“Of everything I do, this is my favorite,” says Ryan Sloop as he walks down a stock lane, leading a group of Brown Swiss from his family’s dairy to one of the farm’s many grazing pastures. The herd follows behind him, eager to get to a fresh stand of grass. Zealous though they are, all of them are trained to follow Sloop’s lead. When he reached the entry to that morning’s paddock, Sloop steps aside and let the cows stream into the pasture. When they settle down to graze, Sloop appraises the action. “That’s a good sound,” he says, “Heads down – grass going in, milk coming out.”
Sloop Dairy was established here in North Carolina’s central Piedmont in 1907. Today, the dairy is a partnership between Ryan and his father Charles. Together with the occasional help of one part-time high school student, the Sloops milk about 45 Brown Swiss (2x). Ryan came back to the farm after graduating from N.C. State in 2010. Prior to his return, Charles was operating the farm pretty much by himself. “Milking, feeding, breeding, he was doing it all,” Ryan recalls. The farm had been practicing some grazing but after Ryan’s return home they took it to another level.
Today, the farm has about 50 separate grazing paddocks. The goal is to graze from early March to Christmas every year, feeding no silage during the grazing season, just grass and about 20 pounds of grain per animal per day. A computerized feeding system distributes a set amount of grain based on the animal’s size, production and stage of lactation.
At N.C. State, Dr. Steve Washburn encouraged Ryan to consider operating the family farm as a pasture-based dairy, the advice, combined with a trip Washburn arranged for Sloop to visit a successful grazing dairy – influenced the Sloops. “We’re a unique size,” Ryan says. “Having a whole bunch of equity tied up in equipment didn’t make sense. Plus coming out of 2009 we didn’t want to go into debt. Twelve-dollar milk isn’t going to pay for a new tractor.” So Ryan set to work fencing off old crop fields and setting up new grazing pastures. In his words, “we put the equipment on the edge of the field and let the cows do the work. “People get the idea that grazing dairies are low-input and low-return,” he continues, “ours is low-input but I don’t consider it low-return.”
When Ryan graduated from college he and his father set down a list of goals to achieve by 2015. “It was an ambitious list,” Ryan recalls, “it helps me keep my head straight.”
Many of the goals have already been met, some in part thanks to a heavy snowfall in the middle of February 2014, which caused the dairy to lose three buildings. “Last year was a huge year for us,” Ryan explains. In addition to rebuilding two of the three damaged structures, he also built a new manure storage building and installed 2000 feet of water line and 20 hydrants on one part of the farm’s grazing land.
Prior to putting in the watering systems, cows would “commute” back to barn for water. “I was hard-headed,” Ryan admits, “I thought cows didn’t need water close by. I was wrong. The water paid for itself in the first month. Water consumption went up, milk production went up.”
One of the goals from the five-year plan that Ryan’s not likely to attain is the purchasing of a new tractor. “The older I get, the less I want a new tractor,” he says, “I mainly use them to haul manure and build fence. I bought a post driver instead of a new tractor.”
In the pastures, rye grass is a major cool-season forage. The fields have good permanent stands of both clover and crab grass. Millet and sorghum sudangrass are the primary planted warm season forages.
The Sloops only use about 100 acres of their farm. They have other farmland that they have farmed by neighbors Craig and Andy Corriher. “We’re dairy farmers,” Ryan says, “They’re crop farmers.”
As part of the arrangement, the Sloops help with fieldwork when need be. The Corrihers provide the silage the Sloops feed in winter. This year, the Sloops hope to improve the stock lane on another set of grazing paddocks, as well as add waterers. They are also looking to fence off a hay field and use it to graze heifers.
Someday, Ryan may like to add an agritourism component to the farm operation, partly to take advantage of the fact that the dairy sits on a heavily trafficked road and partly to diversify income. In the meantime, the Sloops are slowing growing, probably up to about 75 cows. Ryan gives all his cows names and doesn’t want to get too big. He’s also working to learn more about grazing. “Corey Lutz and Dennis Leaman,” Ryan says, referring to two North Carolina dairymen who operate Jersey grazing dairies, “those guys are my benchmarks.”
The Sloop Dairy has change in its future, but it’s already well on its way to becoming a benchmark of its own, an example of how creative adaptation can allow small family dairies to survive and thrive.
Source: Country Folks
