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Uniqueness to Milk Source’s Missouri dairy farm

A leader of one Missouri’s largest dairy farms says this operation faces significantly different challenges from its other farms.

Milk Source also has farms in Wisconsin, and Todd Willer, Vice President of Operations, says navigating the different climate has been a challenge.

“Weather can be a little bit more volatile here, we’ve learned that. It can get really wet and a week later it can be a drought.”

He tells Brownfield the farm has also worked to reduce the cost of labor because that’s a significant expense.

“When we bought this farm, there was actually three milking parlors on this site,” he says.

“There was a 60 stall rotary, 20 stall rotary, and a 8 stall herringbone that was here, so we removed all three of those parlors and built one new 100 hundred stall rotary,” and adds, “So we’re milking the entire herd on that one parlor now and tried to make it really labor efficient.”

And, he says there’s a lot to learn from other dairy farmers.

“Most of the things that we’re doing on our farms are bits and pieces that we’ve pulled from other farms that we’ve toured and talking to other producers.”

Stangler recently interviewed Willer during a Missouri Dairy Summer Social event at Milk Source’s LaBelle Dairy in La Belle, Missouri.