Vincent and Richard decided not to re-build the dairy due to rapid increase in development. Our father Michael who at the time was 21 years old wanted to continue to milk cows. He went to his father and Uncle’s cow sale and bid against his neighbors to purchase 40 head of Holsteins. He rented a farm for two years close to where he grew up before deciding to purchase a 307 acre farm in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania thus the start of Roaring Creek Farm in 1973.

 

At the start, Michael milked 65 holsteins for 15 years until his sons were old enough to help out. In 1989 he re-built his double-three single stall parlor into a double-six parallel parlor and built the herd to 145 cows in this facility. In 2004, Roaring Creek built a 125 cow tie-stall barn which turned out to be one of the best decisions made for the business.

 

In 2004, our herd average was 27,000lbs. on three time a day milking. In 2015, our herd average is 35,000lbs. with a somatic cell count of 70,000.

 

For the past five years we have been flushing the top five percent of our herd. Flushing only cow families who have proven to have productive lives, good feet and legs and of course tons of milk.  We have also been purchasing embryos from some of the best cow families in the country. Some of these embryos have turned out to be great additions to our herd. These cows are also being flushed today as well.

 

All embryos on hand are for sale. Our inventory changes week to week as we continue to put the embryos in our bottom end to continue to improve the herd.