Enchanted Dairy sees success with high-oleic soybeans

LITTLE FALLS, Minn. — A few years ago, Jacob and Brooke Carrow made the decision to incorporate high-oleic soybeans into their fresh cow ration. The results have proven beneficial, boosting energy-corrected milk yield and lowering feed costs at Enchanted Dairy LLC.

“In 2020, I started reading about these high-oleic soybeans, and I really wanted to integrate them into our operations,” Jacob Carrow said. “In 2024, I planted 200 acres, (and) we started our trial.”

In 2021, the Carrows purchased Enchanted Dairy from Brooke’s parents, Ron and Jeannie Miller, and her uncle, Marv Miller. Today, they milk close to 2,000 cows three times a day in a 40-stall rotary parlor near Little Falls while cultivating around 3,000 acres of crops.

The Four-State Dairy Extension Group, including the University of Minnesota Extension dairy and agricultural and natural resource systems teams, and Enchanted Dairy hosted a field day Aug. 14 to discuss advantages and disadvantages of choosing high-oleic soybeans.

For the Carrows, installing on-farm roasting technology and consulting with industry experts was essential during the process.

“Depending on someone else to roast that volume of beans within our workforce can take quite a bit of infrastructure, so I wanted to take it on farm,” Jacob said. “I’ve been fortunate to have someone like (Austin Schmitt) look over the system and make sure that we get a good quality product.”

Originally designed for the food industry, high-oleic soybeans are becoming more common. Standard soybeans contain high levels of linoleic acid — a polyunsaturated fat — that can suppress milk butterfat. High-oleic soybeans replace much of that linoleic acid with oleic acid, allowing for greater feeding rates and lower risks of milk fat depression.

Chelsea Myer, a nutrition and production consultant for Form-A-Feed Inc., has worked closely with Enchanted Dairy to implement high-oleic soybeans in the herd.

“We had really, really good beans in ‘24,” Myer said. “We were at 82.3% oleic and 4.2% linoleic, so our fatty acid profile was very, very favorable for these beans.”

Before adding the high-oleic beans, Enchanted Dairy’s ECM production sat at 103.5 pounds per cow per day. The ration included canola, gluten, cottonseed, corn silage, haylage and soybean meal. To see the full effects of the beans, the Carrows removed supplemental fat sources, cottonseed and urea.

“We put the beans in right away the first part of January, and we saw about a 4-pound energy-corrected milk increase,” Myer said. “We jumped up to 107.49.”

During the initial implementation, Enchanted Dairy saw feed cost savings of around 50 cents per head per day. Even when the beans were temporarily removed, Myer said milk production remained relatively stable. However, a shift in bean quality was noticed in the 2025 crop, with linoleic levels rising to 15.8% and oleic lowering to 72.7%. To adjust, the dairy worked with Myer and a team to find a solution.

“We don’t have as much bypass fat in these beans anymore, so instead of 100% removing the calcium salts in the ration, we still left a small amount of them in,” Myer said. “As it stands, we’re feeding one-tenth a pound of palm and one-tenth a pound of calcium on top of these beans right now.”

Mature cows at Enchanted Dairy are currently being fed 6.5 pounds of the high-oleic beans per day. Myer said throughout the process, testing bean quality and monitoring cow behavior, like rumination and milk changes, are crucial.

“When you start thinking about how fresh cows just went through a very stressful event, and they need this smooth muscle repair, the uterine repair, increased protein; they need all this to get them high into production as well into reproductive cycling really quick,” she said. “We’ve been tracking week four and week eight milk on them in conjunction with what total herd milk has been, and we have seen a really, really nice increase.”

Barry Visser, a dairy nutrition consultant for Vita Plus, emphasized that high-oleic soybeans are not a “silver bullet,” as many factors can impact how they perform.

“There are factors that impact how much oleic fatty acid the bean will lay down in a given year, such as when did we get them planted, what kind of growing season do we have, what kind of moisture have we had (and) the maturity of the bean?” Visser said.

While roasting on farm can solve issues surrounding transportation and storage, Visser said not every farmer will be able to do so. Depending on the unit, roasters can cost anywhere from $50,000 to over $100,000, and they require producer operation and maintenance, adding labor, management and time commitment.

“I say it’s not for everyone also under the premise that we do have a limitation of how much seeds are available and not everyone has bean acres or neighbors willing to grow them,” Visser said. “It’s not just raising them, it’s the roasting (and) the storing, too.”

While small amounts of unroasted soybeans can be fed to dairy cattle, roasted beans increase protein digestibility, raise rumen undegradable protein content and reduce anti-nutritional factors. Working with Lydell Martin, a technician and consultant for A.N. Martin Systems, Enchanted Dairy installed its own roasting system this January to reduce labor and improve efficiency.

“The setup and everything was pretty easy to get these roasters installed; it didn’t take a lot of time, (but) infrastructure, yes, that takes time,” Jacob said. “We did a few other things … that we weren’t set up for, but I wanted to streamline anybody who wanted to provide these beans for me.”

The automated roasting system, known as the SoyRoaster, operates on a schedule of two weeks on and one week off based on soybean consumption. Roaster manager Austin Schmitt monitors the system, making temperature, speed and output changes. The roaster includes various fail-safes that automatically shut down operations and notify Schmitt via text if sequences are not met.

“Over-roasted beans are unpalatable and less usable or digestible to the cow, and under-roasted beans will kill your cows, so the really fine line sits somewhere in the middle,” Schmitt said.

Each day, approximately 300 to 340 bushels are roasted using two combined roasters. Most beans are sourced from the Marshall area through contracted farms. Beans are stored in a bin, where an auger then brings them into two mini hoppers that each feed a roaster. The roasters are insulated oil jackets with a mixing auger, which ensures consistency and even heat distribution.

The beans are then roasted for around 40 to 45 minutes and exit at 225 degrees. According to Martin, the beans are roasted below 460 degrees — the highest temperature being 370 — to prevent fires or burnt beans. After roasting, beans enter a steeping hopper where a fan cools them for 30 minutes to prevent over-roasting.

The soybeans are then processed through a hammer mill, which crushes and grinds them into the desired grind size. Lastly, the beans are blown through a blower to the commodity bay, where they’ll be mixed into feed and fed to the cows.

For the Carrows, the investment in high-oleic soybeans and on-farm roasting has meant higher ECM, healthier fresh cows and feed cost savings. For other dairy producers, the technology and seed supply may not fit, but for those able to manage the cost, quality and nutrition, high-oleic soybeans can be another tool to support performance and profits in the parlor.