When it comes to dairy farming, there are all sorts of different ways to raise and milk cows. In fact, we’ve seen a few different ways from the all-robotic way to the smaller herd that is processing their own milk. But there’s one conversation we haven’t had with a dairy farmer and that’s about raising and caring for healthy animals. For Berend and his family, ensuring their animals are healthy is a top priority all the way from newborn calf to the oldest cow. So come to Alberta and see this large dairy farm in action!
We are touring an Alberta dairy farm today. We are with Berend and you’ve just finished up morning milking. Can you give us a rundown of what your morning looks like as you start milking?
We start at five o’clock each morning. As my brother and father bring in the cows, I’ll start milking them. We have a hired hand as well. Milking goes pretty fast, and within an hour we’re done. Then we can get on with our day. We feed right after milking and then we do maintenance for the rest of the day. We do field work in the summer time as well.
Can you give us an idea of the step-by-step process? The cow comes onto the parlour, then what?
Once they come onto the rotary milker, we spray the udder with iodine.
What’s iodine and why do you do that?
It is an antibacterial that disinfects and cleans the teat. We wipe it and attach the milking units and all this is done within 12 seconds. With our current milking system, we have to be fast and efficient. Anytime we’ve stopped the rotary, we find that the cows get stressed. So we like to keep things moving and keep our little production line going as smoothly as possible.
Once the cows are milked, then they back out of the parlour. Where do the cows go?
The majority of the cows will go back and lie down in the stalls or eat. We want them to have as many hours of the day as possible to eat and rest. Sometimes there will be cows that we sort out for mastitis, infection or sickness, herd health or breeding. We can automatically sort them onto the sort gate, and then they will go into the catch pen.
If a cow gets sick for instance, then you have to treat her with an antibiotic. What do you do with that milk when she is being treated?
If we notice on the rotary that there’s a cow with mastitis, we’ll move her to our hospital barn and sick cow parlour to treat her. We keep all milk separate between our hospital barn and production barn. That way we don’t have any risk of contaminating the system with antibiotics in the milk. It will not be shipped. There is no way it can be part of the food chain. It will not come into the food chain and it will not come into contact with the other milk. We keep it separate. There are heavy fines and rigorous testing all the time. There’s just no chance that we can afford to have that happen. As a cow heals up from her infection, we will test the milk and we have our own on-farm tester and when she clears the test, then she’s moved back onto the rotary and back into the production herd.
No antibiotics in milk.
No antibiotics whatsoever, there is no way that could happen.
You also have a calf barn. What happens when a calf is born?
We give our calves colostrum from a colostrum bag. We try not to use any of our own colostrum, just because we don’t know immunoglobulin rates and sometimes you’ll have heifers that are a little low on that. The colostrum we use has a guaranteed immunoglobulin rate. From there we give them two feedings of colostrum and then move on to pasteurized milk. We feed pasteurized milk all the way up until the calves are close to a hundred days old. They get bottle-fed for the first two weeks and then they move on to an automatic calf feeder. That calf feeder will increase their milk intake from two liters all the way up to 10 liters over an 80 day period. This ensures that the calves receive the nutrition they need to grow.
They would drink 10 liters a day at 80 days old?
Yes. Up to 10 liters a day, and then we wean them off slowly over a 15 or 20 day weaning period. It mimics how a cow weans a calf. While the calves are weaned off, they are moved into a pole barn, then they are started on silage, which is a full mixed feed ration.
Then they basically are on a feed ration that is adjusted as they keep growing until they are in the milking herd. From our conversation, it sounds like one of the most important things to you is making sure that your cows are healthy right from calf to cow.
Yes. We are constantly monitoring herd health right from birth. We try in every way possible to prevent any sick calves. This is the future of our dairy herd and it’s what brings us a good future in milk.
You don’t get a lot of days off and you put a pile of hours in working. Why do you like being a dairy farmer? Why do you go through all the work?
We’re a fourth generation dairy and it’s something that we grew up doing as kids. We’re very passionate about this lifestyle, but growing up with it, we don’t really know much different.
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