Clauss Dairy Farms is a family-owned farm business located just outside the town of Hilmar in central California. Clauss Dairy Farms was established in the early 1950s but it was not until the mid-1970s that the farm began to expand.

When Richard Clauss took over the farm almost 50 years ago, there were just 30 milking cows on the farm. Today, Clauss Dairy is home to a 2,000-strong herd of pedigree Jersey cows. There is also a second dairy farm milking 1,250 Jersey cows adjacent to the main farm, while one of Richard Clauss’s daughters is milking 1,900 Jersey cows just down the road.

In California, the Jersey cow is preferred due to the high fat content of the milk, which is ideal for cheese making. Richard Clauss was one of the original 12 founding shareholders of Hilmar Cheese, a company that has grown to become one of the largest cheese producers in the US.

Rotary parlour

On the main farm, a 50-stall Westphalia rotary milking parlour, which was installed in 2008, is capable of milking 350 cows/hour. This rotary runs for 20 hours per day, milking cows three times daily.

At all times there are three employees working a 10-hour shift, with one wiping and stripping, one cupping and one checking that cows were milked out properly and controlling cow flow.

Cows in this Jersey herd are in excellent condition and the cleanliness was incredible.

The cows are brought to and from the sheds in groups of 200 to 250, with a turnaround time of about 45 minutes per group. Most of the labour on dairy farms in California is from Mexico or Portugal.

Labour costs for agriculture are about $10/hour today. However, new legislation working its way through the California state legislature will see minimum wages rise to $15/hour for farmers.

On top of this, the current arrangements allow for employees to work 60 hours a week before the employer must pay overtime.

The new labour laws in California will see this standard working week reduce to 40 hours, meaning any time worked after this will have to be paid as overtime.

Herd health

Herd health is a priority for this farm and it could be seen in the cows. They were producing 69lb (30.5kg) of milk per day at 4.7% butterfat and 4.0% protein on average at a 115 SCC.

Any cow that has health issues such as lameness or mastitis is segregated into a hospital group. Cows are individually charm-tested coming away from this group regardless of withdrawal dates.

Breeding

Breeding on the farm is all AI. The top two-thirds of cows received sexed semen for two rounds followed by a final round of conventional semen if needed. The bottom third of the herd are inseminated with straws from beef sires such as Wagyu.

Heifers were bred at 11 months, receiving two rounds of sexed semen and then conventional insemination. First calving takes place at 20 months. Along with this, 50% of the herd were genomically tested.

All the feeding of the herd is carried out by two diet feeders doing 10-hour shifts.

These are used to feed both farms. The diet of the cows is corn silage, wheat silage, alfalfa, oilseed rape and corn gluten. Minerals are also added to the diet via an impressive in-house mixing system.

Calves

The most labour-intensive part of the farm seems to be the calves.

At any one time, 600 calves in individual huts receives three feeds a day at eight-hour intervals through individual two litre bottles.

All milk is pasteurised for the calves including colostrum in an impressive calf kitchen, where all bottles were brought between feeds to be washed and refilled each time.

Although this was very intensive, it is obviously effective as can be seen with heifers meeting targets and looking incredible as 20-month-old first-calvers.

Overall, Clauss is an impressive farm – high input, high output – which is very professionally run.