Finding a way to dairy

LA CRESCENT, Minn. — Growing up in town as the son of a milk truck driver, Brad Von Arx has been around the dairy industry all his life. He got his feet wet by helping his dad haul milk when he was 14.

“My dad wanted me to help haul milk but I wanted to milk cows,” Von Arx said.

For the last five years, Von Arx has been doing both. He owns a milk hauling company with nearly 65 patrons and also milks 28 cows in a recently installed swing-8 parlor. His farm, which has been in his extended family since the 1800s, is tucked on a back road in the bluffs near La Crescent.

“It’s hard to get it all done,” Von Arx said. “My dad said you can’t do both. You can, but it’s a lot of work. You’ve got to have a lot of good help too (to) make sure everything gets done every day.”

The day begins early and ends late for Von Arx. He gets up at 3 a.m. and hauls milk for five or more hours before coming back for milking and chores around 8 a.m. if things go according to schedule. Once he is done at the farm, he is back to hauling milk before he returns to milk his herd again at 8 p.m.

Von Arx is assisted on the farm by his son, Brandon, who, in addition to his own full-time job, helps with feeding, hauling manure and crops. His cousin, Chad, also helps, along with other employees. In his milk hauling business, Von Arx has six employees in addition to himself who keep his five trucks on the road.

“You’ve got to have good helpers or it won’t work out,” Von Arx said. “(You need) people who are dedicated to the work and doing the job.”

His milk hauling patrons are located in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“It’s getting pretty spread out,” Von Arx said.

In addition to dairy farming and his milk hauling business, Von Arx hauls grain in the fall for about 30 farms, has a 30-cow Angus beef herd, and grows cash crops and feed for his animals.

In 2024, after milking in a stall barn, Von Arx started milking in a parlor he put in because he did not have enough stanchions to milk without switching. He converted part of the old stanchion barn into a pit parlor. Overall, Von Arx said the parlor was fairly inexpensive to put in.

Previously, his setup was a pipeline and 18 stalls in the better section of an old 48-stall stanchion barn, which was in partial disrepair.

“The barn wall (in the stanchion) is all pushed over and the gutters are all screwed up,” Von Arx said. “It would have cost a lot of money to fix all that.”

When he put in the parlor, Von Arx also built a 42-foot enclosure to connect his 40- by 80-foot shed to the lean-to that was on the parlor area. Von Arx said he wanted to get the space fully enclosed so he would no longer have to deal with blowing snow and rain. The space between the shed and barn previously had been a steep cow yard, and Von Arx said enclosing the space helped with potential water runoff through the cow yard.

Von Arx started milking cows in 2021. The Von Arx dairy had originally begun with two cows and a 400-gallon bulk tank.
However, he encountered problems with high bacteria because there was not enough milk for the cooling mechanism to work properly, so he increased his herd.

“We milked them in a bucket (and) I carried the milk from (those) six or eight cows,” Von Arx said. “It gets to be a lot of work if you’re hauling milk all day.”

Von Arx bought cows from an area dairy farm. He purchased animals that had not adjusted to a freestall setup and cows that had sore feet and needed to get off cement. Von Arx houses his cows in a barn with a sawdust-bedded pack.

“(A pack barn) is a cheap way to go starting out,” Von Arx said. “Otherwise, you’ve got to spend a lot of money for manure storage (and) free stalls.”

He also grew his herd internally and now has about a dozen of his own heifers.

Von Arx originally moved to the almost 100-tillable acres farm in 2015. He started with the beef herd, before later adding the dairy. He said the acreage covers most of his animal feed, although he will buy some milk-cow quality hay. Von Arx also farms over 200 acres of rented ground, about 170 acres on which he grows no-till corn and soybeans.

The dairy cows are fed a total mixed ration with dry hay, corn silage, fine ground corn and a protein mineral mix. The cows’ milk components are about 5% butterfat and 3.6% protein on this ration. Von Arx said he breeds for components and feet. He uses A.I. on his cows, and the heifers are bred natural service to beef. Calves are cared for on the farm.

“I like watching the calves grow and raising them up until they’re milk cows,” Von Arx said.