To a scientist, cow milk is a nutrient-dense liquid composed of water, protein, fat, and carbohydrates. At MVP Dairy, it’s composed of so much more — thriving cows, high-quality soil, clean water, regenerative land management, dedicated farm workers, generational knowledge, and a commitment to the future. Producing high-quality milk informs MVP’s every decision point. Seen as opportunities for improvement, equipment and infrastructure are carefully selected to support the dairy’s vision of sustainable farming that brings positive social, economic, and environmental progress to communities. MVP’s choices reflect a farm ecosystem that’s increasingly shifting towards electrification.
In January 2024, MVP received delivery of new equipment fortified with advanced ag technology; Monarch’s MK-V Dairy. Built to push feed, the MK-V Dairy is fulfilling more than a cow’s appetite, it’s helping translate MVP’s ambitious vision into reality.
Across the Generations
Located in agriculture-heavy Mercer County, Ohio, MVP Dairy occupies roughly 82 acres and farms another 4500 acres to support its 4400 dairy cows of which 3900 are being milked. The dairy farm was constructed in 2018 and consists of six freestall barns. The name MVP stands for a partnership between two fourth-generation farming families; the McCarty dairy farming family of Kansas and the VanTilburg grain growing family of Ohio. Both families recognize the importance of having an agricultural legacy and safeguarding it for the future.
“So many people are removed from agriculture or farming, and they don’t understand where their food comes from,” says MVP Dairy co-owner, Kyle VanTilburg, who helps oversee and manage day-to-day operations at the dairy farm.
In response, MVP invests in an on-site learning center to bring in school-age groups or anyone who is willing to learn about the dairy industry. Instead of a quaint, old-fashioned farm, visitors discover a sophisticated ag business working in reciprocity with its land and cows, using both traditional farming knowledge and advanced technologies. VanTilburg describes it as a circular economy that’s a regenerative process. MVP produces the crops that are fed to the cows who produce the milk. In addition to milk, the cows also produce mountains of manure, which MVP turns around and uses as a fertilizer source to enhance the soil for next year’s crops.
Though this system of mutually beneficial give-and-take sounds simplistic in nature, the only way for it to truly support MVP’s vision of generational improvement, is for it to be financially and environmentally sound. At the center of it all are healthy, thriving cows who are a dairy’s mainstay to success. It’s here that the MK-V plays a key role, supporting the cows, the work crews, and overall farm management.
A Day in the Life
If you’re a cow at MVP, life is good. General manager at MVP Dairy, Brock Peters, points out that MVP was built for cows first and people second. MVP is an indoor dairy and its freestall barns are the gold standard of today’s dairy industry, creating an oasis of bovine bliss.
Cows are free to roam and lay anywhere, eat any time, drink any time, and do whatever they choose within their pen. They enjoy regulated ventilation (automated fans maintain a 7-mph breeze and are controlled by an app) for a comfortable temperature and to keep flies away. Mister lines cool them down on hot days and swiveling back scratchers are perfectly positioned for convenient cow self-care. Cows stand on rubber mats for healthy hooves and even get regular pedicures. Just like at a hotel, the cows’ beds are made (leveled) once each day. A cow nutritionist comes twice per month to ensure a robust, balanced diet. They also get room service, all day every day.
We have 24-hour coverage in terms of pushing the feed up to the cows and the MK-V is a great way to help us do that. The more you have a consistent routine, the more your cows will thrive.
Brock Peters, General Manager, MVP Dairy
Bon Appetite
Cows need ample amounts of food to produce milk and feeding cows is a 24/7 affair. Each day feeding begins at 4:30 a.m. with a payloader and triple screw mixer wagon that combines the ingredients that make up the cows’ diet — regeneratively grown haylage, alfalfa, corn, and soybeans — and then delivers the feed by laying it down along the cows’ pen rows. This goes on until about 2:30 p.m. Then the MK-V Dairy takes over. From about 2:30 p.m. through to the morning hours the MK-V Dairy comes along each hour to push the feed so the cows can continue to reach it.
Some of the most important pieces of equipment on the farm, mechanically, are our feed loader and wagon and our Monarch feed-pushing tractor.
Brock Peters, General Manager, MVP Dairy
The MK-V Dairy ensures the cows always have a good, balanced diet available right in front of them, even in the middle of the night for a little snack. VanTilburg observes that the MK-V Dairy does the same job every day and does it repeatedly.
Every tool you have has a job and this one does it well.
Kyle VanTilburg, Co-owner, MVP Dairy
There’s another dimension to feeding operations that the MK-V improves. Peters emphasizes that cow comfort is MVP’s daily overall goal, and this means maintaining a nice, calm, quiet environment by keeping noise levels to a minimum. “The MK-V helps with that because it’s a very quiet tractor,” Peters says. “The cows just kind of stand there and it watch it go by.”
Going the Distance: Powering ROI
As MVP embraces new technologies, it’s shifting more and more to electrification within its farm ecosystem, giving it more resiliency against fuel price fluctuations. The MK-V electric tractor is one tool to achieve it, especially when MVP can use its ag solar project to power it. However, a common concern among farmers regarding electric tractors is battery life and run time. With dairies being 24/7 operations, a top concern was the charge time versus run time. Peters reports that charging the MK-V Dairy is a quick and easy process and smoothly integrates into their round-the-clock feed pushing schedule. Pushing feed takes roughly 10-12 minutes. At the end of each feed push the operator parks the tractor in its designated spot next to the charger, logs out of the smart screen, plugs the charger in, and then goes about their tasks. When it’s time for another feed push, the operator unhooks the charger and off they go.
Those 10-minute intervals add up. Based on usage trends, Peters calculates that the distance the MK-V Dairy will push up feed comes to about 7,900 miles. That’s the equivalent of Monarch’s electric tractor driving coast to coast, twice!
You just don’t envision [feed pushing] 7,900 miles for the year and never leaving an 82-acre patch!
Brock Peters, General Manager, MVP Dairy
All that mileage translates into major fuel and emissions savings. It’s one thing for a piece of equipment to do its job well, but VanTilburg wanted to know if the MK-V Dairy would offset costs. He and his teams believe that it is.
At the current pace of the hours we’re putting on it [MK-V Dairy], we’re going to be looking at about $9,500 worth of fuel savings throughout the year, which is very impressive!
Kyle VanTilburg, Co-owner, MVP Dairy
Elevating Value with WingspanAI
For the MK-V Dairy’s role in pushing feed, Peters and VanTilburg feel the EV tractor is doing more than what they expected it to. While the electric tractor delivers value on reliability and fuel costs, its Wingspan Ag Intelligence technology (WingspanAI) web and mobile app strengthens ROI even more. WingspanAI tracks performance metrics — the time and total hours the tractor is used, energy used, distance traveled, average speed, and emissions savings, bringing valuable insights to operations and enabling data-based decision making. It also provides historical video feeds through footage collected on its 10 cameras. Collectively, these insights bring additional efficiencies to operations and enhance the dairy’s value proposition to its milk buyer.
Labor Accountability
Through WingspanAI, farm managers can pull reports from yesterday or three months ago, essentially looking back through time to see how operations or protocols have become more efficient or correlate with issues that impacted production. For instance, if Peters arrives in the morning and notices a slump in milk production, he starts looking for an explanation. A program in the milking parlor weighs the milk, a feed program reports how many pounds each cow eats per pen, the WingspanAI platform informs him the intervals at which feed was pushed. The cameras let him review footage, when needed. That information helps him figure out where the issue resides.
WingspanAI is huge for accountability because you can simply pull up the WingpanAI platform, show it to a team member and say, ‘Feed only got pushed five times last night. Like what happened?'
Brock Peters, General Manager, MVP Dairy
Enhanced Labor
MVP has hundreds of systems in place to protect its consistent routines because at the end of the day, taking care of the cows is what pays the bills. Peters describes it as a giant ballet with teams dedicated to milking, cow health, reproduction and maternity, feed, maintenance, cleaning and bedding. Because WingspanAI tracks essential metrics, it turns the MK-V Dairy into one of the checks and balances for MVP’s feed push program, allowing team members to shift their time and attention to other issues.
Reporting
Sustainability is very important to MVP Dairy’s milk purchaser, a value shared by MVP. Both MVP and its purchaser also understand that customers today are looking for products that are healthier and more sustainable.
We do end-of-year reporting for a lot of the things we do on our farm in terms of eco-practices and information that gets fed on up to our purchaser.
Brock Peters, General Manager, MVP Dairy
MVP’s regenerative farming and exceptional cow care ensures a high-quality, nutritious product while its solar project is working to offset carbon. It dedicates its unfarmable land for wetlands to naturally filter surface water that runs off the dairy farm. Beehives support pollinator populations. Monarch’s MK-V Dairy fortifies MVP’s sustainability efforts and WingspanAI makes it easy to measure and report these efforts to its buyer at the end of the year.
We’re looking at about 33 metric tons of CO2 saved, which is about eight gas-powered passenger vehicles being used for a whole year
Kyle VanTilburg, Co-owner, MVP Dairy
A Committed Partner
MVP is a farmer partner to its milk purchaser, local community, the land it stewards, the cows it cares for, and the future generations that rely on it to make thoughtful decisions.
We have a continuous improvement mindset. As we investigate future opportunities, we’re always looking to find what we can do better to improve for the next generation.
Kyle VanTilburg, Co-owner, MVP Dairy
As the dairy industry evolves, MVP is positioned both in its practices and mindset to move towards its goal of continued, positive social, environmental, and economic impact. And the MK-V Dairy? Monarch is proud to call MVP one of its customer partners and looks forward to supporting MVP in its ongoing quest to do better and improve for the next generation.
