Milligan Dairy Farm
7400 Stepladder Rd
Parma, MI 49269
517-937-3612 (Cindy)
Here is a link to our website that has our contract available for printing. http://milligandairyfarm.com/
Milligan Dairy Farm is a 5th generation, medium sized, family owned farm. We are a Grade A dairy, licensed and inspected by the state of Michigan. We market our milk through National Farmers Organization, who tests our milk daily for bacteria, antibiotic residue, and somatic cell counts. We also have each individual cow tested monthly for the same things and more. We milk about 120 Holstein, Jersey, Gurnsey, Brown Swiss, Milking Shorthorn, and Ayrshire cows on our farm. Our cow share program enables people to reap the benefits of owning a cow and receiving the milk from that cow, without the hassles of taking care of and milking a cow on a daily basis. Knowing how much we love our milk, we are excited to be able to share it with others.
We try to stay as natural as possible. Our farm consists of 800 acres that we use to pasture, and raise feed, for our cows. Manure is spread on those fields for fertilizer. We grow GMO free corn. We have a new nutritionist on staff that is helping us to follow the feeding program layed out in a book we receives from the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Group. We do not use hormones, rBST, or antibiotic feeds. We treat our animals like we would our family. Probiotics are used on a regular basis and antibiotics for emergency and life threatening illnesses only. If we do have to use antibiotics the milk must test clean before we allow it back in the tank for human consumption.
We treat all our cows the same whether they be ours or belong to others via cow shares. We utilize a veterinarian on the farm once a month to do pregnancy tests and look into any other concerns we have with cow health. We also use a hoof trimmer as needed. Our cows live on pasture when the weather permits and in a free stall barn the rest of the time and are milked twice a day. A free stall barn allows a cow to move around freely, eating or resting when they want to. They always have fresh water.
For milk safety we bed on pasture or in clean sand beds. We have strict guidelines for milking our cows and give our employees quality bonus shares to ensure their incentive in high quality milk. A sample of our milk is pulled from the tank everyday and tested for cleanliness, health, and antibiotics by the co-op. In addition, we pay extra to have each cows milk tested individually once a month for similar things. At any time a cow's milk is suspect of being "off" a sample of her milk is pulled and sent to the lab that day for additional testing.
The actual cost to you would be a onetime fee of $100 to purchase a cow share, and then $25 a month, or $275 a year to board for your cow. It may be paid monthly, or you can arrange to make annual payments. You will bring your own clean milk containers. Because our milk is picked up daily, there is no milk available between 11 am and evening milking at 7 pm. We consider it a small price to pay for same day fresh milk.
If you are interested, or have any further questions, please contact us at 517-937-3612 (Cindy) or by email at milligandairyfarm@yahoo.com To stop by, we are located at 7402 Stepladder Rd in Parma, MI 49269
