Out-of-state visitors share experiences at Ropp farm

AgriNews will follow Ken Ropp throughout the entire year. Each month, look for updates about the farmer and the decisions he makes on his farm.

NORMAL, Ill. — A young family from California recently stopped at the Ropp Jersey Cheese store where they shared some of their common along with unique experiences with Ken Ropp.

“I had a really neat discussion with a family that came in out of the blue and stopped in at the store. It was a younger family that have 850 acres of walnuts and pecans in California, about an hour outside of Sacramento,” Ropp said.

“It was neat to visit with them because two generations ago they dairied, as well. So, we got to really kick some rocks around there at the store, and it was neat because they’re looking for ways to add value to what they’re doing, as well.

“I learned a lot about that industry because I had no idea who the buyers were for walnuts and pecans. Circling back to the dairy side, there’s still opportunity there.

“The unfortunate part of where we’re at as an industry, we’re still so driven by corn and soybean grain prices, and those are soft right now in comparison to what input costs are. That has a dramatic effect on the logic and what we’ve got to do year by year, and there’s times that you want to keep knocking your head against the wall. But you hope that it gets better. That’s why we do what we do.”

Breeding Program

Ropp and AgriNews met July 2 at the dairy farm’s breeding site on the east edge of Bloomington where he detailed the program they utilize to provide quality Jerseys for their dairy business.

“The purpose of this pasture is to run anywhere from five to 15 head on it. The pasture itself is about eight acres, and we’ve got a bull out here that you would term as a cleanup bull, but everything that we do with our breeding program, the first-time calvers are all naturally bred,” he said.

“In a perfect world, we would do everything else artificially from there on. The world is not perfect, so you’ve got your cows that you just cannot get settled artificially, and so we will run them with the bull, as well.”

Of course, bulls aren’t always of the gentle type and have to be handled with extreme caution.

“We had an accident on the farm last year where Brett Yoder (whose responsibilities include feeding and caring for the animals, along with handling the breeding program) got taken down by an older bull. Brett’s fine now, but the bull is no longer with us,” Ropp said.

“We’ve got a second-year bull that had been waiting in the wing, and now we’ve got him running with these heifers here.

“We refer to this as the Hayden pasture. Tom and Jerry Hayden grew up with my dad and have remained very close. They used to run a cow-calf Angus herd on this ground and in the last few years, they’ve sold off the cow-calf herd, but they still have this pasture remaining.

“So, we bring heifers over here along with the bull, and there’s also going to be an aged cow out here that just is a trouble breeder that we’re going to try and get bred with the bull and see how it goes.

“It’s all part of the working part of the dairy farm. If this world was perfect, we wouldn’t have any need for any bulls except for those being collected for artificial insemination.”

Crop Conditions

Despite some stretches of hot weather and spotty rains, Ropp’s corn, soybeans and hay are looking good thus far.

“To me, it was too hot even for June. We had the stretch of about 10 hot days and it’s still warm, but we we’re fortunate. We got a couple of showers in there, one in particular that left us about an inch of rain one night,” he said.

“The thing that’s been strange this year about the rains is it’s been very spotty. It even seems like we’ll get rain on our side of town, you come over to the east side of town, and they haven’t had anything or vice versa.

“We’ve been fortunate, the corn looks great. Beans look great. We’re ready to cut second cutting hay right now. Everything looks very lush. We’re still dry as far as depth, but crop-wise, we look really good right now.

“It’s fun to watch the tassels starting to shoot when I travel as many miles as I do making deliveries. It’s amazing to see some of this corn. ‘Knee-high by the Fourth of July’ should have been thrown out the window a good 40 years ago probably. We’ve been fortunate.”

The hay cutting for feed has been on schedule so far.

“It is very much rain driven, too. It’s just like mowing the yards. If you’ve got ample water coming in and then you get these hot days, it seems like you’re on the mower every three or four days. For us, in a perfect world again, mowing hay about every three weeks is about right on the dairy side,” Ropp said.

“We’ll have anywhere from four to six cuttings on average in a year, just depending on rain and heat and how everything goes.”

Milk Production

Extended periods of heat has an impact on the dairy cow production.

“We didn’t lose any animals, but milk production will fall off because what will happen is the cows will consume more water. They’ll eat less feed. That also drives down your butter fat and protein,” Ropp said.

“So, not only do you see less volume of milk, but you see less on the components. That has its bearing on us because the summer months are when we’re really pushing product and we’ve got Fourth of July here around the corner. Everybody wants some cheese on their shelf and we’ve got to be able to produce it.”