Shamrock Farms runs the ‘finest dairy operation in the state’

Imagine not having to commute to work, being carefully bathed at least twice a day, enjoying free medical care, eating three nutritious meals a day at no cost to you, spending your free time outdoors in cooler weather, or indoors with the proper shade, mist and circulating air, and spending only 11 minutes or so actually working each day.

Dream Job?

You bet — if you’re a cow living on Shamrock Farms just south of Maricopa. About 17,000 of these black and white beauties (Holsteins, with a few brown-and-white Guernseys thrown in) live their lives in relative luxury, away from the traffic and pressures of city life, surrounded by farms and open space. Only about 10,000 of the herd are actively producing milk at one time; there are an additional 4,500 heifers and about 2,500 calves who live separately on the same farm, waiting for their day in the milking barns.

A staff of 88 works with General Manager Frank Boyce to make sure the animals maintain the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. They get some help — if that’s the right word — from the county, the state and the federal government, all of whom have a serious interest in seeing to it that milk produced in this country meets the standards regulators established.

“Our product exceeds those guidelines,” Boyce says proudly. No growth hormones are used in Shamrock milk products.

Boyce, a resident of Rancho El Dorado, came to Maricopa before Shamrock Farms decided to move its principal milking facility from Gilbert in 2003. “The new subdivisions were encroaching on our farm there,” Boyce explains, “so we obtained these 1,000 acres and started designing and building what we believe is the finest dairy operation in the state, if not beyond.” 

About half of the spread contains dairy barns, the feed barn, a garage for repairing rolling stock, water and fuel tanks, offices, pens and other structures. The balance of the acreage is for crops — mainly corn and alfalfa — and pastures, as well as recycling centers for cattle waste.

“Ours is a very environmentally-conscious operation,” Boyce says, showing a visitor where cattle waste is recycled to produce fertilizer that is used to grow the crops. He also pointed out separate organic facilities on the farm, where the larger operation is duplicated, but on a smaller scale. An Arizona native, Boyce has been with the state’s largest dairy firm for 30 years.

From October until May, the Shamrock Farms marketing department conducts tours three or four times a week for seniors and school children and the general public, who gather in specially-designed facilities to see a presentation on milk production and to watch — from a safe and sanitary position — the actual milking take place. Tour groups also pile onto special “trains” that weave their way slowly through the cattle barns, pastures and other points of interest. 

There are no samples handed out to visitors, however.

“The raw milk we produce here — about two million gallons a month — is trucked to our processing facilities in Phoenix,” Boyce says, where the milk is pasteurized and broken down into various components to produce several varieties of milk, cream, half-and-half, cottage cheese, ice cream products and novelty items.

A tour of a typical Shamrock Farms dairy barn reveals about 1,600 cows resting, snoozing or eating from long troughs of pre-mixed food laid down every eight hours by special vehicles that mix hay, molasses, alfalfa, hominy, cottonseed, canola, barley, soybeans and other components into a mass that the cows line up for. Actually, each black and white head pokes through a special “gate” when the food truck rolls in as every cow eagerly awaits its next meal.

Huge bins surround a tank of molasses at the commodities barn, where all of the food components are stored in separate, but equal, troughs. A backhoe is used to transfer each item to the mixing truck. Each cow consumes 80 to 100 pounds of feed every day and drinks about 30 gallons of water.

When it’s time to “work,” the cows walk to the dairy barn, where they are washed down and special care is taken to clean and sanitize their udders before the milking equipment is connected to their teats.

On a floor below the barn, white tile and fluorescent lights shine on the transparent plastic hoses and gleaming stainless steel plumbing as it collects and transports the whole milk to one of three large tanks, where the milk is kept cool until it’s transferred to a truck. There are eleven truckloads of milk leaving the farm for Phoenix every day.

A dairy cow that has given birth usually lactates for 11 months or so, and Boyce says they remain milkers for as long as they can give birth. “One of our cows is 17 years old.”

A cow’s gestation period is the same as a human’s, and the farm’s calves are kept in a separate barn and fed by bottle for a few days until they are able to drink milk from tubs. When they are mature, the young heifers are inseminated and “trained” to live among the other milk-producing stock.

Guernseys — once the standard for dairy operations — have been replaced by the more productive Holsteins at Shamrock Farms.  A look at the familiar Shamrock Farms packaging shows that homage is being paid to the Holsteins breed. “Roxie” is the brand’s “spokescow,” and she appears on each package.

Founded in Tucson in 1922 by Irish immigrants, W. T. McClelland and his wife, Winifred, Shamrock Farms is now run by their son, Norman McClelland. It is the leading milk processor and distributor in the Southwest, and the firm’s products can be found in stores and vending machines throughout the nation.

Once a major milk-consuming nation, the U.S. today ranks 16th worldwide. Countries in Europe and Asia generally account for much more per capita consumption than a typical American’s 22 gallons a year. “But our production continues to increase,” Boyce says, “because the population is still increasing.”

Roxie, no doubt, isn’t worried about retirement. 

You can visit ShamrockFarms.net to learn more.