Calculated growth provides strong foundation

CECIL, Wis. — Ever since his family’s herd of Jersey cows was sold when he was a boy, Seth Berg knew he wanted to find his way back to dairy farming. In 2017, the opportunity for him to begin dairy farming presented itself just down the road from his home farm.

“Before my dad sold the cows in 1988, I did a lot of the work,” Seth said. “I was feeding all the cows; we milked with buckets, so I was carrying all the milk and dumping it in the tank. After he sold the cows, I started helping all the neighbors, milking and relief milking. It was always a goal of mine.”

Today Seth is dairying with his wife, Nicole, and their children, milking 600 cows at Berg’s Family Dairy near Cecil, in Shawano County, which was originally one of the farms he worked at as a teenager.

When Seth and Nicole met, he had been crop farming on his family’s farm sice 1994 and operating a custom business since 1999. Nicole was drawn to the young farmer, who was honest about his future plans.

“He told me he planned on buying the dairy farm next door someday,” Nicole said. “That was what he was doing and he wasn’t moving. I was a city girl from Marinette, but his farmer’s tan won out.”

The Bergs began by working into a partnership with the farm’s previous owners, exchanging custom cropping and heifer raising for interest in the farm.

“They had expanded from a 50-cow tiestall barn to a 130-cow freestall and parlor,” Seth said. “They needed some help on the farm, too.”

The Bergs began learning how to operate a dairy farm.

“When I first started here, I think I cried almost every day,” Nicole said. “It was just overwhelming; we knew very little about dairy farming. I knew nothing. I didn’t know how to milk a cow. The previous owner was really good with cattle, so I just absorbed as much as I could.”

Seven years later, the Bergs say they are still learning but feel much more confident in their ability to run a successful dairy farm, taking advantage of opportunities to grow and make improvements as they can.

“Those early days were pretty exciting,” Seth said. “Everything we did to make improvements, we gained milk. It was probably the hardest, but the most fun.”

Those gains were made by focusing on changes for cow comfort and learning alongside their cows.

“It’s pretty amazing to look back at the beginning,” Nicole said. “When I first started, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep calves alive. Now I can pretty much do everything myself, other than something like a (displaced abomasum) surgery. Back then I’d have laughed at you if you told me that.”

The Bergs said they experienced some difficulties after accepting an offer to purchase the previous owner’s remaining interest in early 2018.

“We had been feeding regular corn silage until early March that year,” Seth said. “Our production had stalled out at 85 pounds, so we were excited to start the (brown mid-rib) silage in March. In three days, we lost 21 pounds of milk per cow. I was devastated.”

After visits from the vet and nutritionist, it was determined the ration had been incorrectly adjusted to accommodate for the BMR silage.

“The fourth day, the cows looked awful and we started feeding baled hay,” Seth said. “The vet told us it could take an entire lactation to rebound, but fortunately, they responded well to the dry hay.”

With the ration fixed, the cows gained back 10 of the lost pounds within a month.

Then during a historic snowfall April 13, 2018, the roof of the holding area collapsed.

“It was during morning milking,” Nicole said. “It was a mess; we looked at each other and wondered if maybe God didn’t want us doing this. But our neighbors were awesome, coming to help us, and we didn’t lose any cows.”

The freestall barn roof sat higher than the holding area, so snow blew over the barn roof, drifting onto the holding area, Seth explained.

“It was cold for a week after the roof collapsed and then it turned hot for the rest of the spring,” Seth said. “As soon as the heat came, the cows started milking like crazy, even though they were standing in the hot sun in the wide-open holding area.”

That helped the Bergs determine air quality was an issue in the holding area. As they rebuilt the holding area, they added tunnel ventilation in the barn.

After closing on the purchase of the farm that October, the Bergs made plans to grow their milking herd. The winter of 2020-2021, the Bergs had 80 milk cows living outside on a bedded pack until the barn was completed in July 2021.

“We lost milk moving into a brand-new barn,” Seth said. “Here we had this new barn to pay for combined with buying the farm. We didn’t buy the dairy to lose money.”

After changing nutritionists, the Bergs’ cows began gaining in milk. As things continued to improve, they began considering another expansion to maximize the usage of their parlor, and they . made a deal with a neighboring farmer.

“He wanted to retire from milking cows but still wanted to live on the farm and have cattle in his barn,” Seth said. “We were looking to grow, so in 2024 we built again and bought his cows and moved our dry cows and heifers to his farm.”

For now, the Bergs are content in terms of size, and plan to seek their growth through improving what they have.

“We plan on staying this size for 14 more years, unless one of our kids wants to get involved,” Seth said. “This seems to be pretty good for what we can handle and for our land base. We did build so that everything is set up so that we could expand pretty easily.”

Despite the challenges in the dairy industry, the Bergs choose to keep a positive outlook.

“We want to be smart and efficient in what we’re doing,” Nicole said. “We don’t want to grow, just to grow. We want good, healthy cattle, a good herd, and to do the best job we can caring for them.”