Megadairy gears up for fall opening

MVP dairy officials said they plan to begin interviewing and hiring employees this summer for the 4,500-head dairy northwest of Neptune and start operations in the fall.

About 50 people attended Thursday morning's Mercer County agriculture breakfast meeting to learn about the operation. Speakers were dairy manager Brock Peters, who moved with his family from Kansas to the area in June, and Kyle VanTilburg of Celina.

The 82-acre facility, planned along Hasis Road south of U.S. 33, is a partnership between VanTilburg Farms of Celina and McCarty Dairy LLC of Colby, Kansas. MVP officials on March 20, 2017, announced plans to build the multimillion-dollar dairy.

The cows will produce non-GMO milk for Minster's Dannon Yogurt plant. The dairy would be the fifth McCarty Family Farms facility and its first in Ohio. Until now, VanTilburg farms had been mainly a grain and agronomy operation.

Peters said the family passed up Utah to look at Ohio to locate the new dairy, searching for an Ohio site for three years.

"We've been milking in Kansas for 20 years and been with Dannon over six years," Peters said. "We'd looked long and hard at one (local) dairy, but we decided against it and decided to build instead."

VanTilburg said about six years ago, his family began looking at options in the commodity market and how the operation could become more value-added on the food chain.

"We started researching milking cows, and we ran into the McCartys," VanTilburg said. "After a year of vetting, we joined a partnership with the McCartys to build the dairy."

The VanTilburgs are lifelong Mercer County residents. Both farms have received awards and recognition for agricultural innovation and conservation. The McCarty family started milking cows by hand in a small barn in northeast Pennsylvania in 1914. The McCarty operation milks 8,500 cows among four sites, three in Kansas and one in southwest Nebraska.

The dairy will be designed with cow comfort and the environment in mind, Peters said. A patented anaerobic treatment cell system to treat manure designed to reduce waste and odors is planned. The treatment is similar to what some area villages use, VanTilburg noted.

The barns would have ventilation and systems to flush manure multiple times each day. The barn siding would be transparent to let in natural light. The farm will use sand bedding which will be separated from waste, washed and reused.

The farm will use cover crops, grid soil sampling and will apply three types of treated manure.

Peters said the farm will be audited four times a year and also will undergo unannounced audits.

The dairy initially was met with strong opposition. Several neighbors said they worried about odor, increased traffic, manure runoff and other issues. About 140 people attended an Aug. 8 Ohio Department of Agriculture open house and public meeting in Celina.

Neighbor Tim Townsend asked if MVP officials would test residents' groundwater before and after the dairy begins operations to monitor any contamination.

Both VanTilburg and Peters said they would.

"We would send samples to Brookside Labs," Peters said.

Townsend asked if farm organizers had a contingency plan if the manure lagoon overflows.

Peters said the lagoon is built to have additional space to accommodate heavy rains. He said he did not anticipate it would overflow.

"It's all built to handle a 100-year storm, and we have extra room to provide a buffer," Peters said.

They plan to continually pump manure irrigation water onto growing crops to keep down the level, he said.

Townsend asked if MVP officials were concerned that their large operation might put smaller dairies out of business.

Peters said he wasn't.

"We're not in direct competition with those guys because our product (non-GMO milk) is going to be different."

Bob Maurer, Mercer County Soil and Water Conservation District board member, said he had traveled to the McCarty Farms' Scott City dairy in Kansas recently to check it out and said the farm had no odor.

Peters said MVP is exploring opportunities to identify farm sites to grow heifer calves for MVP's herd and market bull calves locally.

The dairy also will include a visitors center that will host area school tours and other educational events, Peters said. VanTilburg said MVP officials are looking to partner with Wright State University-Lake Campus to allow its students to use the center.

The dairy has a Facebook page, and the McCarty Dairy website is McCartyfamilyfarms.com.

The next Mercer County agriculture breakfast meeting will include a tour of CW Egg, an egg-breaking facility in Fort Recovery, sometime in May or June, said Nikki Hawk, Mercer SWCD administrator/education specialist.