PHOTO BY BRYCE RICHTER

Their UW experience opened James (left) and Robert Baerwolf to new ideas. Andy Manis

Though Sassy Cow Creamery is certainly one of a kind, in scale it resembles another legendary facility 20 miles south on the UW campus.

“We’re probably like a cousin of Babcock ice cream,” James Baerwolf ’93 says, “or at least they were a size we could wrap our heads around when we were getting started.”

As College of Agricultural and Life Sciences students, James and his brother, Rob ’96, (at left in photo above), studied agriculture education and dairy science. They commuted daily from Columbus, Wisconsin, for classes, while also working on the family farm.

“I figured I’d be farming and wanted to take advantage of everything the university had to offer for all aspects of operating a farm,” Rob says of a course load that also included plant science and engineering.

When James and Rob graduated, their parents were ready to retire, giving the brothers a chance to make the farm their own. “The college experience allowed us to be a little more willing to adopt new technology or changes in farming,” James says.

Today, the brothers work the same Columbia County land their grandfather purchased in 1946, though their footprint has expanded. Their two farms cover 1,700 acres. Some 850 cows produce 6,000 gallons of milk daily, including 250 cows that produce organic milk.

In 2008, James and Rob, looking for new ways to grow their business, opened Sassy Cow Creamery. They produce and sell organic and traditional milk, 50 ice cream flavors, and other dairy products at retailers across Wisconsin and Illinois and at their Columbus location, a year-round destination for dairy lovers. Last summer, new construction tripled the size of the store.

Back when they began building the creamery, the two looked to their alma mater for tips. Working with the former Dairy Business Innovation Center, UW’s Center for Dairy Research, and some Babcock plant personnel, the Baerwolfs tapped into decades of expertise. They draw on the UW’s resources for staffing, too. Many of the creamery’s interns are Badgers. Sales and marketing manager Kara Kasten-Olson ’07 started at Sassy Cow after graduating with degrees in dairy science and life sciences communication.

As the dairy industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, Rob’s advice for future farmers mirrors the model that grew the Baerwolf farms and Sassy Cow. “New ideas and innovation are a better bet than trying to succeed in the commodity markets or by size alone,” he says.

Michael P. King

On hot days, the cows at Rosy-Lane Holsteins in Watertown, Wisconsin, are given cool showers while they’re being milked. It’s a strategy for promoting cow comfort that Jennifer Van Os (above) has learned by visiting milk producers around the state since joining the Department of Dairy Science as an assistant professor last spring. “It’s very nice to work with a farm where the things we’re looking at were their idea,” she says. “It’s not some zany idea that we came up with in the university and now we’re trying to get people to adopt it.”

From left: Elizabeth Binversie, Anuj Modi, Taylor, Ted Halbach, Kathryn Ruh, Sarah Witt, and photographer Bryce Richter. Pity poor Modi. Photo: Jeff Miller.

Brown Swiss are divas.

They’re lovely cows, but as dairy breeds go, they’re high-maintenance and kind of temperamental.

“Brown Swiss do what they want, when they want,” says Sarah Witt x’17, a member of the Badger Dairy Club who helped On Wisconsin stage its cover shoot for this issue. And we needed a lot of help.

Although the UW is the flagship university of America’s Dairyland, we haven’t covered milk studies in a feature-length article in many years, so we wanted to give cows their due. We held a cattle call to select the best cover girl, which led us to UW Wonderment Taylor, the 1,500-pound, three-year-old beauty you see here.

But choosing the right cow is the easy part. Getting her photo? Now, that’s hard.

Ted Halbach, who teaches dairy cattle evaluation, was there to assist. Whenever UW cattle make a public appearance — which they were doing a bit of this week; it was World Dairy Expo — Halbach’s the guy to see. He can get our mooing models ready for a runway show or photo shoot. And he assembled the entourage that prepped and managed Taylor.

First Witt and a few fellow students — Kathryn Ruh x’14, Elizabeth Binversie x’15, and Anuj Modi x’17 — had to get Taylor primped and polished. They washed her, brushed her coat, combed out her tail, and brightened up her hooves. Normally this last task is done with a product called Black Magic — or with shoe polish or even spray paint if Black Magic isn’t available. On our day, the team had none of the above, so instead they shined up her tootsies with spray oil. Then they brought Taylor — a very skeptical Taylor — into the Stock Pavilion, where we’d set up a makeshift photo studio.

Ruh and Binversie coaxed her into position, while Witt convinced her to look in the right direction by hooting like a howler monkey. As for Modi, he was on bucket duty. Don’t ask.

And Taylor? We eventually got her picture, but she made it clear that she didn’t like clicking cameras. She liked popping flashes even less. She threw a tantrum, threatened to kick over a few thousand dollars’ worth of lights, and generally huffed and sulked.

Diva.