By Matt de Simone
The Cave Hill Dairy Farm in Troutville is one of seven dairy farms left in Botetourt County. It is a fifth-generation dairy farm and a sixth-generation farm.
“It takes a village to run a farm,” Courtney Henderson of Cave Hill said in a recent interview. “Luckily, in Botetourt County, we have support all the way around. We have support from the Board of Supervisors, support from the people here—everybody knows us. In the dairy world alone, (Botetourt’s community of farmers) will help me if I need medication for a cow. If I have the equipment (other farmers) need, they’ll borrow it.
“Obviously, there’s going to be competition because we’re all trying to make milk, but within the dairy world and ag world in general, we all try to help each other out the best we can.”
Courtney is a part of the fifth generation of dairy farmers who currently tend to the herd. Since Courtney could walk, she would help her grandfather feed the cows. Along with her father, Jeff, her grandfather, Jerry, and mother, Karen, are three generations of Hendersons. They spend their days maintaining the farm’s day-to-day operations and working with the livestock, which produces a large amount of milk per day.
How much milk? The farm ships about 17,500 pounds of milk every other day.
The Hendersons have farmed on the property since the 1700s. Courtney’s great-great-grandfather went to Pennsylvania and purchased three Holstein heifer calves in 1935. Amazingly enough, those three calves were the last ever brought to the farm from the outside. Almost a century ago, the Hendersons never bought any cattle after that initial purchase.
Since then, dairy farms across the county have slowly decreased.
“When I started 30 years ago, there were three times as many dairy farms in the county than there are now,” Jeff mentioned. “Around 1960, (regulations) did away with milk cans. A lot of dairy farms wouldn’t upgrade to bulk tanks, which did away with many farms.
“Those farms weren’t full-time dairy-only. They were either working off-farm and milking cows, too, or they had other enterprises on the farm as well as the dairy. But with that big investment into the equipment to go into bulk, those farms shut down their dairy operations.”
Today, Cave Hill milks 127 cows daily and roughly 350 animals on the farm, from newborns to milk cows.
“We are considered a 100% closed dairy,” Courtney said in a recent interview. “Since nothing comes in, we don’t have as many issues as other farmers have.”
A “closed dairy” means that nothing comes into the farm, but the farm will sell out to potential buyers. The Hendersons don’t have to worry about shipping diseases such as “heel warts” that tend to pop up on cattle during the shipping process.
Although the farm doesn’t face any problems as far as bringing in cattle, the Hendersons face similar issues many other farmers face annually. The strict regulations in selling dairy continue to increase. Any farm wants to sell the top quality, but regulations ensure the number of animals in specific spaces.
For instance, the farm may have many animals in a particular space. However, other animals such as pigs and chickens must be a specific distance away from the dairy herd. Farmers face regulations on the amount of manure they can spread on their fields with nutrient management set up to avoid a runoff, polluting streams. International trade affects dairy farms as well. Supply and demand must meet. If a particular country gets removed from the trade scenario, there could be an abundance of milk in the United States, which affects the demand.
Dairy farmers wear many hats. Courtney’s primary focus is the milking parlor. A milking parlor is part of a building where cows are milked on a dairy farm. The parlor at Cave Hill welcomes up to ten cows at a time.
There are four main modes of milking cows in a parlor. Cave Hill utilizes the Herringbone design (the most common design), where the cattle stand at a 45-degree angle. This design offers the milker a different access point to the udder than the parallel or tandem designs and allows access to different types of equipment.
Cows are brought to the milking parlor to be milked and are then returned to a feeding and/or resting area. The main advantages of a milking parlor compared to milking cows in their housing area are that it increases labor efficiency, provides ergonomic benefits, and reduces the risk of injury, both traumatic and repetitive stress-related.
A farmer may also milk their cows in a housing area using bucket milkers or a pipeline milking system. Automatic or robotic milking systems usually operate without someone being present to supervise the milking process and have been in use for the past three decades on commercial farms.
Automated milking systems are most commonly integrated into the animal housing area (box—style systems), although robotic rotary milking parlors have recently appeared on commercial dairy farms. The Ingleside Dairy Farm in Lexington is a “robot farm” run by Jennifer Leech where the cows essentially milk themselves.
People within the dairy farming community often debate the best place for the cows to live. The Henderson family prefers their cows to live in a more controlled environment. In the winter, the Hendersons leave their cows in a barn. They allow their cows to graze in the pasture in warmer weather.
“Sometimes, cows are better off in barns,” Courtney added. “In a barn, there’s a controlled environment. We work very hard keeping the cows clean and keeping them from getting infections.”
She mentioned that beef cattle tend to spend more time in a rotational grazing system—shifting the livestock to different units of a pasture or range in regular sequence to permit the recovery and growth of the pasture plants after grazing.
Courtney graduated from Lord Botetourt High School and was an active member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA).
“When I was in FFA, I loved it,” Courtney said. “I tried to take advantage of every opportunity. I got to see so many different things. It helped me figure out what I wanted to do (as a farmer). I wanted to know what other industries were doing.”
Courtney also holds a science and business degree from Virginia Tech. She was in the dairy science program traveling to Florida, Georgia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania participating in the ‘Dairy Challenge’ team.
According to the Department of Dairy Science at Virginia Tech, the Dairy Challenge introduces students with skills needed to perform well in the contest, including knowledge of management practices related to nutrition, feeding, reproduction, herd health, finance, labor, etc., understanding how a dairy enterprise operates, ability to identify and solve dairy problems, and skills to communicate these observations effectively.
Courtney brought her knowledge of dairy science learned at school and used it at Cave Hill, which produced positive results.
Over the past couple of years, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many farms to adjust their operations. Cave Hill Dairy Farm is no exception.
“It’s hard to get medications,” Courtney said. “The milk co-ops have done a great job preparing for (any issues revolving around the pandemic).”
Although the fear of shutting down the farm during the pandemic was something to consider, they were fortunate not to reach that point.
Currently, Courtney works with local schools in Virginia that are a part of an ‘Adopt-A-Cow’ program available for teachers, homeschool teachers, after-school programs, library programs, and youth agriculture programs.
The program lets students have updates on their calf. The students learn about agricultural practices and the importance of dairy and dairy cows.
For more information about the Cave Hill Dairy Farm, please visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CaveHill2/.