MSU selling cows to reduce costs

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Driven by the absence of future research projects and budgetary pressure, MSU will sell one of its three dairy cow herds from the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station, or UPES, this fall.

The UPES — located in Chatham, Mich. — is one of 15 field stations in the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, or MAES, which is restructuring after $400,000 was cut by MSU’s Board of Trustees last month and state appropriations still are uncertain.

After evaluating that there were no planned research projects with the dairy herd, about 70 cows will be sold in October, said John Baker, associate director for the MAES.

“We have about 15 stations where we conduct research and that’s continually under review,” Baker said. “If we get under a situation where we don’t see a programmatic need, we’ll make the appropriate cut.”

The anticipated $70,000 from the cows’ sales — also including replacement heifers that have been waiting to join the herd at maturity ­ — will be applied to other research at the station, which Baker said, in addition to dairy, focuses on crops specific to the Upper Peninsula.

“There’s a multitude of other research that’s going on in terms of crops, forages and bioenergy,” Baker said. “We’re not abandoning that station — we’re still committed to keeping active research there that’s going to benefit the Upper Peninsula.”

Baker said he could not give a figure for the savings from selling the herd because there are many variables involved, including the loss of income from the generated milk and potential costs to maintain environmental compliance, which will no longer apply.

“In the end, there will be an overall savings,” Baker said.

The dairy herd was used for a nutritional trial that was recently completed and the animal scientist who conducted the study has retired, Baker said.

“When we did the assessment for that station, we realized that there was no programmatic demand in the Department of Animal Science or the College of Veterinary Medicine,” he said.

Although there is no direct impact on the two remaining dairy herds — one at MSU’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, or KBS, in Hickory Corners, Mich., and one at the MSU Dairy Teaching and Research Center — Jim Bronson, the farm manager at KBS, said the news is unfortunate.

“Any time the dairy group gets hit like that, it’s kind of sad,” Bronson said.

The dairy farms have different missions, but the KBS station also has dealt with change as it moved from a conventionally housed herd to a pasture-based dairy management system for their cattle, including a robotic milking parlor, last year.

“The argument for a pasture-based herd would be that you can develop a system that has less in terms of facility cost, lower equipment cost and, in some ways, you may end up with lower feed cost,” Bronson said.

Because the distance from central campus makes research projects difficult, it was a logical reason to disperse the herd, said Ruth Borger, the director of communications for the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“The university is going through a reshaping and restructuring process that aims to not only make us more effective, but to reinvest our dollars in the highest and best use,” Borger said.

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