Mainstreet Radio’s Rachel Reabe profiles Steve and Deb Heuer, whose work as bovine sitters. The Minnesota couple are for hire to assist dairy farmers who are away from their farms for a period of time and need someone to watch, feed, and milk the cows.
[CALF MOOING] RACHEL REABE: The days have a comforting rhythm for the 58 Holstein cows on the Dale and Jeanne Schauer farm just outside of Glencoe, an hour west of the Twin Cities. An early-morning milking, time out in the pasture, then back to the barn for a big dinner and the evening milking. As far as these black and white cows are concerned, this day is no different from any other day as they wait in their stalls for their turn at the milking machine. But it's not the Schauers that are doing the chores tonight. It's a young couple that babysit bovines for a living.
STEVE HEUER: My name is Steve Heuer. And mainly what Deb and I do is just do a lot of relief work for farmers that like to take off on vacation, need a few days off, or have something special that they need to go to.
RACHEL REABE: The Heuers are quite possibly the only couple in the state that work full time filling in for dairy farmers. Both grew up on dairy farms, and look at this as an interim career to gain experience and savings to put into their own dairy herd, someday. Deb Heuer.
DEB HEUER: We started almost two years ago. And so far, it's been going really well. We counted last winter, we stayed busy, we had nine days of vacation from November until the middle of March. So we stayed really busy.
RACHEL REABE: Except for those nine days, the Heuers and their year-old baby were off minding someone's farm. They live a half hour northwest of the Schauers and draw many of their customers from the dairy farms in the surrounding area. Although, they've also been contacted by dairy farmers all over Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin.
Deb and Steve, dressed in striped overalls and tennis shoes, push the portable milking equipment down the center aisle of the wooden barn. Deb will hook up the cows on the left, Steve's in charge of the cows on the right. Baby Dani in her stroller is usually parked at one end of the barn.
Someday, they hope to spend their milking time in their own barn with their own cows. But for now, the Heuers are content to make a living taking care of other people's herds. This is the fourth time they've worked at the Schauer dairy farm. Steve Heuer says, because of the modern equipment, it's one of his favorite farms.
STEVE HEUER: Everything is just real convenient. I mean, there isn't real backbreaking labor here. And then, you get to the next place where the guy feeds all his cows with a wheelbarrow and 5 gallon pails.
RACHEL REABE: The Heuers charge $100 a day for farms that have over 50 cows. That includes the two milkings a day, feeding the cows, and the regular barn chores. Dairy farmers Dale and Jeanne Schauer, just back from a couple of days at a Northern Minnesota resort, say it's money well spent.
JEANNE SCHAUER: You need that mental rest, or whatever. To get away, you need that. Most people work five days a week, and they have the two days to relax and forget their work, but dairy farmers don't. They have to be there seven days a week.
DALE SCHAUER: This winter now we took a vacation to Hawaii, and we were gone 10 days, I think. So when we come back, it didn't bother me one bit to write that check out. I guess, we never even called them this last winter, did we?
RACHEL REABE: Before he heard about the Heuers, Dale Schauer said he would try to hire a student or a neighbor to take over the chores, so they could get away. But it was always an effort to try to set something up, and then spend days acquainting somebody with their farm system.
DALE SCHAUER: Not anyone can come in here and do this. That's what's really hard, to find someone. It takes a lot of experience. And I think Deb and Steve have really got the experience to take care of them.
RACHEL REABE: After two years on the job, the Heuers say they've seen all varieties of dairy operations, from the most modern, to the most primitive. And Steve says, they've met all kinds of cows.
STEVE HEUER: There's cows I can walk right up to and grab by a neck chain and-- I mean, just like we're old buddies or something, already. And there's a few cows you remember that you don't sit down by, and this cow is a little nervous. This cow you could sleep underneath. After a while, you get your own favorite cows at somebody else's place after a while.
RACHEL REABE: Dairy farmer Steve Heuer. I'm Rachel Reabe.
[CALF MOOING]
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