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NY Dairy Supplier Innovating in Smaller Operations
NY Dairy Supply Innovating in Smaller Operations
By Ann Hinch
SOUTH KORTRIGHT, N.Y. — Positive association is a powerful sales tool. Coca-Cola has spent decades linking its soda to Santa and cute polar bears, while Ford touts its F-150 with farm and construction work. Don’s Dairy Supply tempts potential clients with samples of milk, cheese and yogurt made on the farms of clients using its equipment.
Dan and Erin Richards began bottling cream top milk on their first-generation Cossayuna, N.Y., farm three years ago. Armed with a 100-gallon vat pasteurizer, Bunker Hill Creamery processes about 800 gallons from 200 Holsteins each week into white, chocolate and maple-flavored milk for retail.
But their dream of an on-farm creamery began earlier, when in 2016 they contacted Don’s, two hours away in South Kortright. Dan Richards had seen something about a mobile goat milking parlor/processing unit that owner Don Coager and his family designed and built two years prior for a Jewish farmer who wanted to bottle smallbatch kosher milk.
As of 2014, Brooke White, Coager’s daughter, explained he had been in business more than three decades fabricating, equipping and repairing for upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania dairy farms. The goat farmer, who had bought some land but wasn’t sure how long he might stay on it and didn’t want to sink money into a permanent structure, contacted Don’s for ideas.
“I need something to milk them in,” Brooke recalls him saying.
And then her father’s reply: “What about a shipping container?”
UPCYCLING CONTAINERS
In the 1950s, shipping magnate Malcom McLean helped standardize large metal shipping containers –those ubiquitous boxcars seen crossing the country on trains or stacked on giant barges ferrying goods between countries. And as early as 1962, there are patents proposing how surplus containers could be used instead as mobile product exhibition booths.
Since then, containers have been converted into housing, classrooms, offices, storefronts – even a California skatepark. Another use catching on in popularity is small-scale dairy production.
Coager, his son, Kyle Coager, and Brooke designed and fabricated that first 16-stall rapid-exit milking parlor
This is a 45 ft container with a VC Van’t Reit 105 gallon pasteurizer, a Milk Plan bulk tank for cooling and a Carriage Machine Shop bottler.
with pipeline and utility room into a COR-TEN steel container, then put it on a trailer to the goat farmer. Later he ordered a second container to be converted into a creamery.
“We put the project on our website,” Brooke said, “and we started to get calls.”
Seven years later, the Don’s team has kitted out 30 containers for farmers in 11 states and has orders to deliver to five more. Creating a creamery or milking parlor out of a 20-, 40- or 45-foot steel container usually takes 2-4 months and the cost runs between $50,000$120,000. Of the 30 so far, 25 have been for creameries – mostly to process cow milk, but also from goats and even one from sheep.
Being smaller doesn’t make the work necessarily easier. “It’s almost like building a building from the ground up,” said Brooke, who explained Don’s has been constructing and designing for permanent on-farm dairy processing structures for decades, as well as selling equipment.
“We tell people, you give us your idea, and we’ll fix it for you,” said Debbie Coager, who manages the books for Don’s and has been married to the owner for 46 years.
Neither of them grew up on a farm, but he did fieldwork as a kid and her grandparents had a farm they sold when she and Don were still just dating. “We were heartbroken,” she said of that loss.
Don’s Dairy Supply started as someone else’s business long before Coager’s cousin acquired it. The couple bought it from him and renamed it 39 years ago, and built it up while still working other jobs. Both graduates of BOCES of New York State, Debbie was a certified hairdresser who would stay up managing accounts into the wee hours and Don, whose training was in agricultural mechanics, ran a route truck while also haying and doing other work for farmers.
In 1989, Jeff Laing (still one of Don’s route drivers) joined the business and formed a corporation with them. Don’s has adapted and grown over the decades, surviving a fire in 2017 that destroyed its main building. Debbie said they took advantage of the rebuilding to locate the whole of the business on the other side of the road through their property, away from the house.
Don’s employs a service team and building crew in addition to the core family, and promises just about any equipment or service a dairy farmer could require “to be the most successful operation as possible.” This includes 24-hour customer service – which is sometimes Debbie answering the phone at 2 a.m.
“When people call, he wants someone to answer,” she explained. “It’s kind of old-school, but that’s his way.”
READY FOR THE CALL
Don’s way has also been to think ahead. Debbie said even before the containers, he wanted to figure out a way to best build a milking parlor on a flatbed trailer that could be moved between farms as needed – such as when a barn fire temporarily displaces cows. So, when the goat farmer reached out in 2014, Don was ready.
There is a basic process to converting any shipping container into use for a dairy – cutting windows and doors, spraying foam insulation, putting in a concrete floor with stainless steel drainage and installing electrical and plumbing and hookups. But no two look or function the same inside, and Brooke said they enjoy problemsolving for the limited space.
Richards’ 45-foot trailer, for instance, consists of a processing room with the 100-gallon vat and a 15-foot walk-in cooler. “You’re not going to do a large volume of (milk), which we don’t, but it was a way for us to get our feet wet in the retail business,” he said.
A permanent building surrounds the container itself. Richards constructed it to add the lab, dry storage and office space he needed. If their operation outgrows what the converted container can handle, he could slide it out and resell it, and construct a permanent processing setup in that space.
“(A buyer) could literally come pick it up with a crane and load it on a truck,” he said.
Mobility and resale potential are just two of a container creamery’s charms, in addition to being more
A recent project was this 12-stall goat parlor and milk house container.
The Richards hosted a tour of their processing container. This 45 Container processing room has 2- 100 gallon Anco pasteurizers & a Carriage machine Shop filler.
affordable than constructing a permanent processing structure. Brooke said a milking parlor container with generator could be taken into fields on large farms to milk cows. In several states, she said farmers on agzoned property are not taxed because containers are not considered permanent structures.
Containers are rugged and often require less maintenance than a traditional building, she said – when it is delivered by truck, usually it just needs unloaded and the water, electricity and drains hooked up.
Most people’s reaction at stepping into a converted container is surprise at how spacious it feels. Brooke recalled one 45-foot yogurt plant that went to Florida that the buyer considered roomy, despite the fact it had to contain a utility room, bathroom and commercial kitchen in addition to the processing space.
Don, Kyle and Brooke work with each buyer to develop a workflow in accordance with state guidelines, whether the container is a small part of a big operation or the focus of a small-scale entrepreneur starting out. “It’s fun for us to really be able to help people grow that idea,” she said.
“Each (converted container) is creative in its own right,” she added, noting how the equipment and other pieces inside are often put on wheels to also be moved around as needed.
Demand for containers began picking up around the time dairy cooperatives reduced their milk purchases. She said over the last 17 months, too, COVID-19 supply chain shutdowns that led to shortages in grocery stores helped some on-farm producers she knows. Farmstands began to sell out of milk and other staples, and some farmers may have begun to see a way to find a niche and keep their land profitable.
MORE THAN CONTAINERS
The containers are just one part of the Coagers’ broader business. “We use Don’s for everything,” Richards said – including a new milking parlor installation last year.
Another satisfied customer is Kyle Clark, a fifthgeneration farmer who lives close to Don’s. While studying for his dairy science degree, he worked in the on-campus creamery where he became “infatuated” with the equipment and processes – “As dairy farmers, we really don’t see much of that; we’re on the other side of that spectrum,” he noted.
Once back home, Clark started collecting equipment until he started his on-farm creamery in early 2020. He and his dad constructed most of Clark Farms’ on-farm processing plant but hired Don’s to install the sanitary piping, as “that’s a very, very skilled job.”
His dad and grandfather have used Don’s services for decades, and Clark noted it isn’t just equipment and fabrication. The family has had to call for emergency repairs, and whoever responds is dedicated to work for hours if need be, no matter the time of day.
“They’re great people and they do good work,” he said, adding while he doesn’t use a container, he thinks it’s great for some producers. “I really commend (Don’s) for innovating – it’s smart.”
Debbie noted Don is exploring non-farm uses for containers. He and son Kyle created a business called RamRod’s Bar Rental – a container bar they rent out for weddings, parties and other events. One side folds out into a deck with barstools and an awning. Debbie said another potential customer is talking about designing a mobile ice-cream parlor.
Brooke said most of their container users are young people trying to modernize a generational farm to be sustainable and not rely solely on a co-op check. And if someone is already leaning toward the concept, they may be coaxed by tasting dairy products created by other container customers – including Bunker Hill’s flavors.
“I swear, the milk itself sells the containers sometimes,” she chuckled, “because they taste it and go, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so good.’”
Don’s Dairy Supply is online at www.donsdairysupply. com or can be reached at 607-538-9464. You can also email them at donsdairysupply@live.com.
Kyle Clark and his dad constructed most of Clark Farms’ on-farm processing plant but hired Don’s to install the sanitary piping, as “that’s a very, very skilled job.”
