In today’s episode of The Milk Check, we’re joined by Tim the Dairy Farmer, a farmer, speaker and ag comedian. If you think dairy farming is no laughing matter, then you haven’t met Tim. Tune in for a special episode of the podcast, where Tim and the Jacoby team discuss:
- Strong harvest likely leading to lower feed prices
- Could dairy heifer prices rival Black Angus prices in the near(ish) future?
- Could the milk price reach $30?
- Things you should never plan near the cow pasture
Plus, learn how Tim got into the comedy biz and how he silences the hecklers.
Don’t miss this episode of The Milk Check with Tim the Dairy Farmer.
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Intro audio (with music): Welcome to the Milk Check, a TC Jacoby & Co podcast where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind.
Ted Jacoby II (T3): Welcome, everybody, to the Milk Check. This month we’ve got a very special episode, we have a special guest, Tim the Dairy Farmer is with us today. Tim is going to ask us what we think is going on with these dairy markets, and we’re going to do our best to give him an answer, and we’ll see where the conversation goes from there. Tim, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Tim the Dairy Farmer: I’ve been in the dairy business for 30-something years, taken my licks, started doing standup comedy as Tim the Dairy Farmer about 22 years ago, and I speak at agriculture events. I’m a standup comedian, I’m not a motivational speaker. I’m horrible at marketing myself there, Ted. So basically I’m a dairy farmer that does standup comedy, and they hire me to come to meetings, to wake up after guys like you talk. And here’s another thing, this podcast is called the Milk Check, correct?
T3: Yes.
Tim: All right. This is how you know I’m a dairy farmer, y’all call it the Milk Check, I’m just happy my last milk check had a comma.
T3: Well, that’s why we call it the Milk Check, because we want to talk a little bit about markets and what’s affected dairy farmers’ milk checks. Hopefully most dairy farmers do have a comma right now because prices are halfway decent. But before we go to markets, Tim, I’ve got to ask, tell me about one of the most interesting agricultural events that you participated in. I’d love to hear a good story.
Tim: Oh, man. I’ve got so many. It’s not the good ones that you remember, it’s the horrible ones. There’s three shows, there’s the one you planned to do, the one you do, and the one you wish on the drive home that you would have done. I’ve had all kinds of stuff go wrong. No, for the most part they’re always fun.
T3: All right.
Josh White: So Tim, how often are you on the farm versus having to hit the road for comedy?
Tim: I probably go off and do 30, 35 shows a year. Normally I fly out the night before and I’m back the day after. My brother’s always been my biggest supporter, he covers while I’m gone. I couldn’t have made it this far doing comedy without my brother’s support, because we’re partners in the dairy and he’s always covered for me when I’m gone.
T3: Where is the dairy located, Tim?
Tim: Central Florida. We’re actually over between Fort Myers and Tampa, where all the elderly people go to pass away, you take a right and that’s where we’re at.
T3: When that hurricane came through Fort Myers last year, that affect you guys at all?
Tim: No, it affected a few of my buddies. Nobody lost any cows, but barns were just crinkled up like aluminum foil and tossed around. I think over the years I’ve lost three barns to hurricanes.
T3: Oh, really?
Tim: Yeah. They tell you how it’s rated for 80 mile an hour or whatever, and then when the tornado or the hurricane comes through it wads it up like a piece of paper and chucks it 100 yards. You’re like, “Well, that wasn’t rated right.” Anyway. Go ahead, this is your podcast.
T3: Tim, if you have a question to get the market discussion started, why don’t you go ahead and shoot?
Tim: I’m just wondering what things are doing. All my buddies, my relatives are all in the commercial side of it. And don’t lie to me, if it’s going to hurt, just rip the Band-Aid off.
T3: Well, I’ll tell you what we’re having right now is we’re having an internal discussion, my brother Gus is convinced that all this breeding the beef that’s going on is going to create a heifer shortage of such magnitude that we’re going to have $30 milk by the end of the year. Gus, would you agree with that?
Gus Jacoby: Not by the end of this year, although I think it is plausible. I would say that within the next year, and maybe it’s 12 to 14 months, we’re going to be in for it. I think the contraction on cows is going to be fairly significant enough, and then any uptick in demand will send the milk price spiraling upward, and $30 milk is certainly a plausible scenario under those conditions.
T3: And Josh, what would you say is happening on the demand side? Are we able to sell any nonfat right now?
Josh White: Internationally it’s not real great, Ted. It’s a broken record, same thing every time. We’ve come off of tough times before for the dairymen, margins looked a little bit better now, but the one black eye in the whole product market remains to be the milk powders. And every day we get maybe some optimism or some hope or something that looks like tomorrow could turn around, but it isn’t happening yet.
T3: Our friends in Asia, any indication yet that China’s coming back and is going to start buying a little bit more powdered than they have been?
Josh: No.
T3: I think everybody’s in agreement on that. I know the two blogs that I read this morning, including BCA and Ross Rant, both of them have China in the toilet, and not getting out any time soon. They say India is where it’s going to be, that’s going to be the next hotspot. Not necessarily as a market for dairy products, the overall economy.
Gus: Yeah. Economically I believe it. When it comes to dairy though, India is stable when it comes to milk. They rarely are major importers of dairy.
T2: I think Gus is right, but the economy is the other side of that coin.
T3: So I was listening to an economist last week who basically said it looks like we’re going to go into a very mild recession. The asterisk on his comment was everybody’s hoping that interest rates come down. Interest rates are not coming down five points.
T2: They’re going to do a quarter on general principles.
T3: Right. They’re going to come down from the 6% to 7% they are right now to maybe 5%. The next thing he said was that we may spend most of 2025 there, because then we’re going right back up, because they are going to achieve a soft landing, the recession we will probably have will be mild, and there’s still a lot of pent-up demand and it’s just going to accelerate right out of it, and then we’re going to be right back where we were. If you think about that from a dairy perspective, everybody’s breeding the beef, Tim’s breeding the beef. Tim, are your cousins breeding the beef?
Tim: Oh, yeah. This is even a year or so ago, I’m getting $2.25 a pound for that beef calf, whereas I’d only get, what, $.96, $.98 cents a pound for the milk? I would take milk out of my tank and feed black calves, it was better for me to just put it in a calf and raise the calf. So yeah, there’s a lot of guys doing it. So let me ask you guys this, because I don’t follow the market like you do, and I’ve been in this business for 30-something years. So you’re telling me now that powered milk is what sets the market these days? Is that what you’re saying?
T3: The cheese price is probably the biggest factor setting the market.
Tim: Okay.
T3: You’ve got cheese that has a big influence, butter has a big influence, but you’ve still got to do something with the powder as well.
Tim: It amazes me, because back in the day you’d get a little bump in money if you had a higher butter fat, they pay you on quality of course, and then the stuff that they’re making the powder at, we all would either feed that back to the cows or put in on the ground. And now, all of a sudden somebody took a trash product and it’s one of the … I’m just shooting from the hip, but I’ve been in it long enough to know that that used to go down the drain. It kind of amazes me.
Gus: Tim, we have a pretty unique set of circumstances in our industry now. So the last milk production report we can track at about 1%, we look at certain areas of the country that are starting to lose that milk, such as the Southwest, and in the same time as they lose that milk they have cheese plants being built in those regions, and fairly significant ones. So as you analyze that, if the milk’s not growing that means that milk’s got to come out of somewhere to fill those plants, so obviously it’s going to come out of class four. We’ve seen it come out of class four a little bit just on the current contraction, but as we move forward and these cheese plants come online and start building up their processing capacity, I think that’s where we start to wonder what this powder market is really going to do and just how tight it might get.
Tim: I’ve been in Florida all my life milking cows, and we’ve always been class one. Everybody always wanted to come into the Florida market, so we had Texas, Maryland, Virginia, they all wanted to come in. And now, it’s no secret, Walmart’s getting ready to build a big facility there in I think Macon, Georgia. The guys here in Florida, they’re a little worried because it could really crush the Florida market.
Gus: I think that’s a legitimate concern, as Walmart starts to make their own bottled milk, that’s got to come out of some of the guys that are co-packing that for Walmart right now down there.
Tim: Right.
Gus: Then you add in the fact that if you lose those facilities, now that milk’s going in there, and I believe most of the milk that’s intended for the new Walmart facility is going to be coming from cows on farms that intend to expand quite a bit.
Tim: Yeah. Even so, it opens up the ability for Walmart to buy milk from other states and ship it into Florida cheaper than what we’re doing.
Gus: I don’t know if there’s enough transportation credits and zone differentials to make that still work, with the freight, the way it costs these days. But there’s always that time of the year when you have to do it, in that fall timeframe it always gets tight enough down there, where if they want to get enough milk to fill the orders, you’ve got to bring it from the Mideast or somewhere up north.
Tim: I have another question.
T3: Just yell it out.
Gus: I think you’ve got to yell it out.
Tim: Okay. So you guys are predicting $30 milk.
T3: Gus. Wait, Tim, Gus is predicting $30 milk.
Gus: But that’s, just so you know, I have an indefinite amount of time before we get there.
Tim: Okay. So now you’re a real consultant. Do you see heifer prices going through the roof then? Because they’re not too bad right now.
Gus: I can’t see how they wouldn’t. The beef market really is going to drive that, and it’s my understanding that the beef market doesn’t look to come down anytime soon, and yet the … Of any credible significance, I should say. And yet the dairy heifer supply continues to shorten. So under that scenario, I would say that means that certainly as milk price goes up, plenty of reason for the replacement heifers for dairy to continue to go up.
T3: And I’ll echo that. Tim, I believe dairy heifer prices are poised at some point in the next two years to go through the roof. Unless markets don’t work anymore, the market math says at some point we’re going to be really, really short of dairy heifers. The only other possibility is we don’t kill cows and we end up with 17-year-old cows.
T2: Tim, let me ask you a question. At what price, at what milk price would you stop breeding for black calves?
Tim: I don’t know, I’ve never put a pencil to that. But right now selling raw, no, I’m going to keep selling it raw. It’s got a pet food label. I think every farm is different, because who’s got a mortgage? Who had rich parents? Who’s expanding? I think what’s going to happen, as soon as you say $30 milk, and trust me, I was one of them at one time, when dairy farmers start hearing high prices they’re going to mortgage everything to the hilt and they’re going to expand overnight, and then there goes your price because you’re going to be swamped again. I’m just telling you my opinion on what I’ve seen, and it’s tainted, but dairy farmers are, “Oh, god. We’re going to get high milk, let’s expand, let’s mortgage the wife’s car too and see what we can do.”
Gus: Tim, I think 100%, I get what you’re saying. I think the only caveat is the fact that we haven’t had this short of a replacement heifer supply for dairy in over a quarter of a century.
Tim: Yeah. I think this is something that we’ve never encountered before.
Gus: And it doesn’t look like it’s going to end soon either. Right now the decisions that dairymen are making are the same as what they were a year ago, even under these circumstances, because there’s not enough there to influence them yet to change their decision process.
Tim: Yeah. Everybody’s a little gun shy because you don’t know what the economy’s going to do.
Gus: Yep.
Josh: So Tim, our job in the industry is to think about and pay attention to the things that Tim the Dairy Farmer, who is dairy farming and a comedian, doesn’t have time to pay attention to. And I can tell you there’s a lot of weird stuff. I sat on a webinar a week ago about Ozempic and how that’s driving dairy prices, and I guarantee that’s not something that’s probably on your radar. Ozempic, the weight loss drug, and how that’s driving whey protein consumption. Earlier in the conversation you mentioned the stuff we used to poor down the drain, and it’s driving whey prices right now to the point to where people in the US and even in Europe are talking about how the whey component price is as important as the cheese price.
Tim: That’s amazing. Maybe get some of this nut milk stuff out of the market.
Gus: Don’t get us started on-
T3: Don’t get us started on nut milk. And by the way, nut milk is not milk.
Tim: Well, I’ve got a joke about soy milk that I tell. When I do clubs and I say, “How many of y’all are drinking soy milk?” There will be a bunch of people to raise their hand. I’ll be like, “Listen, I don’t know if you know this but soy milk is made from a soy bean, which is the same bean from which they make ethanol and biodiesel fuel, and I tried soy milk but every time I farted it would smell like WD-40. But at least the toilet seat doesn’t squeak anymore, so that’s the good side.”
T3: That’s good.
Tim: Hey, can you tell me where all my check money goes to for dairy?
Gus: No.
T3: Did you just answer that by saying, “No?”
Tim: I’m going to go down that rabbit hole with you guys and see what we can figure out. I don’t know the answer either. Oh, well.
T3: I will say this, Tim, some of that checkoff money does go to fund things like the US Dairy Export Council. I’ll defend the US Dairy Export Council because dairy exports have grown over the last 30 years from roughly 3% of our dairy production to almost 20%, and that has really been a big factor in driving increased milk production in this country. So some of the checkoff dollars, I think rightfully so, we need to question what it’s being used for, but the money that’s been given to the US Dairy Export Council has definitely been well-used.
Tim: Good recover there, Ted. Somebody’s getting invited to the meeting in Chicago, I guess.
T3: If you’re a dairy producer or a cooperative looking for a better market for your milk, or you’re a food manufacturer hoping to strengthen your dairy procurement or risk management strategy, please reach out to TC Jacoby & Co. We’ve been building worldwide relationships with all sides of the dairy supply chain for over 75 years. Tap into our expertise for unlimited free consultant support and we’ll develop a sales or procurement strategy that hits all of your targets. Please visit us online at www.Jacoby.com to get started. Thanks for listening to the Milk Check, back to the show.
We’re talking to Tim the Dairy Farmer today. Tim is an ag comedian, he owns a dairy farm in Florida, used to sell his milk to SMI and he’s currently selling grass-fed milk and is a standup comedian.
T2: Well, good luck.
Tim: Thank you. So $30 milk, high heifer prices.
T3: Yeah. But Tim, I’m going to say this, everybody is breeding the beef, what is going to happen if they have to pay $7000 for a freshening heifer in order to rotate their herd?
Gus: That’s right.
Tim: They’re going to end up in the beef business, and then you’re going to have a shortage of milk, and then the prices are going to go higher.
Gus: Tim, I’ve been trying to tell my brother about that simple fact that you just mentioned for quite some time. I think you just got him to maybe believe it.
Tim: I’m there, man. I don’t want you to think I’m some weirdo, but I remember I was at a co-op meeting here in Florida, this is 20 years ago, the dairy business used to be a circle. You’d have a couple bad years and it’d come back around, and then it just got to where it kept staying on the bottom, staying on the bottom. One guy brought up the idea, he’s like, “Well, if we’d all just dump our milk for two days, then there wouldn’t be so much milk.” And I was like, “Hey, that would work, but there’s going to be that one dairy farmer that ain’t going to dump his milk.” I’m not a market guy, y’all are the smart guys, I’m just out here telling jokes. That’s what I do. Well, what other else is going on in the market? Commodities going to go up? Feed prices going to go through the roof with this $30 milk, or what?
Gus: Well, it’s our understanding that the harvest is expected to be pretty good this year, and feed inputs would actually go down. Which in turn, if we can’t get the cows or can’t expand the herd or at least expand milk production to any degree, that means that the farm economics for what we have at least would be very, very strong over the next year or so. So we’re thinking the dairyman’s about to have some pretty good times, except that they just can’t expand like you insinuated earlier. If you can’t get ahold of the cows, what are you going to do? Even though you have a strong ambition to grow your herd.
Tim: Milk goats.
Gus: Yeah.
T3: I don’t think you’re going to be able to get 80 pounds of milk a day out of a goat.
Tim: I ain’t milking no goat. I did the Virginia Holstein Association, their 100th anniversary years ago, and you probably heard this joke, but they had Holstein people there, but then they also had Guernsey people there and Jersey people there, and one guy was all proud of his Jersey. I said, “You know what they say about people that milk Jerseys? They’re too proud to milk a goat.” Of course, the Guernsey guys, I can’t think of her name, but she was a famous painter that paints cows, I’ve seen her stuff in museums and in Hoard’s Dairyman and whatnot, they were auctioning off this painting that she had, of course it had all the top Holstein cows from Select Sires and whatnot in this picture, and they had me trying to promote the artwork, and I said, “Y’all don’t know this but there’s actually two Guernseys in this picture. You can’t see it from where you’re sitting, but if you go out behind this red barn that’s painted here they’re on the dead pile. That’s where the Guernseys are at.”
T3: What’s interesting, Tim, is we’ve had a lot more people milk Jerseys today than did 20 years ago. Maybe not in Florida, but in just about every other part of the country, because they give higher protein and higher butter fat. The cheese plants would rather have the Jersey milk than the Holstein milk.
Tim: Half my herd are Jersey cross.
Josh: So fortunately, our audience are people that get most of these jokes, but when you’re performing are you performing for agricultural people mostly? Or do you go around and actually perform in urban areas?
Tim: Oh, I do it all. When I do a club I have to dumb it down a little bit, explain it a little more. I don’t just talk about cows, I talk about family reunions and yard sales, whatever. Funny’s funny, I can talk to any group. I mainly specialize at agriculture companies or agriculture affiliate companies. I have noticed when I run into some of these ag organizations, it seems like some of these ag things you go to, they don’t want to laugh. Everything’s too serious. And I’m like, “You’re in the dairy business, you’ve got to laugh otherwise you’re going to be in the fetal position crying some days.”
I remember years ago they wanted me to put on a comedy show at the World Dairy Expo, the person that was in charge, he said that the dairy business was no laughing matter. And I was like, “Dude, you are so wrong.” Life can get so bad that you need to laugh, it’s good for you. That’s what I do is just help people forget about their problems for an hour.
T3: I’ll tell you, dairy markets, same thing. Everybody sees markets going up, so everybody does something just like the dairy farmers, they expand. And then they’re like, “Finally, I’ve got all the milk I need or I have all the cheese I need.” Well, guess what? They show up at the door ready to sell all that cheese, at the same time every one of their neighbors shows up at the door ready to sell their cheese, and what does the market do?
Tim: Crashes. And that’s the good thing about the dairy industry is you can milk the cow today and you’re not going to get a check for 45 days, and you don’t know what’s going to change between now and then, and you have really no idea what you’re going to get paid for it. Do you guys think, just like the hogs or chickens or anything, do you think you’re going to get to where dairy’s pretty much just contract?
T3: You mean at a flat price?
Tim: Yeah. I’d be milking cows for some big cheese conglomerate and I’m just getting paid to milk the cows, but I’m getting a fixed price. Do you think the dairy industry will ever go that way?
T3: Not as long as we have the Federal Orders system.
Tim: All right.
Ted: I’ll take it a step further, Tim. I think that’s a great question. I think the one thing that makes dairy different than whether you’re raising pigs or chickens or beef, or you’re growing crops, is those cows will give milk 365 days a year. Prices go up, they’re going to give the milk. Prices go down, they’re going to give the milk. And so you have this disconnect that always exists between how much supply is coming at you and what’s going on on the demand side. And if demand goes up it will be, as you said, 45 days, 45 days before that milk check goes up enough to give the signal to the dairy farmer to produce more milk. And of course, what does the dairy farmer need to do? They’re probably going to have to build a new barn, they’re going to have to buy another heifer, they’re going to have to maybe feed their cows a little bit different.
By the time that milk shows up it’s a good six months later minimum, because everybody’s milk’s showing up and now there’s too much milk and the market’s going back down. So this cycle of chasing your tail is ingrained into the market, and I think it will always be really difficult for a large percentage of the dairy industry to flat price their milk, because you get too much consistency in this-
Tim: Right. On the flip side, I’ve seen guys that go bankrupt damn near overnight because it’s 45 days before they figure out that they just lost their butt. It’s a fickle industry, I still like it.
T3: You like the adventure.
Tim: I like the adventure, yes. I’ve done a lot of shows at casinos, people have their corporate events at a casino, and they’re like, “Aren’t you going to gamble?” I’m like, “Dude, I gamble every day. Why do I want to go down there and lose more money?” Hey, speaking of which, I don’t know if you guys follow farm equipment much, but there’s a new tractor out, it doesn’t have a seat or a steering wheel, it’s not one of those autonomous ones, it’s actually made for that lost his ass and doesn’t know where to turn.
T3: Well, Tristan, you’ve been a little bit quiet. Tim, Tristan is our youngest member of our trading team. Do you have any questions for Tim?
Tristan: I was wondering what do you find most rewarding about dairy farming and making people laugh?
Tim: I don’t know, I just like cows. I’ve always enjoyed cows. I would rather be around cows than people a lot of times. Sometimes it’s just the challenge. I guess I like stress. As far as making people laugh, I’m not going to lie to you, I get an adrenaline rush from it. But I enjoy it, it’s fun, but it’s also a chance to get people to forget about things in their life that they’re dealing with, physical, mental, financial, whatever, just a chance where they forget about those problems for a little while.
Tristan: When you’re writing your jokes, where do you generally get your material from? Is it on the farm?
Tim: A lot of on the farm, I get a lot of people come up to me after a show and tell me a story. Everyday life, it comes from everywhere.
T3: Is it something that’s just intuitive, or is there actually a process?
Tim: Listen, I’m 55, I’ve got the mentality of a 12-year-old. It might just come naturally to me that way. Then there’s sometimes there’s a joke where you have to try it several times to get the timing right, the ending right. Some jokes you’re like, “That’s a zinger.” But then other ones it might take you 10 times trying it out before you finally get it right.
T3: How did you get to the point where the thought went through your head, “I might actually be a halfway decent comedian?”
Tim: I grew up, I always liked comedy. My parents on the way to church and whatnot, we were always listening to Jerry Clower, and then as I got older, of course good Baptist kid, I had Eddie Murphy, I had Pryor, I had all that good Christian boy material there. My mom was dying of cancer, I’d stop and see her at the house, I’d stop by on my way to a farm, and she’s like, “Just tell me a joke. Tell me a joke.” So I’d tell her a joke and she encouraged me. Before she died she’s like, “Listen, there’s more to life than just milking cows, and I know you’ve always liked this standup thing, I want you to try it.” She passed away, about a month after her passing I actually went to a comedy club where they had a “How To Do Standup” class. So took this class, I was horrible.
Tristan: Tim, what is the funniest thing that’s ever happened on your farm? Or one of the funniest things.
Tim: Now, this is how I actually became Tim the Dairy Farmer I think, because I used to just go under my name Tim Moffett, but I always would tell some stories about the farm. A buddy of mine had a farm down the road and his employees planted some marijuana plants in a wooded area on the other side of the fence, and these heifers had got in there and ate all the buds and the tops off these plants. These cows were stoned out of their mind. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen I think. So then I wrote the joke about “My cows ate a field of marijuana, we had to sell it as organic though. Because it was really high in … Hell, it was just high.”
T3: Is that when you got into grass-fed dairy?
Tim: Yeah.
Tristan: This one’s a fun question, but if you could have any animal, real or fictional, as part of your farm, what would it be and why?
Tim: Fainting goats.
Tristan: Fainting goats?
Tim: Fainting goats, they’re hilarious. They have a defense mechanism, they stiffen up and they just fall over. But I would love to have fainting goats on the farm.
Tristan: Would you milk them?
Tim: No, I’d just laugh my ass off at them. They’re fun. I don’t know, $30 milk, I might start milking them.
T3: Fainting goats eating the marijuana.
Tim: I could have tours.
Tristan: Could you tell us about your background in dairy farming? How’d you get started?
Tim: I lost a bet is how I got started. No. My brother and I grew up in the heifer replacement business, our dad was in the dairy heifer replacement, and my brother and I had both figured out when we were pretty young that we couldn’t work with our dad. I love my dad to death, have all the respect in the world for him, but sometimes working with family is tough. So my brother and I actually started out, we borrowed some money from my uncle, we bought 100 cows, a guy that wanted to go out of business, we rented the crappiest dairy in the state of Florida. I think it was an old stanchion barn, and that’s how we got started. 100 cows and a flat barn, and then we were milking … I think we were milking 400 before we ever hired our first employee. The most we ever got up to was about 750.
T3: How long ago was that, Tim?
Tim: 1992?
T3: 750 cows in 1992 is a pretty big farm.
Tim: Yeah. 18 years ago we downsized, because it seemed like all my money was going to feed companies and everybody but us. I was bringing in a lot of money, I just wasn’t keeping any of it. We were not doing well, so we decided to go to all grass, and when we did that we downsized to what our farm and property could sustain. Right now I’m cutting grass silage, everybody’s putting up corn silage right now, we’re bagging grass. We went to all grass and we just started milking them once a day.
T3: Oh, wow. Okay.
Tim: That sounds sacrilegious to a lot of guys, but when I quit feeding the grain I didn’t have the production that I used to have, but I have no overhead now. I can literally take a cow to 11 pounds and still make money on her right now. It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. That’s what we did for us, we’ve only milked our cows once a day for the last 15 years. I know people milk them four times a day, and you’ll wear a cow out in about four years. You talked about a cow with a 17-year lactation, I’ve got several of those right now. I have a geriatric herd is what I’m telling you. They should be getting Social Security checks.
T3: Tim, I’ve got a question for you. You’ve got to settle a bet between my brother and I.
Tim: Okay.
T3: The average number of lactations for a dairy cow in this country is what, two, two and a half?
Tim: Something like that.
T3: So one of the things we know is going to happen as everybody’s breeding the beef is people are going to have to keep cows longer if they want to produce milk. So you’re going to have that third lactation, that fourth lactation, that fifth lactation. In your experience, if you’ve got 17-year-old cows, let’s say that cow is on his fifth or sixth lactation, are they just as healthy as the young cow on his second lactation?
Tim: It all depends on the cow. But yeah, they’re just as healthy. Listen, what I do is so against the grain, people think I’m smoking weed. When I quit feeding such a high-powered grain, my herd health problems went away. I don’t have the blown out feet, I don’t have the retained afterbirth. My Jerseys, especially older Jerseys, they will still get milk fever, that’s just part of their genetics. I’ve got cows that are 13, 14 lactation that are just as strong as my heifers. They might move a little slower, but they give just as much milk as they always have. That’s me. I don’t know if I answered your question or not, but I hope we convinced your brother.
Gus: I’m not so sure, not so sure.
Tim: Well, what’s your opinion, smart guy?
Gus: I look at this more from a statistical analysis, I guess. This heifer shortage has been going on for a little while now, and we have slaughtered much less cows over the last year, a little bit more now, and my perspective is that we’re going to obviously slowly age the herd as a whole, and at some point we’re going to start incurring more illness or more health related issues, and when that happens we can’t avoid the culling, right? It’s just going to start cropping up again. What I struggle with when I discuss this with Ted is that when that threshold occurs, whenever that is, I think it’s going to hit us fairly heavy, and I don’t think that we’re going to have an ability to slaughter less before this heifer issue is resolved. So therefore, at some point I think we contract the herd size at a more significant tick than what we have already, just because we have to.
Tim: I think with high cull prices guys are getting rid of cows that they should have been getting rid of, so naturally when you cull part of your herd the rest of the herd, they’re not fighting for bunk space, they’re not fighting for free stall space. The help actually sees a sick cow now because there might be less cows and I think naturally the cows that are still there are going to be healthier. That’s just my opinion. I’m a cow guy, not a numbers guy.
Gus: You can’t argue with it.
Tim: But then again, you know what opinions are.
T3: All right, before we wrap it up, Tristan, do you have any more questions?
Tristan: Yes. Do you get a lot of hecklers at your shows?
Tim: I don’t get a lot of hecklers. There’s always at least one. People ask me, “Do you go after people in the crowd?” And I’m like, “No, I do not.” There’s always somebody in the audience, I don’t know why they do it, but they decide they want to be part of the show and they’ll say something stupid, and I’ll be nice, and then they’ll say something stupid again and then I’ll embarrass the hell out of them. It just happens. Normally that part of the evening, after these corporate events they’ve sat around and had a few drinks, and they’re like, “Well, I’m funnier than he is, and he’s going to hear about it.” Okay. But no, I don’t get a lot of hecklers, I get drunk people.
Gus: Yeah, I can see that.
T3: Well, all right, it’s time for us to wrap this up. Tim?
Tim: Yes.
T3: If our listeners want to know where to find you and find out where your next show is, where do they go?
Tim: Just to go TimTheDairyFarmer.com, you can find out everything you need to about me. I have social media, but I post just enough to let people know I’m still alive. Go to TimTheDairyFarmer.com, I’ve got a special on YouTube called Milking It, I’ve got a couple albums out produced by Larry the Cable Guy’s Git-R-Done Records. One of them is called Farm Raised, the other one’s called Corncobs & Chaos. Just go to TimTheDairyFarmer.com.
T3: Tim, we really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you very much.
Tim: I had fun. Thank you, guys.
Tristan: Thank you.
Gus: … appreciate it, thank you.
Exit Audio (with music): We welcome your participation in The Milk Check. If you have comments to share or questions you want answered, email podcast@jacoby.com. Our theme music is composed and performed by Phil Keagy. The Milk Check is a production of TC Jacoby & Co.
