- Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Dairy, it's probably one of the most misunderstood pieces of agriculture out there.

People are fascinated because everybody drinks milk, eats cheese, all that good stuff.

Let's talk to a couple of dairy farmers today.

How are you guys doing?

- Good.

- Good.

How are you today?

- Andy and Sarah Lenkaitis from Kane County.

Now it's, St. Charles is the town?

- Correct.

- Is that a very big town?

- It's about 35,000 people.

- Okay.

Oh, you have a Walmart, don't ya?

- Couple of 'em, yeah.

- Wow.

Well, la-di-da!

(all laughing) - Starbucks, whatever you want.

- And Kane County.

Are you guys still jealous of Abel County?

- Why?

Why would we be jealous?

- It's a little biblical humor there.

- Ah, ah, I see.

That's true.

- Kane and Abel, They were...

Didn't end so well.

- Yeah.

(Rob puffs) (all laughing) - All right, for the people that don't know where that is in Illinois, where is St. Charles?

- We're an hour straight west of Chicago.

- Okay, so you're up there.

Now, is it rural, or you got a lot of people around you?

- No, it's pretty suburban.

We actually live within an incorporated village called Campton Hills, so we have quite a few neighbors around us.

It's actually pretty big contrast to where I grew up.

I grew up about an hour northeast of Madison, in a little rural town called Brandon, Wisconsin.

And so when I moved down to Illinois, when Andy and I got engaged and we started farming, it's a pretty big contrast to what I was used to.

So our farmstead is not all together, there's fields here and there, and some are rented and some are owned, and there's subdivisions around us, and we have to be cognizant of our neighbors.

And so it's a lot different farming in the area that we're in, as opposed to where I grew up.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And the county's split pretty well in thirds with very urban area on the east side, the middle's in transitional, and then the west is still pretty rural, but there's definitely quite a big population area around us.

Like Sarah said, three, so divisions on three sides of us.

A lot of traffic, a lot of people.

- Okay.

So you grew up on a dairy farm?

- I did.

- Okay.

- A first generation dairy farm.

So my dad started working with cows when he was in high school, just on neighbors' farms and people he knew, and fell in love with it.

And so then my parents bought their farm in 1991, moved from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, to where they are today.

- And you grew up on a dairy farm, Andy?

- Correct.

Yeah, my folks bought the farm the, actually the year I was born, so I was about a year old when they purchased the farm.

Mom and Dad kinda kept things just simple for the first two years, and they started milking about five cows in 1985.

Kinda grew from there.

My mom was milking before and after school.

She was a German language teacher.

And my dad, he worked at the Board of Trade in Chicago for about 45-plus years.

- [Rob] Oh, back when the pits were open?

- Back when there were people and, yeah.

- I bet he's got some stories.

- He's got some fun stories, yeah, about everything going on down there.

And, yeah, and then throughout the late '80s and '90s, kinda developed the herd a little bit.

We ended up taking over the farm in 2014, management.

We were milking about 35 cows in a tie stall barn.

And then to where we got to today, put up a robot barn, milking about 80 cows now.

- Okay.

We're gonna get into all that.

You're talking farmeries already.

- No, a little bit.

Yep.

- It's okay.

It's okay.

I just can't get over you both grew up on dairy.

Was this an arranged marriage?

- That's the best!

We met at a bar in Madison.

- Shocking.

- The old fashioned way.

- Wisconsin.

You met in a bar at dollar.

(Andy and Sarah laughing) At Dollar Bud Nite.

(all laughing) - No, it was Five-Dollar LIT Nite.

- Yeah.

Five-Dollar Long Island Iced Tea Nite.

(all laughing) So just randomly met?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we kinda, I had a coat with a cow in the back of it, and she came up and talked to me.

So, you know, it does happen every now and then.

But then we figured out we had competed against each other like seven years earlier in a 4H quiz bowl contest.

And then we knew a lot of the same people, but had never crossed paths.

- Yep.

I went to UW Madison and he went to the University of Illinois, so we never crossed paths at college, but just had a lot of mutual friends.

- Yeah.

The dating rituals of the dairy people fascinate me.

- Well, you gotta be able to, you know, the first date is to bring her home and make sure she can milk cows.

I mean, that's a requirement, basically.

(Sarah laughing) - There's a joke there that I'm gonna leave alone.

(all laughing) There's several, actually.

Okay, so you guys, you meet, you fall in love.

Was there a decision where you were gonna end up, 'cause you both had dairies, different states.

Did you pick the right one?

(all laughing) - I'll let you answer that one first.

- So actually, we didn't start dairy farming right away.

So Andy and I, we both graduated about the same time.

He's a little older, but he graduated with his Masters in Ag Engineering, and then I finished up my undergrad, and we actually worked in industry, both of us, for a few years.

And then the opportunity came up.

Well, we started buying cows, and then that turned into a lot of cows.

- I heard that's addicting.

- It is.

Yeah.

And then the opportunity came up to start managing his family's dairy farm.

And so we took that and just kinda ran with it.

And at some point, we decided that I should stay home on the farm, so I stopped working full-time.

And Andy's a really bad millennial.

He's been at the same job since he graduated college, so.

- How many years?

- Fifteen-and-a-half years.

- And who do work for?

- GEA Farm Technologies.

- [Rob] And they're the ones that make the stuff on your farm?

- Yeah.

I work in the farm technologies division, which makes milking equipment, manure handling, robotic milking.

And so I'm in tech support, kinda help our customers out, help our dealers and customers, make sure everything works how it should.

- Customer is always the boss, so technically, she is your boss.

(both chuckling) - Don't say that too loud, but yeah.

She is by far my toughest and most unfiltered customer.

When I get calls at whatever hour of the night, there's no niceties or politeness.

It's just, "How do I fix this stupid thing?

Tell me quick, 'cause I'm tired, before I go take care of your children."

"Okay."

(Andy and Sarah laughing) - Should be a fun ride home.

- Yeah.

(Andy and Sarah laughing) - Okay, Sarah, let me ask you this, because up until that moment probably most people watching were looking at it and were like, "He's the dairy farmer, you're the doting wife that is just watching kids and making a apple pie to cool on the windowsill," and all that.

Does that bother you?

- It's all right.

(laughing) - Little bit?

I mean, honestly, if I was you, it would bother me a little bit.

- It's alright.

I'm okay.

This is how we make the farm work for us and for our family.

It's kind of necessary for us to have one off-the-farm income, and it made sense for Andy to stay working at his job.

And we get the benefits of, you know, he's, you know, really knows the equipment really well, and can kinda help me troubleshoot a lot of things.

And so I've just kinda had to learn, trial by fire a little bit.

But yeah, I stay home on the farm and do a lot of the day-to-day.

I've had some really great part-time, full-time help over the years.

We've had some interns over the summer, and over the winter too, that have helped out too.

And we just kinda make it all work, so.

- Yeah.

I spend the nights and weekends when I'm home doing manure and crop work, and fixing whatever needs to be done, but... - Yeah, there's a list, "Fix these things."

- I have the things I need to work on, and... - Your honey-do list includes manure.

- Yeah.

Yeah!

There's some house chores and then, you know, "Go fix manure pump and breed this cow."

That's just kinda what the list is.

- Do you guys enjoy it?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I don't know what else we'd be doing.

You could look at it, we could spend our time, have a second home somewhere, or go vacation, but we just, it's so peaceful on the farm, you know.

It's all our hard work that's paying off and putting a good product out there, making milk for people, and making good cows, and making memories with the family.

And, you know, I can sit in the tractor with my little one, and you know, he loves it, and just, we can do a lot of things on the farm with our kids, and bring a lotta other people into it.

And it's just, it's been a great experience.

- Yeah.

Yeah, the five years that we weren't farming, we missed it.

Like right after we got married we were kind of like, "What?

There's something missing."

- We traveled the world, we had a lot of fun.

Every weekend was something busy, you know.

And now we don't do that, but it's, I don't-- - We come to Peoria.

- Yeah.

(Andy and Sarah laughing) I wouldn't say we miss it, you know.

- Just one kid?

- Two.

- Two.

Okay.

The one you brought here, my wife's probably doing the whole bounce walk somewhere.

- That's Nora.

She's four months now.

And then we have a four-and-a-half year old son, Lucas.

So actually, when we built our new barn and started up our robotic milkers, I was 12 weeks pregnant.

So that was interesting, to be pregnant, and starting up that barn, and learning all these new things, and pushing all these cows at the same time that I was expecting, but... - Yeah.

A lot of new experiences that year, with building the barn, and then having our first child, and everything.

- But firing up the robots was by and far-- - Let's talk about that.

- easier than the child.

- A lot of people don't know what a robotic milker is.

Explain how your dairy works.

- Yeah.

So we had been in what was called a tie stall barn, where the cows come into the barn twice a day, usually in the morning and at night, and you bring the individual milking units out to the cow, and you prep their udder and attach the milking unit, and then the cow gives the milk, and then you finish up and move on to the next.

And so we had five of those units that we moved between 35 cows, and milking took about two hours with setup and take down and everything.

What we installed-- - Twice a day.

- Twice a day, yeah.

Yep.

Twice a day, every day, same time.

'Cause cows are creatures of habit.

- What times?

- Loves consistency.

Alright, so I was hoping to get going by, have milkers on by 5.30 in the morning.

- I thought you just said you had to be consistent.

Now we're hoping.

(all laughing) - Well, I mean, some days you hit snooze on the alarm clock a couple of times.

- The cow is sitting there with her legs crossed, waiting for you at the barn.

- "Where are you?

Are you coming?"

And then in the evening we usually milked about 4.30 or five o'clock in the afternoon, so.

Yeah, but that was five years ago now.

So when we built our new barn, we added two robotic milking units.

And so basically those are available to the cows 24/7.

And so each of our cows wears one of these collars that you have in front of you, and that's kind of an identifier for the cow.

And so when she decides she wants to go milk, she enters the robotic milking unit, the robot reads this tag and says that she either has permission to milk or she doesn't, and that's based on how much time has elapsed since her last milking.

So based on production, how much milk the cow is giving, we can set the interval at how often she can milk.

So instead of twice a day, some of our cows milk up to four times, five times a day.

And then at a minimum, we want them to milk twice a day.

- So this has a LoJack in it, right.

So it's reading lots of stuff.

- What?

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we can track the cow.

- LoJack.

(Andy and Sarah laughing) - A Fitbit.

- Basically.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Some sort of wearable technology, and that's what the cow has around her neck.

So there's a couple of different things going on.

The size of it, has a big coil of wire, and that makes our RFID system read, so that way it'll read passive antenna.

And then also inside of it, similar technology to what's in your cell phone, there's an accelerometer, a gyroscope, microphone, and that's looking for those smaller movements.

As that cow has that around her neck and she's chewing her feed, it's gonna move just a little bit, but kind of a rhythmic motion, different times.

And so we can measure that, and then we have that data feedback through our herd management system, and we can look at that.

And basically, we're trying to manage by exception.

We know a cow should be ruminating for what, eight hours a day, let's say, a third of the day she should be chewing her feed again.

If that deviates within 10, 20%, we wanna know about it right away, because there's a good chance that cow's not feeling well.

- Something wrong with it.

- Yeah, and then we-- - This goes around her neck though?

- Yeah.

- You could... - Totally.

(chuckling) - I dunno.

You do like the... How's that?

The-- - The cross body bag kinda.

- That doesn't look too bad.

- It's trendy.

(Sarah chuckling) We can put it on you and monitor you now.

- Everybody wanna do this for the rest of the... - So every cow has a number and a name.

So you are 1294, who is Brooklyn.

- I've been called worse.

(all laughing) I've been to robotic dairies before.

I think one thing maybe people don't know is that when they go in to get milk, there is some feed dropped, right?

- There is, yeah.

- So the one we were there, a cow would come in and then the robot would say, "Uh-uh."

- Yeah.

Not enough time has elapsed.

- Yeah.

"You don't get to feed," and it boots it out.

- The exit gate opens and she has to leave, yeah.

- Yes.

It's fascinating.

And it's amazing to me that you can make a robot that actually is able to find the teat, go up there, wash it it, and then grab a hold of it and milk it.

It's just, it's amazing to watch.

- Yeah.

So there is a camera on the front, and then that's part of the data that's associated with her tag too, is kind of a location of her teats.

So it knows that this cow has her teats located in this location, and based on the camera and what's stored as her location, it attaches to the four.

And like you said, it does exactly what we used to do in the tie stall barn, or what a farmer might do in a parlor situation, where they wipe off each teat, use an iodine solution to wash it, and clean that off, and then attach the unit.

So the robot does all of that for us, while she is being fed some pellets, or a treat, while she's being milked.

- So making this automative.

Automative?

Automatic?

- Automated.

- I don't know if that's a word.

It's a Canadian word.

So I'm assuming this has taken some of the workload off.

- Yeah.

So I mean, like we said, I've got two small children now, and I've had both of those children while we've been in this barn.

And I've worked my entire pregnancy, and worked after my pregnancy with a toddler in tow, and now an infant in tow, and it's a lot more ergonomic type work.

I'm not having to worry about attaching the unit myself, and bringing all the cows in myself, and things like that.

There's still work to be done, and there's still things that need to be done, but it's a lot more ergonomic, and there's a lot more flexibility to the time.

I don't have to be there with milkers on at 5.30 in the morning.

I can go take my son to school, and then come back and kinda check and see how things are doing, and do a couple of tasks.

Then the baby gets up and I feed her, and then I do a few more things.

And so that flexibility's really been important for me too.

- What do you do in your free time?

(all laughing) - Well, see, that's the thing.

In the old barn, you would milk the cows, and then you would turn everything off and you'd go home for the night.

This is always on.

So, as like Andy alluded to, I could get an alarm in the middle of the night to my phone, saying that one of the robots isn't working for some reason, and it could be as simple as a hose came off, or it could be something more complicated.

And so that's when I call him and I say, "Let's get this fixed and let's get me back to bed."

(laughing) - And a lot of it I can do remotely.

If I'm traveling for work and I'm a couple of times zones away, I can address 90% of the problems on my phone.

And I know enough about the software and what the data means that I can normally troubleshoot the problem, and I can decide am I gonna wake my wife up for this or not?

That's the question.

Do I wanna call her and wake her up to fix this issue?

- [Rob] Generally, the answer is no.

- Generally, it's no.

(Sarah laughing) But if I can try to get it remotely, or maybe it's 4.00 a.m., and I can just wait two more hours and call her then.

Our system isn't a hundred percent full.

That's part of the reason we're only milking 80 cows and not more.

I have some flexibility if something goes down.

And that was kinda built in when we designed the barn, just so, we're not there all the time, and we have some time that, okay, if we be down for a couple hours, we're not gonna get ourselves so far behind we can't catch up in a week.

'Cause the cows, they know when something's down.

And certain cows like to milk at certain times.

They still kinda have their schedule mindset.

And some cows'll milk at the same time as each other.

They'll come in with a group of friends, and go to the parlor, and do all this.

And they just kinda have their own schedule they wanna keep.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Women.

Am I right?

- Totally.

We're complicated creatures.

(all laughing) - Is there something special about this cow here?

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah.

- So do you wanna?

- Yeah.

So that's Dream-Prairie Rebate-Red.

That's actually the first cow that Sarah and I purchased together.

- We joke that we spent our tax rebate on her.

- Yeah.

(all laughing) - So that's the one that started it all, for you two, anyway.

- Yeah.

- I'd say it got us back into it, you know.

Like Sarah mentioned, there was a couple years there, we just both had jobs and we were working nothing with the farm, really no involvement, and we just both kinda knew something was missing, and wanted to get back in.

And there was a dairy up in Wisconsin having dispersal, similar breeding to what we wanted to focus on.

So we bought this cow.

She had a calf in her, and kinda started the herd, so to speak.

And then-- - Now we have lots of daughters and granddaughters.

- Yeah, there there's probably 15 or 20 daughters, granddaughters of hers milking in the barn.

- If someone wanted, at today's prices, wanted to buy a cow like that, let's say average genetics, right?

What would, ballpark, something like that be?

- That's a loaded question.

- Well, yeah, I don't know if you could get Sarah to put a price in any cow.

(Andy and Sarah laughing) I think we paid 4600 for her.

- I don't think that's right.

- And that's probably about similar what should be worth today for a cow of her age, and being pregnant with a heifer, and breeding and everything.

- So I don't know if we said all of our cows are registered Holsteins, so the breed of them is Holsteins, and then registered, you can kind of equate it as the same as AKC for dogs.

So all of our cows have papers that talk about their lineage, and then the performance of them in their lineage.

And so that's what attracted us to her, and that's what...

Different breeders have different philosophies, and so they gravitate towards different types of performance.

And so for us, she was a red and white cow, and we liked the family, and the breeding, and her performance, and so that's why we were interested in her.

And so we breed what we think will be the next generation better and better.

- Gotcha.

Plus, I mean, with your dairy, with this cow and this genetics being so specific, only producing strawberry milk with the red cows.

- Totally.

Yes.

- I mean that has to be, you gotta be on your game with the marketing and all.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So-- - It brings up a good point though, with what people don't know about dairy, right?

Because on social media, I mean, sometimes the stuff they say about dairy is just, I mean, it's flat out lies.

It's people that don't want you to do what you're doing.

Does that ever bother you?

- So when we built our new facility, we did kind of build it so that we could have tours and we could bring people on the farm.

One, we knew our close proximity to Chicago, and because we're in such a suburban area, there would be lots of people around that might want to come and see what we're doing and learn more about dairy farming.

And so we've had quite a few tours over the five years that we've had the farm.

- Yeah, easily a couple of thousand people have been through.

We did a big open house in July of 2019, - June of 2019, 'cause June is dairy month.

- That's right, June is dairy month.

- Correct.

- So we had about a thousand people there, and then I think we've probably done in groups of two to 10 to 20 people, another 2,000 easily over the last couple of years.

- Like school kids or just-- - Everything.

Everything from senior groups, to school kids, to registered dieticians, dietetics students, anyone that wants to know more about dairy farmering and they wanna hear it from a dairy farmer.

So we just let them come and see the cows being milked by the robotic milkers, and visit with the cows in the free stall barn, 'cause they just kinda are there during the day, you know, eating or resting in the stalls, and so you can kinda get up close and personal and meet the cows.

And then everyone always loves and goes and sees the baby calves in our calf barn or our nursery.

- Oh, you gotta.

Yeah.

You love baby calves.

- It's great that we're able to bring people onto the farm and they can get that firsthand experience, and then ask us any questions that they do have.

And so that's how we kind of combat the myths and the misinformation, is we... Our doors are open and we're willing to let people kind of come on our farm and talk to us about what we do.

- Yeah.

Share the story, you know, and just get out there.

And I think two of my favorite visitors are probably, we got an NFL running back from Chicago Bears come out.

- Cool.

- David Montgomery.

Yeah, that was a great, really fun visit.

- We even got him to bottle feed a calf.

Yeah.

(laughing) - And did he tackle it?

(all laughing) - I think he... Yeah, he was built.

He was very fit.

And then Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, when she was our House Representative for our district.

- This is a probably a question that's very unfair to ask, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.

- Uh-oh.

(chuckling) - What do you think the biggest takeaway, the biggest surprise is, in general, of people that come out and visit your dairy?

- No, that's a good question.

- Well, thank you.

- Yes, you're welcome.

(all laughing) I think, so, especially our barn, because we have the robotic milkers and the cows kind of set their own schedule and choose when they wanna be milked.

We call it an automated barn, so everything's automated.

So we talk about how notoriously quiet it is, and how just calm and how friendly the cows are, because they do set their own schedules.

So some cows will be coming up and getting milked, some cows will be at the bunk eating, some will be laying down, and it's just very, very peaceful and very quiet.

So I think that's what surprises people the most, is how friendly the cows are, and how much they just go about their business.

- Yeah.

And how they just have a nice, enjoyable place to live.

They're super calm, like you said.

And people are always surprised too, how big they are when you get up close to 'em.

You don't realize how many people never really get close to an animal to realize the size of it, and just, you know.

And really, a lot of questions are like how, "Well, they don't look like a beef cow.

Why are they so bony?"

- Yeah, that's true.

- And it's, well, they're putting everything they have into making milk.

So they're really fit.

- But we do, we work with a nutritionist.

Our nutritionist was actually out on Tuesday.

She comes down and looks at the cows once every three to four weeks, and looks at the feed that we've made that we have available, and she formulates a diet.

So it's basically like a recipe card of what we feed our cows every day.

And it's very specific and very particular, the weight of each ingredient, to make sure that each cow gets a complete diet.

So I always say they probably eat better than I do.

- [Rob] I'm sure.

- Way better than me.

- Unfortunately, I did not leave enough time to really answer this question.

But is there antibiotics in your milk?

- No, there is not antibiotics in our milk, but we do use antibiotics to help our cows.

If one of them does get sick, we work with our veterinarian and she helps us with that.

(phone chiming) - Gotcha.

(phone continuing to chime) Okay.

Threw me.

Is that mine?

- No, it's mine.

It's my alarm to go get Lucas from preschool.

- That's fine.

Don't worry.

- I'm sorry.

I silenced my phone, but apparently the alarm still comes through!

(all laughing) - That's fine.

Honestly, nobody watches this show, so it's not a big deal.

- So it's my alarm that like, I have to drop everything and go get my son from preschool, otherwise I'll be late.

- I know that alarm.

We have that alarm.

Alright.

Regardless, or irregardless for our Canadian viewer, no antibiotics.

Hormones?

- No.

There are no hormones in milk either.

- The natural ones.

- Well, so there are naturally occurring hormones in a cow, but there are no added hormones to milk, no.

- Exactly.

Okay.

You guys have a social media or the old internet?

- We do have a Facebook page that, when I'm on the ball, I post things now and then, usually cute baby calves.

- Yeah.

Or kid photos.

- Or what or what we're up to on the farm, especially what Lucas is up to on the farm.

But yeah.

- What's the handle?

- So our farm, it's called Lenkaitis Holsteins, so just our last name.

- Very common spelling.

- L-E-N-K-A-A-I-T-I-S. - L-E-N-K-A-I-T-I-S. - Okay.

Andy and Sarah Lenkaitis.

Thank you guys so very much for coming down and being on the show and explaining what you do.

I really appreciate it.

I know the people at home appreciate it too.

So thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(upbeat music)