Planning for generation four

SPRING VALLEY, Minn. — Nathan Heusinkveld believes estate planning often gets overlooked when it comes to passing on farms to the next generation. He intends to be different as he brings on his son, Lucas, as the fourth generation on their family’s dairy farm.

“Having that part set up before you have issues is pretty big,” Nathan said. “(That way) the next generation doesn’t have to deal with it.”

Nathan and Lucas milk 450 cows in a double-12 parallel parlor and raise 90 cow-calf beef pairs as well. Their farm is situated on 700-800 acres near Spring Valley. They are assisted by eight full- and part-time employees, as well as Nathan’s wife, Misty, who does the bookwork, and Nathan’s mom, Darla, who helps out.

“It’s nice to see (the dairy) keep going … as far as a farm family,” Nathan said.

Some of Lucas’ first memories on the farm are of feeding calves at 4 or 5 years old or riding along during haying with his great-grandpa.

Since he was little, he has always wanted to be part of the farm, Lucas said.

Lucas came on full time after graduating from Northeast Iowa Community College in 2023.

He plans to begin buying into the operation sometime within the next two years. Nathan is working on buying out his uncle, Steve, and his mom.

Nathan said the estate planning work done to pass the dairy on to him will now help with bringing on Lucas.

“When I got in, everything was laid out how things were going to be: how to buy, how to do this, how to do that,” Nathan said. “Some of that groundwork makes it a little easier for the next generation.”

He said the estate planning professionals they worked with were helpful.

“We didn’t know how to split things up, and (the estate planners) had ideas how to do it,” he said. “It was way easier for the next generation, once you set some guidelines and some rules.”

He said the No. 1 reason it is important to him that Lucas continues the dairy is family. However, it was also good timing for the farm.

“Buying out my mother and my uncle, the workload was quite a bit more,” Nathan said. “He knew everything about the dairy, so (it was) nice to go that route.”

Lucas has never fully left the dairy, commuting to college while continuing to help on the farm.

“It’s what I grew up with, and I don’t know anything but dairy farming,” he said. “I don’t know if I could do anything (else).”

Nathan and Misty had encouraged Lucas to attend college, where he received an associate degree in dairy science. He has brought his knowledge home, and consequently, the farm has increased the number of colostrum feedings and how quickly calves receive colostrum and upped the number of vaccinations they do, especially with calves.

The father-son duo works independently while shouldering employee management together. Nathan works more with the breeding while Lucas works more with the youngstock and the beef herd. They use double-ovsynch on their dairy herd, breeding about 50% of the herd to beef bulls and selling the black calves. This helps manage their herd size, since their herd tends to be older, with cows milking about four lactations each.

They said one of their most important management decisions over the years was to start using sand bedding and to focus on cow comfort. They gained about 10 pounds of milk per cow and also saw better conception rates.

The Heusinkvelds’ mornings are usually dedicated to working with their cattle while afternoons are spent doing fieldwork.

They raise as much of their feed as possible, also buying feed in the field and doing custom chopping with their self-propelled chopper.

“We’re probably more cow people than crop people,” Nathan said. “We do pretty well on crops, but to us, crops are like the vacation. … We’re 75% done when we get to cropping. We got all the manure hauled and all the stuff taken care of.”

Looking to the future, the Heusinkvelds are interested in putting in more manure storage because their pit has insufficient capacity. They have been pursuing this for several years and have had an engineer do design work. However, permitting has been a holdup.

“I got ravines around here that (the government) turned them into intermittent waterways of the U.S.,” Nathan said. “Now we’re a confinement building within those waterways. So now we have a whole new set of rules.”

They also are interested in putting in a transition barn so their fresh cows do not have to go into the main group right away. They have already upgraded their heifer housing with monoslope barns, which they said has been a good step for their dairy.

“We’re always … looking for the future, keeping things current,” Nathan said.

When it comes to expansion, previously, they had slowly transitioned larger, but Nathan said he questions whether that was the correct way to go about it.

“If we would have just done it all right away, it would have cost more, but we might have been further ahead,” he said.

For now, they remain unsure about expansion.

“In agriculture it always seems like it gets bigger and bigger and bigger,” Nathan said. “Four-hundred and fifty is easy to work with right now. Who knows?”