June 16, 2010, Vienna, WI
– An economic development loan from Dane County and the Wisconsin Department of
Commerce is helping a dairy farm in the Town of Vienna expand, county executive
Kathleen Falk recently announced.
June 16, 2010, Vienna, WI
– An economic development loan from Dane County and the Wisconsin Department of
Commerce is helping a dairy farm in the Town of Vienna expand, county executive
Kathleen Falk recently announced.
The $175,000 loan ($87,500
each from Dane County’s Revolving Loan Fund for Economic Development and the
State Department of Commerce) will help the White Gold Dairy purchase 350 new
cows.
To accommodate the new
cows, the farm is planning an expansion, including construction of a new
350-cow free stall barn and adding more stalls in their milking parlor. The
farm will also construct a new nine million gallon lagoon and a 60 x 125 foot
bunker silo with runoff controls. The total cost of the expansion is around $2.4
million.
In addition to
construction laborers, the expansion will add four new permanent jobs at the
farm to help with milking the additional cows.
White Gold Dairy is owned
and operated by the Maier family, which has been milking cows since 1922. White
Gold Dairy is one of three dairies working cooperatively as part of the Dane
County Manure Digester “Cow Power” project. The manure digester will be built,
owned, and operated by Clear Horizons, LLC of Milwaukee. The new facility will
convert methane from the cow manure into electricity and remove the bulk of the
phosphorus found in manure.
