26-year-old readies his dairy for long-term expansion

Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley

Dairyman Bill Wolfe is the young blood of his Wisconsin family’s fourth-generation farm. His great-grandfather homesteaded the original farm. Since then the family has purchased other farmland adjacent to the homestead, owning a total of 600 acres. Today the 26-year-old Wolfe and his father milk 120 cows, raise beef cattle and grow cash crops in southwestern Wisconsin.

“I’ve been working here ever since I could do anything,” Wolfe says.

Wisconsin dairyman Bill Wolfe says he is most proud of the calf management on his 120-cow dairy. Courtesy photo by Bill Wolfe.

As a junior in high school, he helped his father build the farm’s milking parlor. Then after graduating from high school, he went to Southwest Wisconsin Technical College in Fennimore, Wisconsin, where he earned a degree in agribusiness and dairy management.

While attending school, Wolfe worked on a 300-cow dairy, learning about the importance of getting the dairy employees to work together as a team. He also interned with a dairy equipment company. He says while he was selling acid detergent and other parlor supplies he got to talk to many dairymen. He asked many of them what they would have done differently on their operation, if they could do it over again.

“It’s really nice getting that type of knowledge from them,” Wolfe says.

He says those experiences will help him down the road as he works toward his dream of expanding his herd to 700 cows in the next 10 years. Employee management is one of the inevitable obstacles Wolfe says he will encounter as he expands.

“We don’t have many employees now,” Wolfe says. “The biggest obstacles to getting bigger is making sure that your on-the farm point men – your nutritionist, herd health guy and milk manager – are good people you can rely on and count on so that when you are managing you can handle it all.”

Visiting World Ag Expo this year as a winner of Progressive Dairyman’s Best of Two World’s Promotion, Wolfe says he wants to learn more about how dairymen in California manage their employees. Although Wolfe says some in his state may jeer at the management styles of Western dairies, he wants to become more acquainted with how they do things, because in his opinion they have similar employee management and herd health challenges that producers in Wisconsin face.

“We should all be working together,” Wolfe says. “If you look at the number of dairies today and the number of people that are in the industry, eventually we are all going to have to work together. And we are working together more and more all the time. You’re going to want contacts all over the U.S. There is no one here that’s any better and no one there that’s any better if you are dairying the way it’s supposed to be done.”

Wolfe says he’ll be canvassing World Ag Expo to learn more about manure digesters, calf management, herd health and cow comfort.

“I love talking to other people,” Wolfe says. “That’s the best way to get to know things. You can’t learn it all by just doing it.” PD