Around the Farm

Some of you may not be anywhere close to our farm, so lets take a little 'Virtual Tour' of our farm.

Our dairy was founded in 2003.  My husband and I met in college.  Right from the start, I knew his dream in life was to go back to his family farm in ND, join his father, and become a dairy farmer for life.  At that time his parents were milking 150 cows in the original homestead that my husband's Great Grandparents dairy farmed at with their 15 registered Holstein cows.  Every generation since then has grown the farm and the cow herd size.  So once we graduated, the farm came to a turning point where it was either 1. Expand the current homestead and build a brand-new facility that allowed us to expand or 2. Buy an existing dairy farm and expand that way.  Well, along came an opportunity of a 'foreclosed' dairy farm that was completely empty only 45 miles away!  We toured it, and the rest is history.  On December, 23rd, 2003, our dairy was fully operational with our original herd of 150 cows!  In these past 10 years, there has been major remodeling, reconstruction, building, expanding, tweaking, and changes that has made this quite an amazing journey.  So, lets start the tour:

A little about my family.  My husband and myself are Owners and Partners with his parents.  We also have 10 employees that we employ to help milk our 1,000 milk cows. Also, our amazing children have been an integral part of every facet of our life.

Even before each of my children were born, they bounced around in the tractors and worked at the farm in my tummy.  Then as babies they were in a backpack on my back during milking in the parlor, sitting in their infant seats in the Bagger during corn chopping, riding in the semi truck hauling feed, pushing the grain cart while we are feeding calves, shoveling the barn stalls, moving cows.  You name it, they have either done it, or helped do it! 

 


 

Now, lets walk over to the calf barn.  This is the part of the farm that I am responsible for and I absolutely LOVE IT!  Back in 2005 with the growing number of cows, came the growing number of babies!  So we did a lot of research and decided to put up a hoop barn to raise our baby calves in.

This is the Calf Barn back in 2005 after it was just built.



Back in 2005, we had the calves in individual pens until they were old enough to be weaned from their milk, then they went into a 'transition' group pen.

This is our mural that I painted in the calf barn right after it was built.  It is the motto of our calf barn. "Happy, healthy calves don't just happen...we make them that way"  Our babies are our future and we here take very much pride and care of our future.

I would have to say the Calf Barn is probably the favorite place on the farm for people when we are giving a tour.  I mean, seriously, who can resist this face?

Say "Cheese!"

Well, back in 2011, we had up to 100 calves in our calf barn which was extremely labor intensive.  We heard about a brand new way to raise calves with what was called and 'Automatic Calf Milk Feeder'.  So in 2012 we toured a lot of farms that already had them installed, did our research, talk to veterinarians, and decided to buy our own auto feeder.  What is an auto feeder?  Basically a computer chip is put into each one of the calves ear tags.  When they come up to the milk machine to drink, the computer reads the number of that particular calf.  As the calf is drinking, it will record how much the calf drank and how fast so that we can monitor each calf's nutrition and health individually.  This allows us to raise the best calves possible.  This machine feeds up to 80 calves their milk everyday and does a fantastic job.  When a calf is old enough, the machine will automatically start weaning them off their milk, and once they are weaned they will move into weaned pen where they will transition to grain and hay. 



Calf Barn Shed.  You can see the Automatic Milk Feeder on the left side of the picture (basically just a big blender that mixer the water with the milk replacer).

 This is a picture taken recently of what the calf barn looks like now that the 'Auto Feeder' is in.  The calves are in pens together, and when they are hungry they just walk right up to the feeder and eat.  In this picture you can see the calf on the right-side of the picture is actually drinking out of the 'Auto Feeder'.  Pretty slick, huh?

So this picture shows where you can find me most of the time in the calf barn.  I am looking at the computer and analyzing how each individual calf is feeling and doing.  If there is a calf that isn't doing well, I can can start doing preventive steps, such as electrolytes so that they don't get really sick.  The newest thing is there is an Ap on my phone that allows me to see the calf computer on my phone!  So anytime I can log in and see how the calves are!  This is amazing system and the calves are so healthy.

Now that we have super healthy, big calves, we needed a place outside that they could move into after the calf barn.  So back in 2011, we built a monoslope calf barn for all our bigger, weaned calves that are ready to come out of the Calf Barn.  Here is some pictures of the construction.

The new weaned Calf Barn was built (as you can see in the background), now we had to put in gates, pens, water fountains, and a concrete feeding area.

Pouring concrete for the feeding area.  We put grooves in our concrete so the calves don't slip when it gets muddy or icy living out here in the plains.

The finished product!  Here are our weaned calves enjoying their new Weaned Calf Barn

Another picture of the calves in the Weaned Calf Barn.  Here they are all lined up eating their breakfast in the morning.  I'm not so sure they are calves..they kinda look like little piggies!  Look how much food they eat just for breakfast!!!

Ok, let's jump back in the pick-up and head over to the parlor.

We have a 36-stall Rotary-Style Parlor, which is the only one like it in the state of North Dakota!  Now, if you don't know what a Rotary Parlor is, just image a big Merry-Go-Round.  The Merry-Go-Round is constantly turning at a consistent rate.  A cow walks up, steps on in the stall, rides the Merry-Go-Round for one revolution, and then backs off when she is done milking.  It is super slick and a great way to milk cows!

This picture shows one of our employees.  She is the second person in the parlor.  The first person is responsible for the cleaning of the teats of the cows by using a soap scrub.  Once the teats are cleaned, the parlor turns and the cow will arrive at the second person.  The second person in the parlor takes a soft hand-towel, wipes the soap off the cows teats, then attaches the milking unit. This milking unit gently squeezes the teat which stimulates the milk to flow out and into the pipes where it goes into a Bulk Tank (will show that in a minute).  Then once the cow is done being milked, there is a sensor that tells when a cow is done, the milking unit automatically detaches from the cow.  The third employee in the parlor then dips the teats with and Iodine Dip to keep the teats clean until the next milking.  Then the cow can back-off the parlor and return to the pen where she will eat her next meal (depends on what milking it is) and then lay down in our nice sand-bedding stalls.



This is the 3rd employee checking the cow to make sure she has been milked properly and then will put the Iodine Dip on her

In our Parlor, it only takes about 7 minutes for each cow to be milked.  We milk 3 times/Day, every day, at 6 a.m., 2 p.m., and 10 p.m.  Each milking only takes about 3.5 hours to milk our 630 milk cows.

Lets walk into the Bulk Tank Room (this is just the front-view of the Bulk Tank).  This is where the milk is stored and cooled until the milk truck driver shows up everyday at 11am to pick-up our daily milk.  At the Milk Bottling Plant, the milk will be tested with 7 different tests to make sure that the milk they picked up is the correct consistency, the correct composition, the correct temperature, free of any medicines or contaminants, and safe for human consumption.  Once it has past these rigorous tests, then the milk will go on to be homogenized, pasteurized, bottled, and sent-out to areas grocers where 48-hours later it will be bought by our consumers!

Ok, lets wander back to the Free-Stall Barn.  A Free-Stall Barn is where the cows can roam about freely in their pens.  They can eat when they want, drink water, hang around with their friends, and lay-down in whatever stall they choose. 

  

This picture is taken in the middle of the Free-Stall Barn.  There are pens on each side with a drive-through feed alley down the middle where they can eat whenever they choose.

This is an over-head picture of the Free-Stall Barn.  You can see one pen on the right, the drive-through feed alley in the middle, and on the left is another pen.  We have lights that automatically turn-on when its the night milking.  There are fans and sprinkler systems in each pen to keep the cows cool in the warm summers.  We also have stalls for each cow to sleep in.  The sides of the barn are actually called curtains that automatically open and close according to the weather and temperature.  We also use a bedding called 'Sand Bedding' where we put clean, dry, soft sand in each of their stalls.  Just take a minute and image lying on the beach: it's soft, comfortable, easy to clean, and the cows love it!  Everyday during the milking, there is a 4th employee that works back here in the barn.  This employee brings the cows from their pens to the milking parlor in the correct order, scrapes/cleans each stall, cleans the waterers, and then uses the Bobcat to clean the concrete floor in the stalls where the cows walk.  The Bobcat will push the waste and icky sand into a pipe that has water pushing the waste and sand to a building called a 'Sand Separator'.  This machine will clean, wash, and dry the sand so we can recycle it to reuse it in the bedding.  Pretty neat, huh?  We are all about recycling and doing what's best for the environment on this farm!

Happy, safe, healthy, comfortable cows make milk.  Every decision we make on this farm is what is best for the over-all care and comfort of our cows!  We take pride in raising animals that are well-fed, comfortable, happy, and most importantly taken-care of by not only my family, but our employees.  Cow Care is our #1 concern on this farm and strive everyday to make sure that they are well-taken care of!

This is another picture of an overhead of the Free-Stall Barn.  There are 4 pens in our Free-Stall Barn and the cows are sorted according to their breeding cycles.  Cows that have just calved are all in the same pen so they can be monitored and cared for after they have just calved.  Once they are cleared as recovered from calving, then they will move into the breeding pen to the pregnant pen then out to the pasture for their 'dry period' where they will no longer be milked.  This Free-Stall barn can hold up to 650 milk-cows at one time.