Jan. 29, 2009 - Somebody thinking about plunging full-time into a small dairy operation might look at Aaron Dyer's sudden bloom of success and think that it's easy to open a dairy and start making money. That would be before finding out that Dyer has been around the dairy business all his life.
Raised on a dairy cow operation in the Panhandle, Dyer ran his own Holstein heifer ranch before moving to Central Texas four years ago and starting Dyer Dairy with his wife, Susan, who grew up on a Central Texas dairy.
"Between the two of us, we've seen about everything that can happen to you in this business at least once," he said.
Dyer met his wife when visiting local dairies in preparation for starting his own. Though he has spent time with larger operations, the decision to open a small farm was a conscious one. He got his permit to sell Grade A Raw Milk in July of last year.
"There is a demand for raw milk down here," he said. "Most of the good ag land around here is tied up. With the cost of land and taxes down here today, opening a large operation here is not feasible."
For Dyer, another strike against opening a larger commercial dairy in Williamson County was the heat. "That would hurt production at a commercial dairy," he said. "The heat's just too much."
The permit to sell Grade A raw milk comes from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. The agency inspects the facility before it opens and a once a month after that to check the product for the presence of bacteria and antibiotics. He has to sell the milk directly from the farm, and the milk must meet the same standards as pasteurized milk.
"One of the good things about a smaller operation like this is that when there's a problem, you know it," he said. "With a big operation, you're not the one milking the cows every day. You don't see every cow every day."
Dyer has 15 milk cows, including Holsteins, Brown Swiss and Ayrshires. He also has 30-40 beef cows and raises hay. He sells beef mostly by the quarter or by the half, and some by the pound. He plans to begin making and selling cheese at the farm and maybe open up a small store on the property.
"That would help out some of the farmers around here because nearly all of them have a little vegetable garden, and this would give them a place to sell it," he said.
Dyer's cows each average about five to seven gallons of milk per day.
Business so far has come mostly from word-of-mouth advertising, he said. More than 70 people buy milk from Dyer Dairy, buying anywhere from a gallon of raw milk (for $5 a gallon), to 10 gallons at a time.
"Some of my customers tell me they can't drink pasteurized milk," he said. "Some of them are lactose intolerant. Raw milk has lactose too, but the heat in pasteurization changes the milk a little bit. I grew up drinking raw milk off the farm. It's a big health craze now, and people want it."
Running a dairy, even a small one, is a full-time job. Dyer and his wife do all the work on the farm. The days are long, between 12 and 16 hours.
"If you're milking 12 hours apart, by the time you get finished and cleaned up from one milking it's not that long before the next one," he said.
A newcomer to the business might be taken back by the long hours and a myriad of things that can go wrong when trying to produce and sell high quality Grade A milk on a daily basis. Unlike the novices, the Dyers knew what they were getting into.
"Having been around it all my life is a huge advantage," he said. "That helps a lot if you're just stepping into it like we have. We both know what it takes to make a dairy farm work."
