Dairy goats stand in a barn at Joneslan Farm, May 13, 2021, in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O’ Lakes for cheese making.
Farmer Steve Jones herds dairy goats to the milking parlor, May 13, 2021, at Joneslan Farm in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O’ Lakes for cheese-making.
Farmer Brian Jones attaches milking equipment to dairy goats, May 13, 2021, at Joneslan Farm in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O’ Lakes for cheese-making.
Dairy goats stand in a barn at Joneslan Farm, May 13, 2021, in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O’ Lakes for cheese making.
Dairy goats stand in a barn at Joneslan Farm, May 13, 2021, in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O’ Lakes for cheese making.
Fluctuating milk prices and rising costs have driven some small family farms to either go big or leave the industry. Two brothers operating their family’s dairy farm in Vermont made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats.
HYDE PARK, Vt. (AP) — Grappling with a changed industry, two brothers operating their family’s dairy farm in Vermont have made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats.
The Jones family, which had raised cows for 150 years at Joneslan Farm, houses about 1,000 goats in their barn that remains adorned with painted cut-outs of dairy cattle. Fluctuating milk prices paid to dairy cow farmers and rising costs have driven some small family farms to go big or out of business — or get creative like brothers Brian and Steven.
The Jones brothers finished constructing their nanny-milking parlor and delivered their first goat milk earlier this year to Land O’ Lakes-owned Vermont Creamery, to be used for cheese-making.
They plan to milk 1,200 to 1,500 dairy goats within two years.
“We’re growing all the time,” Brian Jones said.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of dairy cow farms fell by more than half between 2003 and 2020 while the number of cows nationwide grew as farms consolidated.
At the same time, the dairy goat industry in the U.S. has grown significantly in the last 20 years, with the number of dairy goats rising from more than 190,000 in 1997 to 440,000 last year — a 2% increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest five-year census of agriculture shows that the number of dairy goat operations has more than doubled from 15,000 in 1997 to more than 35,000 in 2017. The next five-year census comes out in 2022.
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