Hammock Dairy

The Hammock Dairy is a 3rd generation dairy in Chatham, Va. They currently have 700 head but are looking to increase to 1,200. They own all of  the land that they use for crops. They have 800-900 acres for corn silage and double crop with Marshall Rye, Oats, or Wheat. Mr. Hammock uses vertical tillage when necessary but tries to no-till as much as possible. They sow round up ready corn and B.T. corn.

They like to have a 5 year return on investment at most but would like to have a 2 or 3 year. He doesn't agree with the digester at the Vanderhyde Dairy. Mr. Hammock put in center pivot irrigation systems last year but did not need to use them. He also put in a 10 acre pond that took two years to pass regulations and required many permits. The pond cost $35,000. He says that having irrigation is better than having an insurance policy. They are currently participating in a study with Virginia Tech to see population rates of different varieties of corn. To plant each acre of corn it costs between $300-350. He can feed 1 cow off of 1 acre for an entire year and averages 12 tons per acre. There are 12 full time employees on the farm not including Mr. Hammock and his younger brother.
In the milk parlor they pre-dip, then strip the cows, and finally wipe the cows down and this process allows 1 minute of let down time for the cow before they place the milker on. They can milk 100 cows in an hour with 3 employees. They milk 3 times a day and are typically milking 21 out of the 24 hours each day. They started a coop with several of the other farmers in the area and it now has 14 members and they ship out 26 loads of  milk every day. They have the highest quality milk in the U.S. and the higher the quality the longer the shelf life is. The coop also sends 25 loads of milk a week to a Mexican Cheese Plant. In April Hammock Dairy made $27/ 100 wt. and in May they sold 1.5 million lbs of milk. They scrape the barns 3 times a day and change the bedding and clean waters twice a week. They are currently in the process of switching from sawdust to sand. While we were there we did get to see Mr. Hammock pull a calf also.

The Hammock's operation is very neat to see how they feed all of their cows off of their own land without having any extra expense from renting land. It was interesting to see how different dairy farmers think and see the different tasks associated with each different farm if going into an agriculture field where you are required to work with the farmer on a day to day basis. There are somethings that I saw/heard that I did not completely agree but everyone has their own opinion and their own way of doing things.