From the Fields - Madeline Meyer

By Madeline Meyer, Yuba County dairy farmer 

We just finished harvesting our rye for winter silage a couple of weeks ago. Yields were down, but yields have been down pretty much everywhere. We’re still grateful to have the silage to help feed the heifers and cows. Working with our walnut farmer neighbors, they planted rye for us in between their young trees. When the trees are under 5 or 6 years old, they can put tractors through there to harvest. I think that’s pretty cool. We’re using the land two ways: They’re growing their walnut trees and growing rye, so we can feed the cows. We’re using the land efficiently, which I think is awesome.

Now they’re working the ground and getting ready to plant corn. We’re loving this cool weather. The cows really appreciate it, and they’re milking really well right now. There’s definitely a lot more cows getting pregnant in this nice, cool weather.

We’re very excited about June Dairy Month to promote our products. We’ve had a lot of tours this spring. We’ve had tour groups from UC Davis, Chico State, local middle schools, FFA chapters. That’s nice because we’re quite the rarity here in Yuba County. We’re the only dairy left, so it was fun to be able to show our facilities to some of those folks.

We have expanded recently. We purchased a neighbor’s cows. He was going out of business, and we wanted to get his base. We also are renting some of our neighbor’s facilities to house dry cows, so we’ve had some different structural changes around here because we’re milking more cows. That’s been a good change.

Calves are really healthy right now. Bull-calf prices are good. Beef prices were great all winter. The beef herd nationally is at an all-time low, so it’s good for dairy farmers because we get higher beef prices on our cull cows, and we’re getting more for our bull calves too.