the fall when this price of milk is a higher price how else can I uh I guess I've answered that for ya you except you didn't give me any poundage figures yeah yeah well pounds now is approximately five thousand a day pounds back two or three months ago and I was doing a little better and we had more animals milking was approximately a day approximately 66 to 68 hundred a day now you have some plans for the future some growth what do you anticipate your production will be when that growth is realized well we'd like to project and hope that we can make somewheres between the 7,500 and 8,000 pound per day level this is hard to do on a dairy farm I think any farmer will agree with me sometimes you can't project everything in the future on pencil and paper because we are so close to nature on a dairy farm that you can give and take and you can drop to or pick up three cows like anything you didn't know what makes a difference well leaving the tank room moment let's go into the milking parlor now this is a sawtooth type of milking parlor right with a capability of milking five cows on each side if riding cows at the time right would you describe the equipment there to our viewers and explain just the routine that goes on there well it's a low line I think they call it a low line low profile milking system sawtooth herringbone tight parlour double v is the terminology at some farmers use it can milk ten cows and we've got it down basically to approximately moving the cow in washing your testing room milking her and turning her out and approximately seven to eight minutes per animal we're milking now approximately 150 now I'd say 2 hours and 45 minutes I think this could be polished up a little bit right now we we have a little bit of a washing problem with him if they were a little bit cleaner I think it'd be they'd move through a little bit faster VFL just don't have to wash so much on them but I make a law with them washed out or before you put the machine on well this is a sure system that we've seen a great deal of here is a dandy isn't it I'm not saying it because I bought it and I'm stuck with it but I like it and the first day I tried it I swore up and down at the I must have been off my rocker but now we're in on it not because I have it as I said but it's working out pretty good and as I say it can do it a little more polish here and there and it all it'll all come as we learn the cattle learn the Menil learned we'll get at it it looked to us as we watched your milking system and operation that the milk is never exposed to the air it's never touched you know would you explain how the milking system right right it goes directly from the machine from the udder of the cow the Machine through stainless steel pipes glass and pumped then goes through a gravity type filtering system and directly into the tank and I would say within minutes chilled down to roughly 35 to 40 degrees and I would say maybe by an hour hour and a half later it's down to 33 34 35 degrees and all of this contributes to an extremely low bacteria grow bacteria and very good clean Milt right right another great thing that you have here is your manure system a manure if it isn't handled with a system like you have can be one heck of a problem in the dairy business yeah the public is hollering are the public's getting more prone to this manure problem on the dairy farmer or let's say the chicken farmer is a hog farmer or what let's not forget we have to do something with it yeah this stuff does grow our crops to a certain extent it is good let's not waste it we just can't dispose of it just because it smells through so we we try and wash it away into 10,000 gallon tank out of our parlour and then we pump it out take it out into the fields and spread it on the fields and plow it under just as quick as we can to keep the public from having to smell it mm-hmm but it's always not quite that easy for us all right we had this happen to us we had disk attached we had to go into this and we are quite readily close to some people here that I don't think would favor the smell so we more or less where nobody actually said we had to do it but we knew what's coming and we'd like to live with our community we like to do you know what we we think they would like it to do with us in other words do unto them like who I have do unto you and I might add knowing you as I do now but that you wouldn't have it any other way you want it done the best way but well sometimes it's not too easy to do money-wise as I said you're doing it you're doing it well we wholly congratulate it thank you and so ends this week's coverage from upstate New York u.s. farm report is seen each week at the same time on this same station until we meet again so long everybody