Page 10 • Dairy Star • Second Section • Saturday, December 7, 2013
DAIRYING ACROSS AMERICA
Godfrey Dairy thrives in southern heat
Clark milks 800 cows in north central Georgia BY ANDREA BORGERDING Staff writer
year before I kept growing and growing.” Clark bought land and today owns 500 acres and rents another 500 to 600 acres. He raises corn, rye grass and some Bermuda grass. Clark’s dairy today includes 800 Holsteins milked in a double-16 parlor and housed in freestall barns. Cows are milked three times a day with no BST. They are fed a ration of 50-50 corn silage and rye grass, distiller’s grains and a protein mix comprised of soybean meal and cottonseed. Clark is maintaining a 27,000 pound rolling herd average and a somatic cell count of 130,000. “We used to have the SCC down under 100,000 but this summer was tough to keep it down,” Clark said. Clark has 14 full-time employees helping him. His daughter, Megan, just graduated from college and is helping on the dairy by doing book-
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Cuyler Johnson milks cows on Godfrey Dairy in Madison, Ga. They milk three times day in a double-6 parlor.
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Godfrey Dairy is operated by, from left, Emerson Burky (assistance herdsman), Cuyler Johnson (herd manager), and Dave Clark (owner/crop manager). Clark has been slowly building his herd since he began milking in 1979. Today he milks 800 cows near Madison, Ga. work. Cuyler Johnson has been an employee for 20 years and is the herd manager. “Cuyler does an outstanding job,” Clark said.
Clark also raises all of his youngstock on site. “Our biggest challenge is the heat in the summer,” Clark said. “This year wasn’t as bad,
but we had weeks of 95 degrees with 65-70 percent humidity. Some years starts earlier than others, but usually from July to September is pretty bad.”
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Dave Clark checks one his corn elds on his dairy farm in north central Georgia. Clark grows corn, rye grass and Bermuda grass. Turn to GEORGIA | Page 11 Fluegge’s AG • 50 Years • Fluegge’s AG • 50 Years • Fluegge’s AG • 50 Years • Fluegge’s AG • 50 Years •
MADISON, Ga. – Keeping cows cool in the summer can be a challenge for any dairy farmer – especially when you have several months straight of high heat and humidity. For Dave Clark, the heat is a setback, but it hasn’t kept him from building and expanding his 800-cow dairy near Madison, in north central Georgia. “There are getting to be less and less dairies here in the Southeast,” Clark said. “I have about 18 dairies in my county where there used to be 50. An average-sized dairy in Georgia is between 150-250 cows.” Clark grew up working on his grandparent’s dairy operation before he started his own dairy from scratch in 1979. He began with 40 cows and no land. “I started by building a double-6 parlor and kept the cows outside,” Clark said. “I had it that way for about a
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Dairy Star • Second Section • Saturday, December 7, 2013 • Page 11
Continued from GEORGIA | Page 10
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Dave Clark checks progress on packing corn silage on his farm near Madison, Ga. To try to ease the stress on his cows, he tries to freshen all of his cows in the fall, but that is also when milk is in high demand. “The co-ops in the Southeast are trying to get some programs together to try and entice farmers to produce more milk during the fall,” Clark said.
“The co-ops in the utheast are tr Southeast trying prog to get some programs together to try and entice farmers to produce more milk during fall.”
– DAVE CLARK
The milk price, Clark said, is one of the benets of dairying in Georgia. Right now, Clark’s gross milk price is $21.50. But taking off the hauling charge of $1.40 can make a dent in his milk check. “All of my milk goes to Florida,” Clark said. Although the milk price helps, Clark said he would prefer to be dairying in an area where there are more dairy farmers or at least row-crop farmers. “If you gave me $2 million and I’d have to pick the best spot to build
a dairy – it would not be right here in central Georgia,” Clark said. Most of Georgia’s dairy producers are located in southern Georgia. Clark said he realizes dairying might be easier if he had more open cropland and if he had more farmers near him to work with. “I’m in an area where there are not a lot of row crop farmers, but in south central Georgia there a lot of cotton and grain farmers,” Clark said. “I know dairy farmers down there who can pay people to pump their lagoons out, put the manure on another farmer’s land and in exchange they can maybe get the farmer to grow them some corn silage or something. I don’t have that option here in north central Georgia.” Another challenge – a shortage of veterinarians – is something Clark has found himself more fortunate than most dairy farmers. “We have one that we use right now, but some dairies, maybe 60 miles from here, can’t even get a veterinarian,” Clark said. Despite the challenges of dairying in his area, Clark has proven that a dairyman can succeed. Clark currently has about 150 cows kept outside. His plan is to build another freestall barn to get the cows housed inside. “I’ll probably be milking up to 900 cows,” Clark said. “With my land base, that’s about as far as we will go.”
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