News

Social media helps Wisconsin dairy farm manage fire crisis

A Wisconsin dairy farm family says building a presence on social media earlier this year helped them when tragedy struck Wednesday.

Nicki Peterson tells Brownfield she put together a Facebook page for the family’s Four Cubs Farm near Grantsburg, Wisconsin before hosting a dairy breakfast in June, so when fire destroyed their milking parlor Wednesday morning, the word got out fast.  “Looking for people to help haul cows was the main goal we had at that time, so then it became a cry for help just to get the word out, and then you could see that the number of shares was tremendous, just other people even if they didn’t have a truck and trailer knew maybe their networks did.”

Peterson says their Facebook page went from about 500 likes and shares to more than 15-hundred almost instantly.  “I grew up in Iowa, so I even had friends from Iowa posting it, sharing it, just in case they had friends in the area, and then we had like other networks, dairy herd networks.  Minnesota Milk contacted me and they wanted to share it.  We put our phone numbers out there, so our phone numbers were ringing off the hook with people wanting to help.”

Nicki Peterson, her husband Ben, and Ben’s parents Gary and Cris Peterson manage around 900 dairy cattle.  She says it’s hard to believe how fast the dairy community came to their rescue.  “If you count the start of fire to all of the cows being loaded, it was about nine hours.  (It was) faster than we ever could have dreamt would happen.”

All of the Four Cubs Farm cattle are on temporary host farms within an hour and a half of Grantsburg.  Peterson says they are working to rebuild as fast as possible for the cows and their 18 employees, but they’ll be watching the cows electronically.  “We all share the same type of software, so we’re able to actually monitor how they’re doing via the software and that helps us understand, you know, the stress the cows are under as well.”

A Go-Fund-Me page has been set up to help support the 18 employees who are now out of work until the parlor is rebuilt.  As of Friday afternoon, $3,211 has been raised towards their $10,000 goal.

The Peterson family posted this message on their Facebook page Friday afternoon:  “We come together today to thank everyone for your support. Thanks to our friends and families who are praying for and thinking of us, to people bringing meals for our team, to strangers dropping off supplies, to the first responders and fire departments who did a great job containing and putting out the fire, to those who jumped in to help the day of our fire, to the drivers and passengers of the 30-40 trucks/trailers who often took multiple trips on slick roads to transport our cows, to the networks of people who spread the word when we needed help, and to the seven farms (soon to be eight) who are caring for our cows. Our hearts are overflowing with gratitude. Thank you so much.”