Dairying in New Mexico: 10,000 cattle, 1,500 acres
“I simply told my dad that I did not see a whole lot of old guys climbing around on their knees laying carpets,” said the towering Californian, on his path from carpets in Oregon to dairy farming in New Mexico.
“My dad and my uncle were in partnership together. My dad asked me if I wanted to buy my uncle out.” Ted and his father have three farms and 10,000 animals. They deliver one million gallons of milk to market each month.
The three farms, totalling 1,500 acres, are close to Glanbia’s new joint venture cheese plant at Clovis, in the high plains of New Mexico. Each enterprise represents factory farming at its most efficient. The family milk 3,400 cows on one farm, 2,400 on another, and have a third holding with 4,500 heifers, which takes all calves from the other two farms as one-day-olds until they return to their herds as two-year-olds.
The scale of the operation is bewildering, but Ted said it is a life-long dream for himself, and, with the help of God and family, he was determined to make it a success.
“We employ over 50, including family, who understand that the mission of our farms is to produce the highest quality product. It is also to care for our environment, while providing a clean, comfortable and safe environment for our cows, which are our most valuable asset,” he said.
Incomes seem no more satisfactory here, in one of the most intensive milk producing regions in the US, than in Ireland. “It could be worse, but it could be a whole lot better. The present price cycle is probably hitting dairymen a little tougher. In the previous low cycle, energy and feed costs were not as high,” said Ted.
It would cost $4m to become a 3,000 cow farmer in New Mexico today. Most dairymen of that scale make, on average, between $500,000 and $1m of gross revenue in an average year.
“But you have got to remember that goes towards their debt repayment. It’s a lot of dollars, but they have a lot of dollars invested to put back,” he said. Milk prices have been low for the last three years. But dairy farmers had good years previously, and most of them are in good financial shape.
“We are eating equity right now, but we are not in disaster,” he said. Subsidies are not a big part of dairy farming in New Mexico. Each milking of his 3,400 cows takes about seven and half hours, with another hour washing up.
Like other dairy farmers in the region, Ted Boersma is delighted that Clovis was chosen as the location for the new Southwest Cheese plant. Until now, dairy farmers in New Mexico have had to transport their milk out of state, on road journeys of 1,000 miles.
SWC chairman Mike McCloskey said the cost of shipping milk to other states was phenomenal. “Clovis is an ideal location for the plant due to the fact that it is right in the centre of a strong milk supply area, which naturally will also reduce transport costs for farmers,” he said.
