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In 1965, my father was a truck driver for a fertilizer company. Making his daily rounds, Dad thought that if he had his own business, he would do things differently and save money. Finally, he quit and with one truck and a skip loader, he started Silva’s Spreading Service in rural Turlock, California. Six months later, the company he had worked for was out of business while Silva’s new company was growing.

Among the changes my Dad instituted was the delivery method he used. Instead of trucking in separate loads to each farm and later spreading it, my Dad turned to specially designed spreader trucks which not only delivered the manure but went straight into the fields with it. "That cut the cost almost in half," George, Sr. said. At the same time, my Dad devised a unit that attached to the truck and side-dressed fertilizer around young trees. The result of these innovations was that within 10 years, Silva’s Spreading Service had a fleet of 20 fertilizer trucks. That's when he sold the business, bought a piece of property at Prairie Flower and Harding Roads in Turlock, California, and started his own dairy.

Today, G.J. Silva and Son Dairy, Inc. employees over 30 people, farms 800 acres, and runs a herd of over 6,000 head of dairy cattle. 2,200 cows are milked three times per day at the two dairy barn locations in Turlock.

Silva said he got where he is as a dairyman through hard work and doing his homework. He credits his success to being a business man first and a dairyman second. "One of the mistakes some dairymen make is buying equipment for convenience sake rather than necessity," Silva said. Another is not being involved enough in their own day-to-day dairy operations.

In his dairy farm operation, Silva has followed the same instinct to innovate and utilize the latest technologies that made his first business a success. His milking barns have been automated and the cows put on a three-times-a-day milking schedule that adds a gallon per cow in extra milk. Cows are milked around the clock at a rate of 130 to 140 cows per hour.

In addition, the cows are on a "least cost" feed program in which commodities such as whole cottonseed, bakery waste, cereal, and hay cubes are mixed in with feed according to a computer formula developed by the farm's dairy nutritionist. "We save $20.00 per ton right there," Silva Sr. said.

One reason Silva keeps a close eye on his operations is that he feels the dairy business is in transition. "Anybody who is highly leveraged, in debt, or doesn't do his homework is going to be out of business because we're in for some difficult times," he said. As for the milk diversion plans a few years back, in which dairymen were paid not to produce, that was a band-aid approach. I think the time has come when the dairymen who are poor managers are going to be weeded out and those who aren't highly leveraged and do a good job will make it."

The dairy is now operated by George Silva, Jr., with the help of his dad. George Sr. is trying to take life a little easier now, and has a beach front home on the Oregon coast. Although dad is relaxing a bit, he still keeps a close eye on the dairy. In the busiest months, you're sure to see dad driving around in his pickup making notes and jotting down a few new ideas. Obviously the tradition of family farming in dairy lives on even as technology and competition continue to evolve our industry.

George Silva, Jr.

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