Cattle farmer who faces prison time is fined by DNR

Cows graze a recently harvested corn field in western Iowa. (Photo by Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

A financially troubled cattle farmer in northeast Iowa who is awaiting sentencing in federal court was recently fined by state regulators for endangering a creek and groundwater.

Michael Butikofer, 54, operates an open feedlot south of Farmersburg in Clayton County with a capacity of more than 1,700 cattle, according to an Iowa Department of Natural Resources order.

In a March 2023 inspection of the facility — known as Fawn Hollow — a DNR officer discovered that an unspecified amount of manure had overflowed from a storage basin and went into an underground tiling inlet that flows to nearby Howard Creek. Butikofer has since removed that inlet.

Further, the officer noted manure stockpiles that were too close to a water well and a sinkhole. The cattle operation is located in the Driftless Area, which has porous bedrock and is more susceptible to groundwater contamination.

A confinement building that had been converted from an open feedlot building was also located too close to two sinkholes.

The DNR ordered Butikofer to pay a $4,000 fine, keep manure and bedding stockpiles at least 400 feet away from sinkholes and wells, and verify that there is no risk of manure discharging again from the property.

Butikofer can appeal the decision. He has reverted the confinement building back to an open feedlot building and now has fewer than 1,000 cattle at the site, said Brian Jergenson, a senior environmental specialist for the DNR.

Legal troubles

Butikofer pleaded guilty in December to three federal criminal charges of theft of livestock, wire fraud and false bankruptcy declaration. He faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced in October.

Court records show that Butikofer is paid to raise cattle for other people, and that in recent years when he became unable to make payments on his debts, he sold cattle he didn’t own and used that money to pay.

He was also accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $200,000 in emergency assistance funds in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and of using part of a federal disaster loan to pay for a bankruptcy attorney. In 2022, he allegedly made false statements about his finances in those bankruptcy proceedings.

Separate from his recent criminal prosecution, in 2020 a federal judge ordered Butikofer to pay three of his former workers about $250,000 for unpaid wages and mistreatment.

The men were from South Africa and traveled to work for Butikofer on a temporary basis in 2018. They sued him the next year, alleging that Butikofer verbally abused and physically threatened them.

The lawsuit claimed Butikofer derided them as “third world trash” and “dumb South Africans” if their work did not meet his expectations. He allegedly threatened to hang one of the workers by his neck and to use a shock collar on another worker “so that he would work faster,” court records show. Butikofer also allegedly pushed a worker toward a corn auger and threatened to throw him into it.

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