Taylor Farm in Onslow County Wins Praise, 1946

By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington Morning Star on Aug. 12, 1946

There is a place for dairy cows and poultry on eastern Carolina farms. If you doubt that, visit the farm of Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Taylor on the Richlands-Comfort Highway, about three miles from Richlands in Onslow County. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor operate the Taylor Stock Farm.

Farm Agent Charlie Clark Jr. enthusiastically declares that this is one of the finest registered Jersey dairies of its size in North Carolina. The Taylors own a herd of 65 registered Jersey heifers and cows with 30 animals now in milk.

Back of the present herd are long years of hard work and intelligent effort. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor began developing this herd 15 years ago. In 1931, they began their dairy work with three-year-old grade cows, selling surplus butter and cream. With this small start, they next bought three registered Jersey cows from the Coastal Plains Branch Station at Willard. Then in 1933, they secured five more registered cows from the herd at the Statesville farm. To these eight animals, they added a top herd sire secured from Granada Farms near Hickory in Catawba County, and they continued to sell butter and cream from the farm until 1939, seven years ago.

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor will tell you that in 1931, they sold only about 1 ½ pounds of butter a day for 15 cents a pound; and then during the next nine years, their production developed to where they were selling 101 pounds. In 1940, they built and equipped a $10,000 modern dairy barn which was ready for use in 1941. When the barn was ready to be used, they began to retail grade “A” fluid milk. In the meantime, their herd had been increased to 30 Jerseys with an average of about 15 cows in milk at a time.

In 1942, four years ago, the Taylors felt that they needed new blood in the herd, so they came up to the State College dairy farm and bought two nice cows. They purchased two more from Ray Maine in Aurora, 15 others from the herd of Dr. Clarence Poe of Raleigh, and three additional ones from the Coastal Plain Station near Willard. Each of these animals was of top Jersey breeding and made a valuable addition to the Taylor herd. A new herd size was secured from an importation of Morrowcroft farm from the Isle of Jersey, and, of the famous Cock Robin breeding.

At the present time, therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor are milking 30 cows from the herd of 65 animals. Each cow is on test with the American Jersey Cattle Club, and the owners have complete records of every cow in the herd. Their top ranking animal produced 14,000 pounds of milk and 575 pounds of butterfat in 305 days of milking. The herd averages 9,600 pounds of milk and 430 pounds of butterfat in the regular 305 milking days.

Some of the cows do not go under 6 per cent of butterfat at any test, and the herd is noted for leading the State time and again in butterfat production.

Farm Agent Clark says that the State Jersey Committee selected two heifers from his herd to be sold in the State sale held in Charlotte last September. Another cow was selected for the State sale in Statesville in August, and a fourth has been selected to represent North Carolina in the National Dairy Show to be held in Columbus, Ohio, in October. This committee of experts visiting this farm congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Taylor for the excellent breeding work which they had been carrying on and for the high quality of their individual animals.

The farm proper consists of 172 acres of land with 160 cleared or open. Of this amount, there is an allotment of 21.5 acres of tobacco. The remainder of the open land is devoted to the production of feed crops, largely supplementary grazing crops, silage corn, and hay.

The farm has meant much to the surrounding community for the reason that Mr. Taylor has sold a number of his best bull calves to neighbors at reasonable prices. These animals are being used on native cattle to build up the quality of family cows in Onslow County. Mr. Clark estimates that it will be only a short time now until the Taylors will be ready to sell some of their surplus heifer calves as well. In the meantime, of course, these heifers are too valuable and too badly needed to be disposed of except in unusual circumstances, much as when one or two are selected for state sales.

In addition to the dairy work on the Taylor farm, the owners are operating a hatchery for Barred Rock chicks. The Taylors have always sought the best, and so they secured their original poultry stock from T.N. Wilcox of Tryon, Polk County, operator of an outstanding Barred Rock breeding farm. Mr. Wilcox’s birds have received national as well as state honors, winning many of the national egg laying contests. From an original purchase of chicks, the Taylors saved 200 hens and from these they have developed a flock of 1,200 laying hens.

They have incubator capacity for 12,000 eggs, and hatch and sell about 24,000 baby chicks each season. Each year, about 200 of the best laying hens in the flock of 1,200 are selected and used for breeding purposes. The hens are trap-nested and each egg produced is carefully recorded. Some of the top hens lay from 307 to 309 eggs a year, and the entire flock of 1,200 hens has an average of 250 eggs per hen.

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor’s ultimate aim is to have the best in Jersey milkers and in Barred Rock layers. They are pointing the way to what can be done with livestock and poultry in eastern Carolina, and they say that what they are doing others can do also. It’s an interesting farm.