The Rural Voice, 1993-07, Page 22Bruce Schmidt with his prize-winning Jerseys.
Waste not,
want not
Using alcohol by-product
proves the key ingredient
in helping young couple
produce top herd results
By Keith Roulston
18 THE RURAL VOICE
When you start small and
want to build a successful
farm business, you'd
better use every edge you
can get. Seeking an edge
led Bruce and Grace Schmidt to be
one of the leaders in Ontario in using
by-product feeds to increase
production in their dairy herd.
The Schmidts have been feeding
wet distillers grains to their Jersey
herd for two years and it has been
part of the answer in increasing yield
and decreasing the cost per litre of
producing milk, Bruce says. In the
past year the Schmidts have won
awards for the second highest
producing Jersey herd in Ontario and
the fourth in Canada, won the Perth -
Huron Jersey Club high total BCA
trophy and will be receiving, in July,
the award for the second highest
producing herd (all breeds) in Huron
County and the most improved herd
(all breeds) in Huron County.
It's been a long hard struggle for
the Schmidts. After Bruce, the son of
a Cargill -area dairy farmer married
Grace, who grew up on a Blyth -area
farm, they went looking for an empty
dairy barn they could rent to start
farming. They found one just a
couple of farms away from Grace's
home farm. They rented the barn,
house and a few acres and started out
with the absolute minimum. They had
no land so had to buy all their inputs.
They had no farm as collateral so
they had to purchase feed and other
supplies on a cash basis.
Finally in the spring of 1989 they
were able to purchase a 73 -acre farm
a couple of miles away near Walton.
The farm fit the bill, Bruce says,
because it had a good dairy barn with
a new milking parlour but a small
land base that helped keep the cost
down. "It allowed us to get in and get
rolling," he says.
Their first step was to install a
computer feeder system and
automatic takeoffs in the milking
parlour. The Schmidts have plowed
every available cent into their
farming operation, doing without
many luxuries for their personal lives
while they accumulated more quota.
Despite his best efforts, however,
getting his production up was a losing
battle. "We were culling heavily and
still our BCA (Breed Class Average)
was stuck at 160. I wasn't satisfied
and started taking a look at how