As Dairy Farms Die Out, Spears Shifts to Heifers

In 2000, Bob Spears converted his family’s 65-year-old dairy farm in Farmington into Arkansas’ largest heifer-raising operation. Where he once had 400 head of dairy cows, he now has 1,230 head of heifers being raised for dairy farms in other states.

Bob Spears said economic pressures squeezed the profit out of the milk cow business in Arkansas. Costs kept going up, but milk prices stayed about the same. And the humidity in Arkansas caused cows to produce less milk than they would in drier states like Arizona.

“It’s really kind of sad,” he said. “Nadine’s parents started the dairy here in 1935.”

Nadine is Bob Spears’ wife. His son Randy and grandson Ryan also work on the 1,431 acres of family farmland. Spears Cattle Co. owns 435 of those acres and leases the rest.

When Bob and Nadine Spears moved back from Kansas City in 1968 to work the family farm, neighbors would pay him 75 cents for a gallon of milk.

“In the year 2000,” he said, “that’s the same as we were getting, about 75 cents … Milk prices were awful.”

Now, farmers get about $1.29 per gallon, and milk sells in area stores for about $2.80 a gallon. Bob Spears said profit is going primarily to the bottling dairy and retailer.

“There were as many dairies in Washington County 25 years ago as there are in the whole state now,” Randy Spears said.

“Maybe more,” added his father, “but they were smaller.”

John Fox, a milk sanitarian with the Arkansas Department of Health, said there are currently between 230 and 235 dairy farms in Arkansas. In 1960, there were 1,260, but that included family farms with only a half dozen cows.

The Spears family tries to keep their heifer population between 1,200 and 1,500. There may be more cows on the farm than there were six years ago, but it has lightened the workload because they don’t have to be milked. In January, Randy Spears bought 100 head of milk cows “basically to give my son a job.” For all practical purposes, the family is out of the dairy business.

The Spears family bought 17 semi-trailer loads of cows last year from “back east.” They buy cows when they’re between 500 and 800 pounds in weight (about nine to ten months old). When the cows get to be 750 to 800 pounds, they’re mated with one of 31 bulls on the farm.

When the cows are 20 to 24 months old (and two months shy of giving birth to a calf) they’re sold to dairy farms in other states. Environmental regulations often restrict herd sizes, so large dairy farms don’t want too many cows on hand that aren’t producing milk. That’s why buying cows from Spears Cattle Co. is a good deal for them. The large dairy farms were paying Spears $1,850 per head in early March. Of that amount, Bob Spears said about $125 per head is profit and goes to salaries on his farm.

Bob Spears said he buys the 500-pound cows for about $1,150 per head. He keeps them for about 400 days. It costs about $1.30 per day to feed a cow, and the average cow will gain about 1.7 pounds of weight per day.