Breakfast offers dairy close-up

It will be a busy day at Brunner’s Hillside Dairy as they host the Pepin County Dairy Breakfast. The day will also include a graduation party for the newest member of their team, Mara Brunner. She’s the sixth generation to work on the farm east of Durand. She plans to continue her agricultural education this fall at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

The operation is a partnership between her dad, Joel Brunner, and neighbor Mike Bauer. The herd of 260 cows is the result of an expansion from 81 cows in 1999. At that time a new barn was built on the next-door property with a double-12 parlor, freestall barn and bunker silos. Brunner does the finances and field work, while Bauer does the feeding and field work. Mara Brunner’s job is to help with some of the milking and most of the computer work. Brunner’s wife, Carrie Brunner, does the nutrient-management plan. Their milk is sold to Eau Galle Cheese Factory.

The herd consists mostly of Holsteins.

“We have a mix of everything,” Mara Brunner said. “We have some Jersey and some Shorthorns mixed in with the Holsteins.”

They’ve also added several Red Holsteins into the herd.

Breeding is done by CentralStar. A technician comes daily to breed the cows, using marks on the cows to identify heat activity.

Joel Brunner said, “We try to watch for as much natural heat as we can. We don’t give everything shots like a lot of places. It saves a lot of money, handling and shots.”

Their conception rate is a healthy 50 percent for the first service, he said. Although they use some hormones, they try to keep them to a minimum.

“We’ve been doing a lot of polled the past five or seven years,” he said. “Eventually the whole herd will be polled and we won’t have any to de-horn, which aggravates a lot of people. We’re further ahead than a lot of people with that.”