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For all they're worth

By AMY BICKEL

The Hutchinson News

HUTCHINSON -- The night before his 52nd birthday, Calvin Nisly lamented to his wife that he didn't know how long his small Reno County dairy could stay in business.

For 13 years, the 65 cows he milks each day have provided him enough money to take care of his family of six. But on this early March day, reality had set in when his most recent paycheck came in the mail.

His cows are losing money.

His youngest child, 4-year-old Juliet, overheard her father's woes. The next day, she wrapped him a gift -- all the money from her piggy bank, 75 cents. She told him it was to help buy the cows hay.

"She thought it would be sad if the cows left, and she thought she'd do her part," he said with a laugh, but added in a more serious manner, "My first thought was we shouldn't have talked about it in front of her, but it was very touching, all the same."

Career choice

Thirteen years ago, Partridge-area dairyman Calvin Nisly had a choice to make: be a dairy farmer or be a school social worker.

As he watched part of his Brown Swiss cow herd file into his milking parlor one afternoon, he said he never questioned whether he made the right choice.

Nisly and his wife, Andrea, were living in Switzerland, where Andrea was born. They wanted to come back to Kansas.

With family already taking over his father's dairy farm down the road, Nisly built his own milking operation on a small acreage of land.

Instead of the 9-to-5 work of an office job with weekends off, he elected the hard-working lifestyle of a dairy farm -- getting up at 3:30 every morning of the week to start the day's milking.

His work typically ends well after dark. Vacations are rare. The last milking he missed was when Juliet was born. She turns 5 this spring.

Reservations

But on a recent evening, after finishing his evening milking, Nisly acknowledged he has reservations about the business.

His check from his marketer for the first two weeks of February was $5 a hundredweight less than what he received in January.

Mirrored by a faltering U.S. economy and a now struggling export market, milk prices have dipped 50 percent since summer after reaching record levels in 2007 and early 2008.

Running the numbers

A year ago, milk averaged around $20 a hundredweight (per 100 pounds), which equals about 12Ôªø1âÑ2 gallons, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Last month, prices averaged around $12 per hundredweight, and economists expect it to fall to just above $10 in March.

With inputs like feed still high, that means milk costs more to produce than what the farmer needs to break even, said Mike Brouk, with Kansas State University.

"We have more milk than we need, it's that simple," Brouk said of the prices.

Poor prices, however, can be weathered only so long.

With 70,000 dairy farms across the United States, many are looking at ways to cut costs amid one of the worst dairy situations in recent history.

Some have culled cows. Others have gone out of business, said Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation.

"I think there is a real concern -- depending on how leveraged they are and how much debt they have -- that they won't be able to hang on," he said. "The bottom line is, with the prices we are seeing this early spring, no one is going to make money and we're going to lose some."

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