12658 Hwy. 27 West Little Falls, MN( 320) 632-5410
hometownsource. com / heartland / Stories of the Heartland • Sunday, September 20, 2026 Page 39
from Malaysia since those prices are quite high, there’ s a lot of interest in farmers raising their own fat and protein for the cows. So much so that it can sometimes be difficult to get the seed, he said.
While small amounts of raw high oleic soybeans can be safely fed to cows, it isn’ t recommended. The amount of high oleic soybeans cows need to eat in order for the benefits to really show exceeds the maximum amount of raw high oleic beans that can be fed to cows. Because of this, it is always best to only feed roasted beans.
Salfer explained that raw soybeans contain anti-nutritional factors, such as trypsin inhibitors and urease, and lack sufficient bypass protein. Because of this, roasting is required to destroy the anti-nutritional factors and raise rumen undergradable protein from 25 % up to 40-60 %.
Jake and Brooke Carrow purchased Enchanted Dairy from Brooke’ s parents, Ron and Jeannie Miller and her uncle Marv Miller on Jan 1, 2021. Having transitioned into taking over the farm for a while, Jake said he started reading about the highlights of feeding high oleic soybeans to dairy cows in 2020. Wanting to integrate the beans into the operation, he and Brooke weren’ t quite sure at first what that would look like.
“ You know, it takes time and trials and everything like that. There was not a lot of good research on it in our area yet, so it took probably three years for me to finally dive in and actually say,‘ We’ re going to plant some of these things,’” he said.
The Carrows planted 200 acres of high oleic soybeans on their farm in Marshall in 2024 to see how well the beans would grow. They also connected with Kevin Lahr at KLC Farms Roasting in Sauk Centre to see if he’ d grow some beans, as well. Before long, their trial was underway.
“ We started our trial and it went pretty well. We found out what we can and cannot do and from there, it was a short blip of probably five to six weeks of feeding them and we got a taste of it, and the taste was pretty good,” Jake said.
The following year, the Carrows planted all of their acres on their farm in Marshall with high oleic soybeans. Happy with the results, the couple has continued to grow the beans annually. While producers can opt to have their beans roasted by someone else, Jake said he knew that depending on someone else to roast the volume of beans they needed to feed the cows at Enchanted Dairy would not work well. As a result, the Carrows decided to build their own roasting facility on site. The roasting facility was completed in January.
Jake said it was fairly easy to install the
Sheila McCoy / Stories of the Heartland
In comparison to conventional soybeans, feeding high oleic soybeans to dairy cows increases milk fat production, while lowering the risk of diet-induced milk fat depression. First testing the beans as a trial a couple of years ago and seeing positive results, the Enchanted Dairy in Little Falls decided to continue to feed their dairy herd roasted high oleic soybeans.
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12658 Hwy. 27 West Little Falls, MN( 320) 632-5410