Dickinson Supervisors Schedule Public Hearing On Possible Expansion Of Dairy Operation
Dickinson Supervisors Schedule Public Hearing On Possible Expansion Of Dairy Operation
March 15, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors today (Tues.) set April 5th as the date for some public hearings on a revised manure management plan and proposed expansion of the county’s only dairy farm. Erin Jones of Jones Dairy outlined some of the plans to board members…
“We aren’t necessarily getting huge. That’s not really our family goal. Instead what we’re doing is we’re making a lateral move with the potential to be able to expand. Right now there’s not a lot of opportunity to sell a lot more milk, but there is an opportunity to use technology to do a better job at what we’re doing. We want to be more efficient, we want to make sure that our operation is sustainable.”
Jones’ brother, Nathan, talked numbers…
“We’re going from being permitted for 1,150 head of mature dairy cattle to 1,950. And that’s kind of the change with this expansion, not real big. And then we have kind of a big change in the numbers of young calves that are listed in there, too, and that’s only because we incorporated some existing buildings at another site within the same manure management plan altogether as one, where they haven’t been before. So all of the expansion falls within, mostly within mature dairy animals.”
Jones added the expanded facility would also help broaden the tours of the operation they provide to the public…
“We do a lot of tours now and I think a lot of people have seen our dairy and we’re going to continue to do that. This new facility will be better set up to give tours for people to see it which we think is exciting. We enjoy doing that and showing it off.”
The facility is known for it’s high quality of operations and practices.
