Shawhan offers personal touch to dairy cows

By PAT LAWRENCE

patlawrence@cinci.rr.com

Janet Shawhan of Star­lite Dairy and Grain in Hills­boro knows all the names of her cows. The dairy farm houses approx­i­mately 200 cows, heifers, bulls and calves.

N ot only is Janet Shawhan on a first name basis with her co-workers, she knows all their moth­ers personally.

Janet and her fam­ily own and oper­ate Star­lite Dairy and Grain. Most morn­ings she rises at 4:30 a.m. and heads for the milk­ing par­lor by 5 a.m., where about a hun­dred ami­able Hol­steins oblig­ingly line up for her ministrations.

“I call them co-workers because they work with me every­day and we depend on each other. They’re just like peo­ple, each one is dif­fer­ent,” she says. “Some are all busi­ness, some like to visit, some want to love on you.”

Every cow has her teats dipped with an iodine solu­tion, then towel dried before the milk­ing cups are applied, then dipped again with sooth­ing glyc­erin. A fresh towel is used for each cow at each milk­ing. Janet says, “I have two wash­ers and dri­ers in the house and another set out here. I do laun­dry morn­ing and night!” The elec­tronic milk­ing machines use a pul­sat­ing vac­uum that sim­u­lates the effect of a suck­ling calf; cows empty their milk in 3–5 min­utes. A sen­sor indi­cates when the milk slows down, and the milker auto­mat­i­cally releases.

“Our cows aver­age 78 pounds of milk a day, about 2,500 gal­lons a year.” Janet says. “We updated our milk­ing par­lor with a com­pletely dif­fer­ent sys­tem in Decem­ber. It’s a double-eight — six­teen cows at a time instead of ten — and a big change for the cows. Now we milk from behind, rather than the side. Cows don’t like change but they’re get­ting used to the new con­di­tions. Now the entire milk­ing only takes about two hours. We’re fin­ished in time to enjoy the sun rise.”

The col­lected milk is piped directly to a refrig­er­ated 2,000-gallon stain­less steel tank in the milk room, stored for pick-up and ship­ping to a pro­cess­ing plant. Star­lite Dairy sells their milk to Dairy Farm­ers of Amer­ica, a national coop­er­a­tive that has rec­og­nized their facil­ity as a Gold Stan­dard Dairy for years. The milk is processed and sold by buy­ers that include Kroger, Mei­jer, Gen­eral Foods, Dan­non and Nestle.

Star­lite is one of 2,984 dairies in Ohio. It’s home to about 200 cows, heifers, bulls and calves housed in open, curtain-sided freestall barns with rub­ber floor­ing. The arrange­ment max­i­mizes cow com­fort and safety, allow­ing ani­mals to choose where they lay in the exten­sive barns and pro­vid­ing con­stant access to food and water. The feed is a Total Mixed Ration includ­ing hay, corn silage bean meal and ground corn with min­er­als. The com­po­si­tion varies accord­ing to the animal’s char­ac­ter­is­tics and is tested reg­u­larly by a pro­fes­sional nutri­tion­ist. High-production cows, low-production cows, dry cows, new calves, are all kept in dis­tinct areas; all have spe­cific mix­tures for­mu­lated for their nutri­tional needs.

Janet says, “New moth­ers and any cows that need a lit­tle extra atten­tion go to the ‘the pam­per pen’. Every cow has a name and num­ber. I can call their names faster than their num­bers!” She intro­duces them, “Jello, Molly, Joan, Daisy, Merry, my favorite, she’s like a puppy,” and recounts their her­itage. “This is Splish, out of Splash. This is But­tery, out of But­ter­ball, out of But­ter­cup. We had an alco­holic line, too-Whiskey, Daquiri, Mar­garita and Mud Slide.”

Janet always intended to work with ani­mals. “My father had a win­dow cov­er­ing busi­ness in Gahanna, Ohio-I built blinds as a child– but Dad was also on the Colum­bus Zoo board. He was proud to have been instru­men­tal in bring­ing the first Bonobo mon­keys to the zoo. Since we had five acres, he was always bring­ing ani­mals home-a one legged crane, a domes­ti­cated deer, a llama. I grew up vol­un­teer­ing at the zoo and show­ing horses in 4H.”

She and Tom mar­ried in 1980. “We were both the youngest of four chil­dren. We met when his brother mar­ried my sis­ter. He pro­posed on our first real date.” They moved into the house Tom was born in, near Beavercreek.

By the time their sec­ond son was a tod­dler, Janet was milk­ing full time at the fam­ily dairy. “We bought our first farm about five miles from the home­place. In 1983, after we paid off the farm, we bought the cows, a herd of 50–60, from his dad.” It’s a closed farm, accord­ing to Janet. “Our heifer cows remain on the farm. We only bought cows once, to increase the herd to a more prof­itable size, when we moved to High­land County in 1997. We have new calves year round since milk pro­duc­tion requires that the cow be lac­tat­ing from hav­ing given birth. We keep some bull calves, too. We gen­er­ally rely on arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion, which Tom man­ages, but a cow that hasn’t taken after sev­eral AI’s will be mated with a real bull.”

The fam­ily still farms in Greene County as well, about 1,800 acres total, and grows corn, soy­beans, hay and wheat, but all the cows are at the dairy near Mar­shall. Sons Ray and Dan are an inte­gral part of the enter­prise. “They both went to mechanic’s school and are good mechan­ics, which has saved the farm a lot of money.” Janet is sure her grand­son will join the fam­ily busi­ness. “He’s just 4, but he’s a farmer for sure. He already knows every­thing that goes on here.”

Still, it’s a demand­ing busi­ness and there’s a lot to do, from fenc­ing to crop man­age­ment to preg­nancy tests, bed­ding pens, grind­ing and mix­ing feed and, nat­u­rally, hos­ing down barn floors. The freestall barn is scraped twice a day. Star­lite uses pond water for the cows –they drink 40–50 gal­lons a day-and a manure lagoon for waste –about 12 gal­lons a day per cow. The lagoon con­tents are recy­cled as field irri­ga­tion sev­eral times a year. Janet says, “It’s great for replen­ish­ing the soil.”

Zeeva, the Ger­man Shep­herd and two rat ter­ri­ers pro­vide super­vi­sory sup­port, but Star­lite has just added a new full-time employee and a sec­ond part-time employee. Janet says, “It takes some­one very spe­cial to work in the dairy. Milk cows are like finely tuned machines. Things have to be exactly right. We buy high qual­ity hay from Nebraska specif­i­cally for our milk cows. They need clean, com­fort­able bed­ding, good ven­ti­la­tion, a safe, stress-free envi­ron­ment. And they’re all moth­ers; they deserve to be treated with respect. As long as this is our family’s farm, that’s how they’ll be treated.”

When the boys were younger, Janet says, “It was cheaper to hire a babysit­ter and work in the field. I used to disc all day. Now, the boys do the farm­ing, and I take care of the cows. Feed­ing and bed­ding starts about an hour before the after­noon milk­ing at 4 p.m. We eat our big meal at noon, so I plan a meal in the morn­ing. After all these years, that’s still hard for me. At night, we have left­overs — or pizza!”

Elec­tronic milk­ing is clean and effi­cient, but not robotic. Milk­ing is still a two per­son oper­a­tion at Star­lite and pro­duc­ing milk cows don’t take days off. Janet says,“The only vaca­tions Tom and I had was to go to Amish Coun­try for a day or two.” Over the years, though, she made note of things she espe­cially appre­ci­ated dur­ing their times away. “It became my dream to build a lux­ury get-away cabin for other cou­ples.” There were reser­va­tions even before con­struc­tion was com­pleted in Novem­ber. She says, “I’ve spent a lot of my life talk­ing to cows; talk­ing to peo­ple will be fun!”

Janet expects 2013 to be a busy year, wel­com­ing guests, keep­ing the cabin in pris­tine con­di­tion, sched­ul­ing vac­ci­na­tions, veterinarians,and hoof trim­mers, mow­ing, land­scap­ing, and always mak­ing sure her ‘cowork­ers’ are healthy, happy and productive.

Two more grand­chil­dren are on the way, plus, “we’ll be adding a new barn and maybe replac­ing two older barns. And I hope to get a rose bed for the cabin.” Janet is con­vinced the new dairy employ­ees, one man, one woman, have the patience and con­sid­er­a­tion needed for the job. She hopes they have her gen­tle touch. Dairy is one of the most reg­u­lated and inspected indus­tries in agri­cul­ture, but the most care­fully mon­i­tored dairy work­ers may be the ones under Janet Shawhan’s vig­i­lant eyes. “We have a lit­tle piece of heaven here. I want it to stay that way for all of us.”

(Pat Lawrence is a con­trib­u­tor to Acres of South­west Ohio.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Feb 24 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.