A new venture

By Casey Krautkramer,

The Record-Review Kevin Schmidtke’s friends told him he was crazy to start dairy farming because he was already very busy with his carpet cleaning and snowplowing jobs. Kevin and his wife, Kendra (Seitz) Schmidtke, own Schmidtke’s Cleaning Services in rural Stratford. The business cleans carpets, upholstery and drapery along with fire and water restoration.

The couple’s son, Kody Schmidtke, always wanted to operate his own dairy farm. Kendra Schmidtke grew up on her parents Harold and Fern Seitz’s dairy farm in Rangeline. Kevin Schmidtke may not have grown up on a dairy farm in Rozellville, but he worked on neighboring dairy farms. Kevin has always had a love for dairy farming so he became partners with his son Kody.

Kevin and Kendra Schmidtke along with their son Kody and his fiancé, Willow, today milk 70 dairy cows. They spent three years planning and renovating their current farmstead into a dairy farm, and they’ve been milking cows for the past four years. Kevin Schmidtke said he and his son now have things mainly figured out.

“When you start any business from scratch, you need to give it three years before you’ll know if it’ll be successful,” he said. “We learn by failing.”

Kevin Schmidtke lets his son make decisions on the dairy cows’ nutrition and breeding so that he learns from his mistakes, because he realizes that one day his son will be left to run the farm himself.

“The biggest mistake I’ve seen over the years is when a father won’t release the reigns of the dairy farm to a son and then the farm goes out of business,” he said. “I let my son make decisions about the farming operations and then he’ll ask me, ‘what if it’s the wrong decision’ and I tell him so what if you make the wrong decision because then you’ll know to make the right decision the next time.”

Each morning the Schmidtke’s feed their dairy cows corn silage, haylage, mineral proteins and ground-up corn. They milk their cows twice per day at either 5:30 or 6 a.m. and again at 4:30 p.m. Their cows’ milk is hauled to Nasonville Dairy in Marshfield.

“We are averaging 74-1/2 pounds of milk per cow right now,” Kevin Schmidtke said.

They utilize a herringbone milking parlor where eight cows are milked at one time. Each dairy cow has a tag on it that monitors its health on a computer. Kody Schmidtke’s goal is for the dairy farm to eventually be milking 250 cows.

Kevin Schmidtke’s parents, Otto and Linda Schmidtke, started Schmidtke’s Furnace Duct Cleaning in 1975. Kevin Schmidtke took over the carpet and upholstery cleaning, fire restoration and water damage restoration portion of the business in 1993. He sold the duct cleaning portion of the business to his son, Troy Schmidtke, four years ago.

FAMILY ALONG FOR THE RIDE - Kevin Schmidtke, left, decided life wasn’t hectic enough and went on to purchase a dairy farm in rural Stratford. Today, he and his son, Kody, right, milk 70 cows on the farm.

STAFF PHOTO/CASEY KRAUTKRAMER