Dairy farm earns agriculture award

By WAYNE QUESENBERRY/Staff

A Bland County dairy farm won honors at the 2009 Wytheville-Wythe-Bland Chamber of Commerce Annual Membership Dinner Meeting. Morehead Farms LLC received the Agriculture Achievement Award.
“We all need to pause occasionally and give thanks to the dairy producers who provide us with the abundant, wholesome milk products that we all enjoy,” stated David Danner in presenting the award to Rex Morehead and sons, Hash Morehead and Dayton Morehead.
Danner is a retired Bland County Extension agent. He serves on the chamber’s agriculture committee.
According to Rex Morehead, his grandfather started the farm in 1914. Rex Morehead and his late father began the dairy in 1948 after Rex graduated high school.
Morehead’s father built a new milk barn that year in anticipation of electricity coming to the valley to operate the milking machines. At the time, the Moreheads were milking about 45 cows.
Dayton Morehead took over the milking operation after graduating high school in 1986. His brother, Hash, graduated in 1992 and returned to the farm to help his dad manage the total farming operation.
With Morehead and his sons working together, the farm grew in size and the milking herd increased in size and total milk produced increased significantly. In 2002, a new state-of-the-art dairy parlor was built to milk 24 cows at a time.
In 2005 and 2008, new bedded pack housing barns were built. They housed the milking herd of 400 plus cows in a cow friendly and environmentally friendly manner.
“These innovations give cows shelter in the winter and protection from the sun in summer along with water misters and fans for cooling,” Danner noted. “Other innovations include fencing cattle out of the streams and capturing all waste water and manure from the dairy facility and applying it to the crop fields.”
Since 1996, Danner said, the practice alone provided all the phosphorous and potash needed to grow corn each year on the home farm. The bedding from the pack barns, he noted, is hauled and applied to cornfields at other farms.
Rex Morehead also served on the Bland County School Board for 28 years at various times.
Of the award, Hash Morehead said, “It really was a surprise and an honor.”
Wayne Quesenberry can be reached at 1-800-655-1406 or .