ASTORIA, Ore. — The owners of Cowan Dairy, the largest dairy in Clatsop County, have signed a lease with an option to purchase with an international dairy group.
Brad and Melody Cowan signed a memorandum with Free Range Dairy, a Missouri-based limited liability corporation with farms there and in New Zealand. The Cowans sold an adjacent piece of property in Lewis and Clark to Free Range for more than $2.5 million.
Brad Cowan described the transactions as a new partnership, with his family still the owners of the main farm and the more than 900 dairy cattle. Free Range, as a tenant of the Cowans, will manage the farm for the next three years, within which time it will have an option to purchase the operation.
Several employees from Free Range Dairy took up residence at the farm less than a month ago, including David Gasquoine, the operations manager, a dairy farmer from New Zealand’s North Island who moved with his wife, Cathy, to help run the farm.
“Free Range Dairy probably describes what we do in New Zealand and the sort of technology that we sort of hope we can bring to Oregon,” he said. “It’s not dissimilar. You don’t feel that far from home here, because you’ve got pastures. The landscape’s similar near the coast.
“We think we can do a bit of what you guys call pasturing here — we call it grazing,” he said. “But at the same time, we know very little about confinement farming. So we’re learning about that.”
Gasquoine described Free Range as a corporation with shareholders in the U.S., New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company has farms in New Zealand and Missouri, with Cowan Dairy its first outpost in Oregon.
The Cowans, including their three children, have run Cowan Dairy since 1999, when they moved into the former Seppa Dairy Co. They have become the largest producer in the county for the Tillamook County Creamery Association. In 2014, they took over another farm in Nehalem, naming it GreenGold Dairy, which they still run.
Cowan said the family was looking for help running the Astoria farm as his wife deals with medical issues.
“This is the only way we can retire,” he said. “We need help.”
Grassland’s general manager is New Zealander Zach Ward, a respected veteran of the pasture dairy business. But Ward also comes with some baggage. Last year, the government of Chile attempted to extradite Ward from New Zealand for the alleged mistreatment of animals.
Killing “bobby” calves — young males bred so their mothers produce milk but seen as surplus — is a common yet controversial practice among dairy farmers, a cheaper option than raising them to be sold for beef or veal.
Chilean authorities accused Ward, then production manager for New Zealand-based dairy company Manuka, of killing more than 1,500 bobby calves in 2014 by bludgeoning and injecting them with air, according to Stuff, a New Zealand news media company. The charges against Ward were ultimately not upheld after a colleague successfully defended his case, Gasquoine said.
