Sign up for our Newsletter
Dairy St r Milk Break
Visit dairystar.com to sign up!
“All dairy, all the time”™
Volume 26, No. 23
January 25, 2025
Carrying on as sixth generation Hesselink continues farming after loss of brother By Stacey Smart
stacey.s@dairystar.com
OOSTBURG, Wis. — When Scott Hesselink was in his early 20s, it appeared he was destined for a career in mechanics. He went to school for auto-body repair and favored working in a body shop over being a dairy farmer. “I love cars and motorcycles and had an interest in other things,” Scott said. However, he was back to the farm in a full-time manner by the time he was 25. Scott joined his dad, Mark, and his two brothers when his father offered him an opportunity to come home. Now, Scott is the sixth generation running
Quonset Farms with his wife, Lisa. “Scott was the least likely one to take over the farm,” Mark said. The Hesselinks milk 1,075 cows three times a day in a double-15 parallel parlor and farm about 1,500 acres near Oostburg. The family also buys crops off the eld from several neighbors. Heifers are sent to a custom raiser when they are a couple of days old and return home pregnant. “Our rst goal is producing the highest quality milk we can,” Lisa said. “Our parlor manager works hard to ensure that. Caring for our animals, our employees and our land is a priority.”
Quonset Farms is backed by nearly 180 years of history. When Scott’s ancestors arrived from the Netherlands in 1847, they purchased 40 acres where the current farm sits and another 40 acres to the west. The original deeds, signed by Presidents James Polk and Zachary Taylor, hang on the farm’s ofce wall. The farm was named for the Quonset barn Scott’s grandpa bought after the farm’s original barn burnt down in 1941.
Turn to HESSELINK | Page 2 STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
Sco� and Lisa Hesselink take a break in the farm office Jan. 9 at Quonset Farms near Oostburg, Wisconsin. Sco� is the sixth genera�on on his family’s farm where they milk 1,075 cows and farm about 1,500 acres.
Technology aids herd management decisions Minglewood lauded for milk quality, animal health By Danielle Nauman danielle.n@dairystar.com
DEER PARK, Wis. — Years of dedication to milk quality and overall cow health drove Kristin Quist, her family and their farm management team to be named the 2024 recipient of Boehringer Ingelheim’s Dairy First Award. “We’re always chasing goals,” Quist said. “We’ve always had the mentality of never being satised. If we achieve a goal, we’re going to keep continuing to raise the bar, getting better. We’re a highly productive herd and that is how we’ve chosen to manage over the years.”
Quist is the herd manager at her family’s 1,200cow dairy, Minglewood Inc., which she operates alongside her husband, Jacob, and her parents, Kevin and Roxie Solum. Part of the Minglewood herd is housed in a robotic dairy barn and milked with eight DeLaval robotic milking machines. The rest of the herd is milked in the farm’s double-9 parlor. “Milk quality is important to us, and having a low somatic cell count is our goal all the time,” Quist said. “Right now, we are running around 100,000 between both systems.” Milk quality and animal health go hand-in-hand, Quist
PHOTO SUBMITTED
The owners of Minglewood Inc. — Jacob Quist (from le�), Kris�n Quist, Roxie Solum holding Kylie Quist and Kevin Solum — stand in their freestall barn near Deer Park, Wisconsin. The team at Minglewood was honored with Boehringer Ingelheim’s 2024 Dairy First Award, recognizing their commitment to milk quality and overall animal health.
said, and vigilance is the key to achieving high levels of both. She credits the installation of the smaXtec health management system just over two years ago with bettering the farm’s management. “We were on the DeLaval activity system for years, but we only had activity data, we didn’t have rumination data,” Quist said. “There were a lot of things we were missing because we didn’t know we didn’t have the data. Now to be able to identify the handful of animals in a 1,200-cow herd that we need to check every day saves us a lot of time. We look at utilizing the system like having an additional employee.” With that data, Quist said they are catching disease 3-4 days before they might show clinical signs. Turn to QUISTS | Page 6