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It’s always been dairy farming or bust for Ryan Murray.
He dropped out of college in the late 2000s and went to live at home. College wasn’t Murray’s thing, but his parents wanted him to have a plan for the future.
“My mom said, ‘Well, you can’t just … stay here and do nothing,’” he says. So, he bought a few heifers and started getting ready for a transition to organic.
In spring 2013, he started his organic dairy operation with just 35 cows.
Being a seasonal dairy, he says, provides a “weird economy of scale.” He does all his calving at once starting in April. But being seasonal is key because he is mainly a grazing operation. He doesn’t have much of his own equipment, so he can’t afford to make too much feed for the entire year.
Plus, the seasonality of the herd — no milking in winter as he dries the cows off for two to three months — allows him to time their grazing for the spring flush, when he can get the highest quality forage out of his pasture.
Slow expansion
Murray’s first expansion around 2013 was building the herd to 45 cows. It was around that time that he met and later got engaged...