Loyal Dairy Breakfast coming to Hornland Farm

By Valorie Brecht The Ken and Dawn Horn family will host the 41st annual Loyal Dairy Breakfast this Sunday at Hornland Farm, N6952 County Road K, Loyal. Breakfast will be served from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The breakfast is sponsored by the Loyal FFA Alumni and Supporters.

The farm can be reached by traveling south of Loyal on County Highway K for 4.73 miles. Those coming from farther south should note that the H and K intersection will be closed. To reach the farm coming from the east on County H, travel north on Pelsdorf Avenue to Heintown Road, then take Heintown Road west to Highway K. If coming from the west on Highway H, go north on Cardinal Avenue until reaching Heintown Road; then take Heintown Road east to Highway K. The farm is just north of the intersection of Heintown Road and Highway K. There will be field parking, with close handicap accessible parking available.

The menu will include pancakes with butter and pure Wisconsin maple syrup, scrambled eggs, sausage, cheese curds, applesauce, soft serve ice cream, milk, orange juice, and coffee.

Also part of the event will be raffle baskets, a petting zoo, antique tractor display, and walk-throughs of the new barn.

The cost is $8 for adults and $4 for ages 6-12.

Farm history Farming runs in Ken Horn’s blood. He grew up helping his parents, William and Marcia Horn, on the home farm just a mile away on Bobwhite Road. He estimates the property has been in his family for about 100 years.

After graduating from Loyal High School, Ken completed the farm operations course from Mid-State Technical College, graduating in 1990. He started working on the farm full-time and gradually began purchasing more land. Ken and his wife Dawn were married in 2001 and Ken eventually took over the day-to-day operations of the farm. Dawn works for Security Health Plan of Marshfield. Ken and Dawn have three adult children: Tyler, who is an engineer for Nestle in Eau Claire; Olivia, who is an engineer at Wabash in New Lisbon; and Kaden, who has one year left of his heavy equipment operator apprenticeship at Miron Construction in Eau Claire. Kaden still helps on the farm when he can.

The Horns had 70 cows back when Ken graduated college; that number has grown to 480 registered Holsteins. As of the last week of May, the herd was averaging 104.9 pounds of milk per cow per day. Ken also owns 850 acres of land and rents 200 acres, growing alfalfa, corn, and soybeans.

Ken oversees daily operations of the farm, along with his herdsman, Jeremiah Hagen. Jeremiah became herdsman in 2012 and moved his cows and heifers to the dairy at that time. The farm has eight full-time employees who milk cows three times a day.

Ken has added buildings to accommodate his growing herd over the years. The 192-foot by 48-foot calf barn was built in 2000. Also that year, the shed was remodeled. Also in the early 2000s, Ken and Dawn bought a neighboring property from Ken’s cousin Dale Schmidt, remodeled the home, and moved in.

In 2008, the Horns then built a five-row, 220-stall sand-bedded freestall barn with a double-8 parlor, with dimensions of 276 feet by 110 feet. About four or five years

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later, they built a 120-foot addition to that barn, with 114 more stalls. They also purchased a nearby farm with two large freestall barns and a bed-pack barn, which they use to house youngstock. About eight years ago, they purchased SCR collars to monitor each cow’s health.

In 2020, they built a new calf barn with 22, 12 feet by 16 feet pens. Calves are started there on bottles for 10 days; then are moved to a five-calf group pen fed with a six-nipple bar feeder. Unfortunately, on May 15, a tornado-producing storm took down the Horns’ heifer barn, but they were able to relocate the approximately 49 heifers to another barn.

The newest barn was just completed in May. Standing 192 feet by 107 feet, it contains maternity pens, plus two pens for show cows. Ken estimates about 80 cows will be kept in the new barn, between dry and milking cows.The new barn includes a sterile veterinary room to use if a cow is giving birth, needs a medical procedure done, or is being flushed for embryos. Embryo flushing is used to preserve the genetics of a valuable female who may have limitations in natural breeding.

“Well, it’s been around for years, but if you’ve got a really nice cow, it’s one way to get a lot of calves out of one cow. Because we’ve gotten probably 40 calves just out of one cow… A third of the herd out there is probably out of five or six cows that we really liked. We bought a couple red ones, and I’ve probably got like 50 red cows in the barn from those couple,” said Ken.

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Breeding high-quality Holsteins The Horn family has taken great pride is raising high-quality Holsteins that will maximize milk production and perform well at competition.

“I like breeding high quality, type-y cows,” said Ken. “I showed some when I was younger, then again when Jeremiah started working here, because he was into it. Olivia and Kaden have showed since they’ve been young.”

Through Holstein Association USA, the family has shown at the district show, state show, and World Dairy Expo. At last year’s World Dairy Expo, their cow “MS Triple-T Grateful - ET” placed fifth in the open show and third in the junior show, and was nominated for All-American, meaning she was one of the top six cows in the U.S. for a 5-year-old Holstein. In the junior show, she received Honorable Mention All-American, which would be third place in the U.S. Kaden plans to show cattle later this month at the District 4 show at the Clark County Fairgrounds.

In talking to Ken, it became clear that the theme for Hornland Farm is “onward and upward.” The Horns plan to continue developing their herd, breeding for the best possible cattle, and improving their farm property. One of the upcoming projects will be renovating the old barn original to the property into a gathering space that the Horns can use for family get-togethers or other events.

Ken and Dawn Horn and their family look forward to welcoming you to their farm as we celebrate the Wisconsin dairy tradition.

Some information taken from “Hornland Farms” by Mara Budde, writing for Wisconsin Holstein News.