Whether your dairy is large or small, there’s much here to benefit all

By SHERRY BUNTING / Special for Farmshine

MADISON, Wis. – From Sugar Run in Bradford County, Pennsylvania to Kansas and back east to Ohio, then west again, the McCarty family has successively gone through periods of expansion, transition, and now modernization.

They headed west 25 years ago with their 50 Pennsylvania dairy cows to set down roots in open spaces where Tom and Judy and their four sons Mike, Clay, David and Ken felt they could build a future.

Though they envisioned a 1200-cow dairy at the time, what has progressed is a story of adaptation and opportunity-seeking by the fourth-generation brothers that even they did not foresee at the start.

During a Farmshine visit in the summer of 2017, the MVP Dairy in Ohio with their partners the VanTilburg family, was still just a blueprint they were looking at, discussing, and tweaking to be the showcase of what they wanted all of their dairies to reflect in the future.

Today, not only has that 4500-cow Ohio dairy completed and operational for over five years, it includes their first state-of-the-art visitor’s center. This, along with building and equipment innovations, were recently replicated at the second new dairy — Rexford 2.0 in Kansas, where they milk 10,000 cows.

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