Thirsty for milk, and the money that comes with it, South Dakota has ramped up efforts to recruit dairy farmers from other states and countries, including England, Ireland and The Netherlands.

South Dakota isn't alone in the recruitment game, as North Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Texas and other states attempt to prove they are the dairy industry's next frontier.

Simply put, “they want what we have,” said Shelly Mayer, a dairy farmer near Slinger, Wis., and executive director of the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin.

Mayer said she and her husband, Dwight, were recruited by Kansas with the offer of wide-open spaces, attractive to farmers who felt crowded by urban sprawl.

“As a farm kid who grew up in southwestern Wisconsin, I miss some of that,” Mayer said. “You could say they have the open spaces and great big places, which is wonderful.”

Some states have been recruiting dairy farmers for years.

“I think the Dakotas are just getting more aggressive about it,” Mayer said.

It was noticeable this fall at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis., where representatives from the Mount Rushmore state made pitches to dairy farmers about why they should relocate.

Two South Dakota dairy processors put up billboards in Tulare County, Calif., which has about 340,000 dairy cows, saying “All our cows in South Dakota are happy.”

The billboards followed an earlier ad campaign that touted South Dakota as a better place for dairy business because, unlike California, it doesn't have quotas that limit milk production.

“We think South Dakota is a good place to milk cows,” said state Agriculture Secretary Walter Bones. “Our state is one of those areas with tremendous untapped potential.”

Earlier this year, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard went to California on a recruiting mission, telling reporters “we're on a cattle roundup. So if you're out there in the world of dairying and you're looking for a place to plant your dairy, South Dakota is open for business.”

But what the prairie states lack are amenities that Wisconsin has taken a century to develop, including 210 dairy-product plants, related service businesses, technologies, animal genetics, animal health care and an education system focused on dairy science and cheese making.

“Wisconsin was the first place in the world to have a master cheesemaker program,” Mayer said. “California let people get trained here, and then said, 'Come West, young man.' They were taking away our cheesemakers and our technology. But this is the place to be now.”