Grant Greenstead – Vir-Clar Farms, Wisconsin (USA)
Vir-Clar Farms, located in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, is a 2,400-cow dairy farm with a long family history and a strong focus on innovation and efficiency. In 2018, following a major expansion, the team at Vir-Clar recognized the need to take their feeding operation to the next level.
“During that time frame,” says Grant Greenstead, “we recognized that one of the next steps that was important to us was an improvement in our feed manufacture.”
That’s when they turned to Trioliet. “Trioliet allowed us to look at their technology and see where that might fit for our feed manufacturing needs.”
At Vir-Clar, the scale of the operation is significant: “We make about 17 to 18 batches of feed here every day. We feed both milk cows, dry cows and calves from this feed facility. And so we’re doing about 150 tons of feed each and every day.”
The impact of the Solomix 2-3200 stationary feed mixer (for silage) was immediately clear. “With this technology, we’ve been able to really improve our precision and accuracy in manufacturing feeds and recognize significant feed cost savings in that process. We’ve been able to reduce our cost in manufacturing whereby today, based on today’s electrical charges, it only costs us about 27 cents a ton of feed to manufacture these feeds.”
But it wasn’t just the technology that impressed them – it was also the support. “Another unique feature that we’ve been able to really appreciate here is the support, not only from our local dealer Cliff’s, but also from Trioliet itself.”
Grant concludes: “It’s been a great system for us. It’s been able to reduce our time in manufacturing feeds and really does a great job for us.”
