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“The farm is just a great place to grow up. I love having my daughter raised on the farm.”

Nathan Kuehnert
Dairy Farmer

Name: Nathan Kuehnert
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Years farming: I’ve been farming full-time for the past five years.
My family: Our family farm consists of my wife Sarah, and our two kids, my brother Andrew, dad Alan, mother Cindy, uncle Stan, grandfather Melvin, and a couple of good hired hands that are considered family.
How I came to be a farmer: Dairy farming is what I grew up doing with my dad and brother, so I guess you could say “it’s in my blood.” My brother and I started showing cows through 4-H at a very young age and really learned how to “care” for them. I worked on the farm through all my years in school, and while being away at college, I realized how much I missed being at home doing what I loved.
The best thing about being a farmer: It’s pretty cool knowing at the end of each and every day I have worked to provide the world with “Natures most perfect food”: MILK. There is a lot of pride knowing that everything we do is surrounded around one goal: to make the cleanest, purest, most high-quality milk that we can. And this is all possible by maintaining a healthy, happy cow.
My personal philosophy on farming: We strive to feed the world by being good stewards of the land, excellent caretakers of our cows, and great neighbors in our community.

Dairy Production in Indiana and the U.S.

• Indiana has 2,000 dairy farms producing more than 3 billion pounds of milk annually.
• There are 84 cows in the average Indiana dairy herd. The average herd size nationally is 135 cows.
• There are dairy farms in all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
• More than 60,000 dairy farms in the U.S. provide milk, cheese, yogurt and other dairy products to the U.S. and other countries. About 99% of all U.S. dairy farms are family-owned and operated.
• A cow will produce an average of 6.3 gallons of milk each day and about 350,000 glasses of milk in a lifetime.
• Cows eat about 100 pounds of feed every day and drink about a bath tub (50 gallons) of water.
• Cows chew at least 50 times per minute and spend 10 hours per day chewing their cud in order to aid digestion.
• If you open the refrigerator in 96% of U.S. households you’ll find a container of milk. You’ll find cheese in 94% of them.
• To get the same amount of calcium in an 8-ounce glass of milk you would have to eat a quarter-cup of broccoli, around 7 oranges, or 6 slices of wheat bread.
• There are more than 400 different varieties of cheese and many are named for their place of origin. For example, Cheddar cheese originated in Cheddar, England.
• It takes 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of whole milk cheese.
• Cows can smell something up to six miles away.
• Milk is better than water for cooling the mouth while eating spicy food. A protein in milk called “casein” cleanses the taste buds

For more information about dairy farming in Indiana, please visit www.winnersdrinkmilk.com

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