And he’s probably right. At any moment throughout the year, Burton is raising 7,000 head of heifers for 15 Midwestern dairies ranging in size from 800 to 12,000 cows.

“They want their heifers coming back big, stout, 1,300-pound springers that will fit in and calve in well,” Burton says.

Yet Burton doesn’t grow his clients’ springer heifers alone. Harold’s system relies on recruiting, training and utilizing custom growers near his home in north-central Kentucky during the bottle-fed and post-weaning stages of replacement development. Harold personally watches out for weaned calves weighing less than 400 pounds, heifers approaching breeding age (800 pounds) and bred heifers. His program is a decentralized four-stage replacement system that Burton says he wouldn’t trade for a single-site, consolidated program.

“This is not an Everyday Joe operation that someone can just sign up for and say, ‘I want to raise a bunch of heifers,’” Burton says. “Coordination? You ain’t kidding.”

The operation’s heifer calves arrive twice each week and are dispersed among a number of Amish families who bottle-feed the calves milk replacer twice daily. Altogether the families feed about 1,100 head. Burton says he doesn’t have to worry about labor reliability because the families take good care of the calves.

“They don’t usually lose any,” Burton says.

Burton limits the number of problem calves on his operation by requiring his dairy clients’ heifers are in good condition at pickup. That means having a truck driver who can tell a sick calf from a healthy one.

“If a calf is not a good, stout calf or can’t get up and has scours, I tell my driver not to take her,” Burton says. “If a calf is a little bit sick, I’ll leave her and pick her up next week. … When it goes on the trailer, it’s my calf.”

Burton’s been tough with his dairy producer clients at times. He’s temporarily stopped making rounds to dairies who don’t ensure every calf is naval-dipped and gets colostrum. Without those precautions, Burton says the survival rate is less than 50 percent. It doesn’t take long for clients to meet his requirements, and he says that those dairies are the ones currently providing him some of his healthiest calves.

To keep the replacements healthy, Burton follows an intensive vaccination program. By the time the calves are weaned, Burton has spent $30 a head for vaccinations.

“It’s pretty expensive, but that’s what the dairymen want,” he says. After weaning, Burton brings all of the calves back together to raise them in small groups until they weigh 400 pounds. For Burton’s operation, managing pneumonia cases is critical and that first 60 days they are with him amounts to the most challenging stage of his program.

During the post-weaning stage, the heifers are fed a total mixed ration (TMR) of alfalfa and a 16 percent texture mix of whole shell corn. Burton says this has worked better than feeding the hay and grain separately, which they used to do. After reaching 400 pounds, Burton sends the heifers in groups to custom raisers within a 50-mile radius of his operation. He supplies these raisers with 6 pounds of grain to feed each animal per day, and they provide hay or pasture to supplement the diet. Pay is .75 per animal per day. He says heifers gain 1.7 to 1.8 pounds per day.

“I stay right with the growers and tell them how it needs to be done and how much to feed,” Burton says.

Burton didn’t always provide grain to his growers. He had less success paying $1 per day per animal and allowing growers to source their own grain. Some would feed less grain to cut costs. So the extra time to coordinate feed delivery is worth it.

“It’s a little more trouble, but it pays in the long run,” he says. “[Six pounds per day] will put out a heifer a lot quicker. If they don’t grow them and feed them, it’s not going to work for me.”

Timely weight gain is crucial in Burton’s program because a slow-growing heifer costs money. Heifers return to Burton’s facility as they approach 800 pounds and are weighed each week. Only animals that have exceeded that mark are bred.

Three of his clients breed all their heifers to sexed semen. Burton says he averages a 50 percent conception rate with sexed semen and a 68 percent conception rate with conventional semen. After breeding, the heifers are fed a TMR of corn silage, wet distillers grain and alfalfa hay to gain 2-plus pounds per day and reach 1,300 pounds by calving age.

“My dairymen like their heifers with a little flesh on them,” Burton says. “They go into a 3,000-cow dairy and just get beat out if they’re not big, stout heifers.”

Burton estimates his operation and payments to custom growers contribute more than $130,000 in revenue to the local economy and its farmers, many of whom used to grow tobacco and/or feed beef cows.

“It’s a pretty good thing for the area farmers,” he says.

It’s also been a good thing for Burton. Since starting the business in 1998 after selling his 250-cow milking string, Burton has grown from raising 500 animals to more than 7,000. He’d like to be able to raise up to 20,000 replacements and own enough land to raise 7,000 to 8,000 by himself, if necessary. But for now he’s OK with involving others in the community.

“If we can get along well with how we’re doing it now, I’d like to keep doing it,” Burton says.  PD

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Progressive Dairyman