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DAIRY ST R
Soaring Eagle Dairy aims for constant improvement
December 10, 2022
“All dairy, all the time”™
Volume 24, No. 20
Setting the bar high
By Stacey Smart
stacey.s@dairystar.com
NEWTON, Wis. – More than 40 years ago, Jim and Sandie Fitzgerald began fullling a dream to farm when they purchased their own place and put up a barn. It was the rst of several barns they would build throughout the years as their farm grew from a 60-cow dairy to a 1,200-cow dairy. In time, their children latched onto the same dream as four of the ve Fitzgerald children joined the operation to make the farm their career. Today, the Fitzgeralds own the farm with their daughters, Kelly Goehring, Julie Maurer and Stacy Klotz, and their son, Nick Fitzgerald, with each holding 20% ownership in the farm.
Diorama display wins national championship By Jan Lefebvre jan.l@star-pub.com
FARLEY, Iowa – Looking at photos of Doug Simon and Dan Hansen’s dairy farm, one may nd it hard to believe the farm is not real but instead a diorama display on a 1/64th scale. In fact, the farm is so realistic that it won the national championship in its class Nov. 5 at the 45th annual National Farm Toy Show hosted by the National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville. Although it was a thrill to be named champions, both Simon and Hansen said they had an excellent chance of winning that day. “We were both condant that we were going to come home with a trophy,” Hansen said. Simon agreed. “It was the amount of time we put into it,” he said. “When
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
The Fitzgerald siblings – Kelly Goehring (from leŌ), Julie Maurer, Stacy Klotz and Nick Fitzgerald – farm with their parents, Jim and Sandie Fitzgerald, where they milk 1,150 cows and farm 2,200 acres near Newton, Wisconsin. Kelly and Stacy are the farm’s herd managers, Julie is in charge of human resources and manages the parlor, and Nick manages eldwork. Kelly and her parents were partners in the business when they established Soaring Eagle Dairy in 1997. Stacy and Julie joined the operation in 2003, and Nick joined in 2011. Stacy’s husband, Jeremy, also works on the farm. The family milks 1,150
cows and farms 2,200 acres near Newton with help from 20 full-time employees. Cows are milked three times a day in a double-16 parallel parlor. The farm’s rolling herd average is 30,856 pounds of milk, 4.2% butterfat and 3.2% protein.
Cows average 95 pounds of milk per day and maintain a somatic cell count under 150,000 on an annual basis. The Fitzgeralds ship their milk to Land O’Lakes. Farming alongside their parents, the fourth generation is focused on continuous improve-
Detailed dairy
we were putting the whole display together, both of us kept saying that it was going to be really hard for somebody to beat this because it was pretty amazing seeing it all come together. What we ended up with was pretty cool.” Simon and Hansen used weekends and any spare time for about a year and a half to create their masterpiece. Hansen worked from his home in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and Simon from his home in Farley. “I built the equipment for the display,” Hansen said. “Doug did all the scenery and weathering stuff – putting manure in places, dirt and dust on the equipment and grass and gravel on the display board. We used each other’s talents within the hobby to do our own parts. Then a few parts we collaborated on and did together.” Nothing on the display was simply purchased and placed. The farm equipment and some of the tractors were designed by Dan and then 3D printed by him. A few tractors began as Ertl, a replica toy line, tractors but were sandblasted and deconstructed
PHOTO SUBMITTED
Dan Hansen (leŌ) and Doug Simon receive the naƟonal championship trophy Nov. 5 at the NaƟonal Farm Toy Show in Dyersville, Iowa. Their 8-by-8 foot diorama display of an enƟre dairy farm won the 1/64th class at the contest. down to the shell and then rebuilt and painted. “Dairy cows in the barn are Ertl cows, but each one of them
has been custom painted (by Simon) with different markings because no two cows are alike,” Simon said. “Some of them are
ment of cows, crops, employees and the community, as is the generation before them. “How do we get the next pound of milk or the next bushel of corn are questions we often like to ask ourselves,” Julie said. “How can we do better by the cow? The environment?” Julie manages the parlor, is in charge of human resources and handles the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Farm Service Agency regulations. Kelly and Stacy are the farm’s herd managers while Nick manages crops and does eldwork and maintenance with Jeremy. Julie’s daughter, Kelsey, also works on the farm. Jim and Sandie are semi-retired but active at Soaring Eagle Dairy. “When there are six family members here on a daily basis, there are a lot of eyeballs on what’s going on,” Julie said. One example of improvement was a tweak made to their milking system in 2016, which allowed the family to get more cows through the parlor. When
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replicated off of show cows that my family shows competitively. The calves and the heifers, all the animals, were custom painted.” For the contest, the display base had to be 8 feet by 8 feet, but materials used could be almost anything. Simon and Hansen were meticulous in their methods. “Everything, even the littlest of things and accessories, we either weathered or detailed or made it custom,” Simon said. Some of the feed in the display was made from actual feed. “I would occasionally take a bag of distillers or soybean meal or corn gluten pellets, and Doug and I used a small coffee grinder to make it even ner,” Hansen said. “It still had the color and smell of real feed.” They purchased additional materials from hobby stores. “For the feed in the mangers and the alleyways, there’s a blended turf that they use in railroad hobbies that looks like a ground cover,” Simon said. “It
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