ADRIAN - Arno Schot shivered through winter days on his Lenawee County farm that were colder than he had ever experienced in the Netherlands.

He watched prices for the milk from his 600 cows plummet this winter to an unprofitable level for his multimillion-dollar investment. And he was a bit disconcerted by the attitudes of some northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan residents to the new dairy farms being built by Dutch immigrants.

“We always thought the United States was based on economics and based on science,” said Mr. Schot, 27. “But we found a lot of people whose opinions were based on emotions.”

Despite those surprises, however, getting established in southeast Michigan has gone better than Mr. Schot anticipated when he left the Netherlands in November, 1998. Bulldozers are at work to double the size of his dairy to 1,250 cows, and the dairy industry expects milk prices to rise this summer.

The Schots are among about 20 recent Dutch immigrant families milking cows or setting up dairy farms locally that - although medium-size by Western standards - are many times larger than most in this area.

The wave of immigrants has provided a teachable moment for university dairy experts who had been urging local dairy farmers to more closely figure their costs and consider milking more cows if it would help them become more efficient.

It has brought livestock farmers into the community who had been working with far stricter rules on storing and spreading manure in Europe. Some have been willing to make concessions to neighbors about how and when they would spread their cow manure that local farmers might not have made, said Tim Demland, a former representative of Dairy Farmers of America, Inc., milk buyers who is now a dairy expert with Ohio State University extension.

“What they're doing is jumping the dairy industry into the next generation,” he said.

In some areas, neighbors have welcomed the Dutch immigrants and lent them household goods when their belongings were held up in shipping. In other areas, some residents have spoken out strongly against the new farms.

Jose Van Wezel, who with her husband, Jeroen, is building a dairy farm in Putnam County between Miller City and Continental, was surprised that a government grant they applied for was delayed numerous times by the local community - which she thought would share in its benefits. The Van Wezels plan to hire seven employees.

They decided to build without the grant and plan to have barns ready for 675 cows by fall. Different ways of looking at agriculture and downright misunderstandings - such as the value of cow manure for crop fields - are not unique to the United States, Mrs. Van Wezel said. But they have astonished her sometimes.

“We have one of the oldest jobs in the world,” she said of dairy farmers. “But there are a lot of people who don't even have a clue what we're doing. Not only city people, but also people in the country.”

The Schotsare among those who have felt most accepted among the region's dairy farm immigrants. When they sent 100 invitations to neighbors for an open house in July, about 80 people showed up to tour the farm.

“We thought it looked pretty nice,” said Dean Lange, a math teacher who lives about a mile from the Schot farm. “Big is not always better. But big is not always bad either.”

There are signs opposing “mega farms” in nearby neighborhoods, but none on Forrister Road, where the Schots built New Flevo.

Tending the cows has gone well for the Schots. Their cows are producing about 13 percent more milk than they had counted on and about 24 percent more than they got from the herd that they sold in the Netherlands.

Part of the difference is that they now have enough cows to make milking three times a day worthwhile.

In the Netherlands, they milked their 100 cows twice a day.

The huge new barn has helped, where cows are free to wander at will and sleep in a bed of sand.

The Schots didn't buy any registered cows from show herds. In fact, Mr. Schot said some of his animals were “pretty cheap.” But he believes that U.S. cows were bred for years with the goal of producing more milk, while cows in the Netherlands were bred to produce lots of butterfat.

One of the biggest challenges for Mr. Schot was finding a bank where he could borrow money to buy lots of cows, but only a little land. He was surprised that he had to talk to four or five banks before finding a deal he liked.

Like many of the Dutch immigrants, the Schots have made contracts to buy all of their cow feed from neighboring grain farmers and to give their cow manure to those farmers for their fields. That allows the dairy farmers to concentrate all of their time and money on caring for their cows. Area dairy farmers, however, have typically raised both crops and cows.

“We just want to milk a lot of cows,” Mr. Schot said.

First Published May 2, 2001, 10:26 a.m.