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On Wednesday evening, Oct. 15, thirty-three Wolcott Lions, their guests and the evening’s speaker, Mrs. Carol Merrell of Wolcott, met for the service club’s bi-weekly dinner event at the Elks Lodge, and to hear an interesting photo-illustrated report from Mrs. Merrell on the progress of the massive Merrell family Dairy Farm expansion project.
Most deeply involved in running the operation, Carol said, are their son Jon, and his wife Karen (who, as a licensed Veterinarian, is extremely helpful to the business), while Carol and her husband, Harold “Pete” Merrell, also work there daily, feeding calves, operating equipment, offering advice and consultation, and doing whatever else they can to help. Their daughter, Laurie, is the business’ office manager and bookkeeper.
Anyone who has driven south from the Wolcott stoplight, across Rte. 104 to the Lasher Rd. intersection, would have to be blind to fail seeing the barn that has been erected on the east side of Whiskey Hill slightly beyond Salter Colvin Rd. The structure runs E-W, is 823 ft. long, 200 ft. wide, and is currently housing about 500 heifers. When it is completed, it will be home to approx. 1,500 milkers. (The farm currently is milking roughly 1350 cows at the “home farm” barns on Rte. 89, a few hundred yards directly east of the new construction.)
A second (matching) new barn is also proposed for construction just south of the first, to accommodate the same number (1500)—‘though she added that, unsurprisingly, the cost of steel today has SOARED.
She said the heifers in new “Barn #1” recently figured out how to unlatch the gate—and rounding them up was a neighborhood experience!
One of the first milking “parlors” of its type in this area has been installed on the site, and is being readied for use when the rest of the facility’s myriad and complicated electrical, cooling, office materials, hot water and laundry, refrigeration and other power equipment have been finished and cows are moved in. The milking parlor, designed and built in Germany, is really mind-boggling! It is basically an enormous, shiny, steel merry-go-round onto which 72 cows can march, one at a time,—each to its own milking station—while the parlor, said to be the most expensive part of the dairy, rotates ever so slowly and smoothly on nylon rollers. Milkmaids (and here Carol chuckles that women tend to be more “gentle” with the cows than men) will then do the customary udder cleansing, and extraction of the milk.
When each cow makes one complete revolution on the platform, it will have completed the milking process and will step backward from it to be replaced by another animal. She said cows are going to have to learn how to “back off of it”—a procedure to which they should soon adapt. The system is much easier to use than conventional milking in stanchions, and reportedly increases milk production from the cows.
The large, new “freestall” barn has a massive and powerful fresh air fan system which will provide maximum comfort for the animals year ‘round, and help in production, as will the use of sand “bedding”—judged the very best bedding material for cows.
Sufficiency of water is a must for any dairy operation—and THIS one needs a LOT! So it was a pleasant surprise when, preparing the site for the new barns, workers discovered a natural and nearly unlimited source, near the surface, and right at the barn location! The barns are built with a 3-degree slope to the east for a natural runoff and easier cleaning. A manure handling system is located at the east end of the complex.
Carol said they estimate that, when in operation, the enlarged business will employ about 50 people, be running 20 trucks during harvest season (which is nearly all summer and fall) and using 3 chopper/harvesters. She said that cows produce two main things: Milk and manure, and the latter seems almost an industry in itself. Merrells own and rent many hundreds of acres, and do everything possible to make the necessary spreading of this valuable fertilizer as unobjectionable for nearby residents as possible, often discing it into the ground quickly. . .a far cry from the old days of pressure pumping—and squirting it high in the air—through an irrigation pump! That long-abandoned system could make the work “detectable” by one’s nose for several miles downwind depending on weather and wind conditions.
The farm has recently purchased a number of cows (including some standard breeds other than their mostly-Holsteins) as well as some cows already bred which are due to give birth in March and April of ’09—and which will make those months VERY busy at the Merrell dairy farm, she said.
The Wolcott area can be proud to be the home of one of the most modern, state-of-the-art dairy operations anywhere in the nation .
Wolcott Lions will next meet on Wed., Nov. 5 at the Elks Lodge for dinner and a talk by Wolcott Mayor John Monson on the topic “The Future of The Village of Wolcott.”
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