The Mills Family Farm: A story of love, promise
Mills Family Farm is a 200+ acre, veterinarian owned and managed, working cattle facility located in Mooresville, NC, where we raise cattle on grass pastures for beef. We offer local beef to the public and can ship nationwide. All of our beef is all natural, dry-aged for 14 days, raised without antibiotics and no added hormones. We provide gift certificates, custom beef cuts, and supply restaurants, catering businesses, and retail outlets in the Carolinas through a distribution network. We also offer farm tours, agriculture educational seminars and cattle veterinary consulting.
All of our cattle are pasture raised and fed a custom veterinary designed vitamin and mineral mix to provide a complete diet and obtain increased tenderness and flavor. We also offer all natural nitrate and nitrite-free pork products. In our store at the farm, we offer local dairy products, honey, eggs, jams and jellies, and, of course, our meat products: beef and pork.
The farm has been in the family since 1935 and is an Iredell County Farm land Preservation District. We strive to be good stewards of the land with the hopes of continuing the family business for generations to come. Please feel free to browse our website and contact us if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
The Mills Family
Monday, Jan. 24, 2011 by Laura MuellerDr. Bradley Mills loves cows. “I could talk about them all day,” said Mills, driving his truck along the dirt road that divides rolling hills into pastures, home to small herds of heifers. Mills is a doctor of veterinary medicine, specifically a food-animal veterinarian with a focus on cattle. His wife, Nicole Mills, loves horses and has since her grandfather took her riding when she was 7. Nicole has a master’s degree in agriculture. With Bradley’s brother, Brian and his wife Julie, the four own and manage Mills Family Farm at 284 Barfield Road in Mooresville, with help from close friend Milton Tucker and a couple of neighbors. Together they act as veterinarians, farm owners and managers, cattle buyers and producers, animal-health industry educators, meat handlers, consulting veterinarian, riding teachers, equine experts and ambassadors of farming.
The Mills family members are corralling their interests and accomplishments to diversify the farm. Their most recent addition, in July 2010, is Mills Meats, selling locally produced farm-raised beef to the public.
Bradley and Nicole now live in the house his grandparents, John and Mary Blackwelder, bought in 1942. The three farms are now combined, with 200 acres and more than 240 head of cattle.
Mills buys calves from local farmers when they are 8 to 10 months old, weighing 500-600 pounds. They are fed a custom food and cared for until they are 20 months old.
During that time, the cows are divided into groups of 60 or 70. Their diet consists of grass year-round and hay in the winter, supplemented with soy hulls, corn gluten and a veterinarian-designed multivitamin and multimineral mix. In the winter, the herd eats grass and about 1,000 pounds of hay. Feeding the byproducts to cattle is “a great way to be beneficial to the environment,” said Mills.
Mills also is a veterinary consultant at cattle farms throughout 12 states in the Southeast.He travels about 40 weeks a year. He also is involved in education and public speaking about the animal-health industry. He serves on the board of directors for the Iredell County Cattlemen’s Association. One of his consulting goals is to ensure the safety of the food supply. “We produce food. We want everything to be healthy,” he said. “We have been here for 75 years. We try to do a lot of conservation,” he said. “We are always trying to protect the environment.” Learn more: www.millsfamilyfarm.com or 704-960-2994
