DATE:            11/18/02
CONTACT/WRITER:  Gwen Roland, (770) 412-4786
EDITOR:          Diane Palmer, (864) 656-4741;                        
                 spalmer@clemson.edu
     
Clemson was instrumental 
in dairy farmer's award 

     CLEMSON -- A local South Carolina dairy farmer wins a national
award for protecting the environment and benefiting his community while
still making a profit.
     A Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) research
project helped Tom Trantham win the Patrick Madden Farmer of the Year
award.
     The research was conducted by Jean Bertrand and Fred Pardue, both
of Clemson University's Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Science
Department.
     Trantham accepted the award at the SARE Program's national
conference in Raleigh, N.C.
     As he accepted the $1,000 prize money, Trantham recalled how he
went from "down and out to up and running."
     "Down and out" was in 1988 when his cows were winning production
awards but losing money at every milking because feed costs were
gobbling up 65 percent of the gross income.
     "Up and running" is his life today, making a good living on a
grazing dairy that hasn't seen chemical fertilizer in 15 years.
     Bertrand and Pardue's research examined the feasibility of a
year-round grazing dairy and helped refine a management intensive
grazing system that rescued the dairy from near-bankruptcy to netting
better than $40,000 per year with a 42 percent reduction in input
costs.
     Results showed that during the three-year project, an average of
74 cows grazed 689 days out of 945 days for a savings of $15,805 (or 31
cents per cow per day) when compared to Trantham's old confinement
system.
     Now the milkers consistently top a 20,600-pound average. The herd
currently averages 75 cows with about 10 percent dry at any time of the
year, and Trantham's goal of $60,000 per year from 60 milkers is
getting closer every season, especially now that he has converted the
Harvestor silo (an expensive reminder of his conventional dairying
days) into a three-story milk processing plant called Happy Cow
Creamery.
     "Rich people leave monuments, but my monument will be to know that
the dairy continues to be an asset to my community and my family after
I'm gone," said Trantham.
                              END