Brian and Garrett Penning stand inside one of the hog barns they converted into a calf barn, complete with calf crates. Julie Buntjer / The Globe
Summit Lake Livestock converts hog barns for cattle production
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By Julie Buntjer | jbuntjer@dglobe.com WILMONT — When brothers Russ and Brian Penning started Summit Lake Livestock about 15 years ago, they did so as a way to get their own start on the larger Penning Farms operation southeast of Wilmont.
On the State Cattlemen’s Tour, the Pennings will showcase the hog barns they converted for cattle production.
The two began by buying day-old Holstein bottle calves and, as the venture grew, they renovated several vacated hog barns on an uncle’s farmsite, added two hoop barns on that same site, and built two more hoop barns on the farm where they grew up.
“The barns were at a stage in their life that they needed everything,” shared Russ. Doing the work mostly on their own, they gutted the buildings, installing new electrical components and custom beams in the floors, as well as replacing the slats. A pair of calf barns feature two different growing systems — one with open pens where calves roam freely; the other with individual calf crates.
Today, Summit Lake Livestock continues to bring in some day-old bottle calves, though a majority come in at 200 pounds. They also switched from Holstein to Holstein-Angus cross. In addition, they buy cattle at 600 pounds to finish out.
The Pennings use two other former hog barns — 40-foot-wide curtain barns from the 1990s — for finishing cattle. On those buildings, the south walls were removed to make way for feed bunks and manure pit access was altered. The pit is pumped twice per year, with an
outside containment area used to hold the manure from spring until it can be applied after harvest in the fall. “If I had to do it over, I’d do it over in a heartbeat,” Russ said of converting the barns from hogs to cattle production. “This was a way for us to expand into existing facilities we already had. The costs weren’t huge, but the return to the farm is greater.” The brothers, with help from their families, pail-feed milk replacer to young calves and finish out cattle on a corn silage, high moisture corn diet, as well as some grass hay and straw. CONTINUED ON PAGE 31
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