"The farm is for sale.”

It was the plot twist to conclude Brittany Nickerson-Thurlow’s recounting of her family’s seven-decade history in the Florida dairy industry. Though it made for more of a cliff hanger than a happy ending, the decision to sell out is one pondered by many farmers in the same position who contemplate the surging costs of milking cows and the toll it can take on them and their families.

Their story begins with a bad case of arthritis and a doctor’s recommendation to move south, prompting Earl Nickerson to relocate the family farm in Clymer, N.Y., to Wauchula, Fla., in the 1950s. His farming legacy was carried on by son Norman, and later by grandsons Chris and Joe, who stayed on the farm after graduating high school. Together, Norman, Chris, and Joe expanded the operation across three locations, establishing Norm Nickerson and Sons.

“They knew they weren’t necessarily great at raising heifers, and they knew they weren’t the best at mixing feed,” said Nickerson-Thurlow. “My grandfather, dad, and uncle went to a farm in Texas where the farmers were rotational grazing, and that resonated with them. Then, they reconsidered how they were managing the business, they outsourced everything but milking cows, and they restructured the farm for an intensive rotational grazing system.”

Rotational grazing was the focus for the Nickersons’ next farm acquisition in Zolfo Springs in 2003, where they built Ten Mile Grade Dairy. They later established Nickerson Brothers LLC, the successor entity that would eventually own the three farms formerly owned under Norm Nickerson and Sons. With the addition of Ten Mile Grade Dairy, the family had grown their herd to over 5,000 head. Norman was able to semi-retire while Chris and Joe took over the business and began raising the next generation of Nickersons to dairy.

Chris’s children, Nickerson-Thurlow and her brother, Holden, and Joe’s children, Courtney Nickerson Campbell and Logan Nickerson, all worked for the farm in different capacities and were given the same opportunity for ownership when the partnership split in 2017. The split allowed each family unit its own business entity: Chris’s family started Nickerson Cattle Company and Joe’s family started Nickerson Bar III. Nickerson Cattle Company took ownership of Ten Mile Grade Dairy while Nickerson Bar III acquired ownership of the other three farms, dividing total cow numbers evenly.

But the momentum of farm succession started to slow as cattle prices and real estate values soared. There were 99 dairies in the state of Florida when Nickerson-Thurlow started farming full time in 2017. Today, there are 46, and Ten Mile Grade Dairy is the last one in Hardee County. Although cow numbers aren’t declining as drastically as farm numbers, the ability for farmers to stay afloat financially is. And without a segregated market for grass-fed milk, the benefits of a grazing system seem to get lost in the bulk tank.

“It comes down to this: Is the way that our farm is designed a way of the future or is the industry evolving in a way that is leaving this simple, pasture-based model behind?” Nickerson-Thurlow posited.

It’s the latter, she believed. Many interacting factors formed the verdict to sell the farm in early 2022, and the passing of Chris several months later solidified the decision to seek a solution beyond the family. But the siblings decided they weren’t going to sell the farm to just anyone. Ideally, it would go to a buyer with a background in dairy and an interest in rotational grazing — someone who would maintain their pasture-based system for the benefits it brings to the cattle, the milk, and the land.

Star-studded pastures

Ten Mile Grade Dairy encompasses about 1,800 acres. Nearly 700 acres that surround the milking barn are divided into six pastures for grazing. Well-fed water troughs are situated between fence lines, and each pasture is equipped with a cooling pond for reasons obvious to Florida weather. These pastures are further divided into oblong 5- to 10-acre paddocks that stretch from the edge of the cooling ponds to field perimeters like spokes on a wheel. Cows are moved to a new paddock every 12 hours after they return from the milking barn.

The milking herd is split into six groups of 250 to 450 cows that occupy pastures according to their stage of lactation. For example, one group contains the freshest cows that graze closest to the barn so employees can monitor their transition. A different group hoofs it to the most distant pasture when they leave the parlor since these cows are latest in lactation. “They can expend more energy because their milk production isn’t as high,” Nickerson-Thurlow said.

Stargrass is the star player of the pasture base as a subtropical species that grows best in hot and humid conditions. The warm-season perennial really comes to life once the area receives sufficient spring rains and nighttime temperatures hit 70ºF. Nickerson-Thurlow said this typically occurs by mid-April or early May; however, dry starts to recent growing seasons have stalled stargrass regrowth until June.

“That has hurt us a little bit,” she said about the interruption to spring grazing. Seasonal calving creates another trade-off between grass production and animal performance.

“We try to have our primary calving season from October to December. That allows those cattle to peak on milk production in the months when weather is most favorable — January, February, and March — and they have the least amount of environmental stress,” Nickerson-Thurlow said. But during this time, stargrass is dormant.

Despite some experimentation with annual forages, the finicky Florida climate often nips the potential for a successful stand in the bud. Therefore, nutritional needs that are not met in winter pastures are made up for in the barn. Cows receive a one-shot ration at the feedbunk and in the parlor. They supplement the grain mix with dry hay and baleage.

“When the weather is changing and the grass is starting to wake up, we will pull back their available feed so they are eating less in the barn and have to work for their food a little more on the pasture,” Nickerson-Thurlow said.

“My grandpa always used to say we don’t work for the cows, we make our cows work for us,” she continued. “They spread their own manure, they harvest their own forage, and then sometimes, we got to go fishing,” she smiled.

The rest of the farm’s acreage is dedicated to dry cow grazing, manure hauling, and more recently, in-house hay production.

Rookie year in hay

Ten Mile Grade Dairy started baling dry hay and making baleage in 2024 — two jobs that had been hired out until then. Hayfields are seeded to limpograss, which was established after taking a sod cutting and a watermelon harvest on 400 acres across the road from the grazing dairy. Nickerson-Thurlow explained that the preliminary fieldwork and custom watermelon crop were essential to prepare seedbeds that were suitable for the new forage stands.

“By cutting the sod and having the watermelon guys farm it, they were able to disk the ground afterward and create a really nice, level field,” she said. “Then when we planted the grass, we fertilized it and took a couple of cuts off just to get the weeds out and control the forage.”

Holden managed the first forage harvest, cutting grass for baleage in the spring and baling a second cutting of dry hay in the fall. He put these bales in ring feeders that encircle pasture cooling ponds, feeding dry hay when stargrass was dormant and supplying baleage for a short period pre- and postcalving to support cows’ elevated energy demands.

“We worked with a nutritionist whose idea it was to start wrapping bales and making baleage for transition cows,” Nickerson-Thurlow said. “We saw a boost in milk production, we saw a decrease in mortalities, and we just saw an overall improvement in our transition cows eating that fermented product.”

The impetus for on-farm forage harvesting was instigated by steep hay prices despite a less-than-desirable product. As they compared the costs and benefits of renting acres, buying equipment, and renovating cropland into perennial hayfields, Nickerson-Thurlow said the payoff seemed like it would be substantial — and immediate.

“That was just for a conservative number of bales, not to mention the added nutrition that our cows were able to get from better forage quality,” she explained. That bump in forage quality comes from their ability to control the harvest schedule and adjust cutting intervals according to their feed needs. They can tighten up harvest windows to secure higher quality forage or let grass grow longer to take advantage of more tonnage.

They’ve also started making bigger bales — 5-foot to 6-foot round bales — to reduce the number of ring feeder refills needed throughout the hay-feeding season. And gone are the days of footing the bill for transportation costs.

“Bringing our forage program in-house has made a lot of difference for us,” Nickerson-Thurlow said. Even so, the merits of having homegrown forage are still at the mercy of Mother Nature, especially in central Florida.

Weathering the storms

“This year, we had an 85°F February, which is nice for forage growth, but that’s when my cows are peaking, and I really need it to be 65ºF so they’re more comfortable,” Nickerson-Thurlow said.

Extreme heat isn’t always the biggest enemy. Delayed rainfall and extended cold seasons have also defined previous springs and early summers, not to mention heavy rains and hurricane damage that can cut grazing short in the fall and interrupt feed supply chains in general.

Greening disease is another obstacle that has raised the Nickersons' feed costs. What was once a cheap by-product and a staple in their one-shot ration, citrus pulp is now hard to come by as greening disease has wiped out a large portion of Florida’s citrus industry. They’ve resorted to replacing that fiber component of cow diets with more expensive commodities. All of these challenges are thorns in the side of a dairy trying to maximize its margins.

But wait — the story doesn’t end here. After months of waiting, it was as if someone pressed the fast-forward button on the farm sale. Earlier this year, a buyer with the resources to maintain the business, modernize the dairy, and tap into value-added markets for pasture-based milk answered the call. Though it’s still early in their relationship and the two parties are working together to navigate the transition, the Nickerson family looks forward to seeing the changes they had always envisioned for their farm finally begin to take shape. It’s a cliff hanger that turned into a happy ending after all — or rather, a new beginning.

“It’s a dream come true, but the heartbreak is real.” Nickerson-Thurlow said. She may be passing the baton to the next farm owner, but she won’t turn her back on dairy. As the former first vice president of Southeast Milk Inc., she’s developed a deep-rooted love for the industry and will continue to support dairy producers, especially those who implement sustainable practices similar to the ones at Ten Mile Grade Dairy. The larger mission of the six-state marketing cooperative aligns with her personal goals, as well as her desire to preserve the roots that anchor the Nickerson family tree.

This article appeared in the August/September 2025 issue of Hay & Forage Grower on page 18-20.

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