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Canadian~9

Posted 2/25/2014 22:23 (#3717038)
Subject: Start up Canadian Dairy, Registered Ayrshires (lots of pics)

Abbotsford, BC, Canada

Thought i'd finally post in the forum i've been lurking for a while. Sorry in advance for the large post!

My dad was on the graduated entry program for quota for many years, we weren't expecting his name to come up for another couple years but this year his name finally came up. He grew up on a dairy farm in Thunder Bay until he was 10 then one day he came home and his dad said he sold the farm and they were moving to BC. He continues to own his own electrical business specializing in Agriculture. We started Milking on November 6th 2013. And its been quite the adventure so far.

We live next door to my grandparents 40 acre farm, which my mom grew up on. My grandpa has dairy farmed since he was 15 years old. He sold out in 1996 and continued to raise some beef and heifers to keep busy. The barn and most of the field was rented out since then. So it worked out perfectly for us to start our dairy there. The free stall barn is 35 years old and the parlor was added on to the barn in 1989. Everything was in great shape as my grandpa always keeps things in really nice shape, Most of his equipment is from the 1970s and still looks and works like new.

We updated the milking half of the barn with Y2K stalls (29) at 47" spacing. Updated the 2 computer feeder stalls used for grain, added pasture mats with premium pad and indexing pipe. Added Delaval activity monitors. Computer system is Delpro v4.1. Grandpa built the parlor as a double 3 but was built to be able to expand to double 5 which is what we did. Got rid of the weigh jars and added automatic animal ID.

We currently feed grain, alfalfa and silage round bales. We have to buy all our own feed for now as we had rented out the field, once we make our own hay it should cut down on our costs a bit.

My Dad got it in his head that he wanted to milk Ayrshire cows, when he saw the Rosayre (one of the top herds in Canada) auction he decided to buy a bunch of heifers from Ontario. We got 26 heifers, 6 from Rosayre, which looking back might have been too many, but it allowed us to cull some of our poorer cows. We were going to just buy holsteins as the milking herd to start but an Ayrshire farmer in Alberta with a similar quota size was selling out so my dad bought his herd. We are currently milking 25-30 cows, we bought 2 Holsteins and 1 hojo to boost our production a bit at the start. One thing that we really like about the Ayrshire's is they live long lives while staying healthy, some of the animals we bought were 6th and 7th lactation and still looked quite good. Also the calving ease is good, have only had to pull about half of the heifers calves and some of those probably would have them on their own if we weren't there. The cows give birth very easily. We were getting about 4.3% BF but switched to a much cheaper grain and are now at about 3.9-4% BF with 3.4%P our SCC on the latest lab result was 83,000 (usually around 100k). Another reason for the Ayrshires is that we plan on pasturing the cows in the summer and they are supposedly better grazers then most breeds. Average production is about 26kg right now, but its been up to 28kg we think we should be able to get it to over 30kg's in the future. As the majority of our animals are 1st lactation at the moment.

What we've learned since starting is that my dad definitely underestimated the amount of work this would be, especially considering we are doing this on the side. He has been at every milking since the start. Once we get things organized a bit more we will definitely be looking for some milking help to get some time off. Also foot problems (Digital Dermatitis) which my grandpa never had on his closed herd of Holsteins in 50 years caught us off guard a bit, we now have it under control with a foot bath and spraying off the feet in the parlor. The issue we have now is some calves getting scours.

Anyways, if you have any questions just ask. I'll upload a bunch of pics now from the facilities to animals.

Edited by Canadian~9 2/25/2014 22:31