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Dairy producers take journey from Netherlands to Pipestone Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Agri News staff writer
PIPESTONE, Minn. -- Netherlands natives John and Berlinda Vander Wal have found a home for their dairy near Pipestone.
The couple's 1,200-cow dairy farm was one of five milking operations featured during the Minnesota Milk Producers Association's two-day summer bus tour.
John and Berlinda moved from the Netherlands to Alberta, Canada, in 1989 and operated a dairy there for 16 years. They moved to Pipestone in 2005.
The farm name, Newalta, is derived from several words. The "new" in the name comes from their new dairy; "alta" is short for Alberta; and "Wal" comes from their last name.
John is the farm's manager and handles the feeding, herd health and vaccinations while Berlinda oversees book work, fills in where needed and takes care of the family. Their five children help with breeding, feeding calves and other chores.
The cows are milked in a double-20 basement parlor that could be expanded to a double-40. Two workers milk in the pit while one works in the barn scraping alleys. Milking takes seven hours per shift.
Calves are taken from their mothers right after birth to the Cozy Calf Barn. The canvas-roofed hoop barns contain small pens for each calf and are cleaned with a skid steer. The floor of the calf barn is cement with a lawyer of sawdust topped with straw.
The four-row free-stall barn, which houses the milking herd, is naturally ventilated. The cows are on mattresses and headlocks are available for most lactating cows. There are 250 cows housed on bedded pack pen.
Pens in the free-stall are marked from one to nine. The number system helps milkers, he said. The milking cows are in pens one to seven while eight and nine are dry cows.
For dry cows, the far-offs are housed in free-stall pens with headlocks while the close-ups are housed in bedding pack with headlocks.
Replacements are raised by a custom raiser. When they come back to the herd, they are first housed in the free-stall barn. Close-up heifers are housed on bedding pack, he said.
The cows produce around 27,000 pounds of milk and have a somatic cell count of 150,000. In five years they'd like to increase the production to 28,000 and expand the herd to 2,200.
Four family members and 11 employees provide the labor force.
The cows are fed a TMR of alfalfa hay, soy-canola mix, a miscellaneous grain mix with 50 percent dry corn, cottonseed, dry corn gluten, wet corn gluten, molasses, and corn silage. Dry cows eat grass, wheat straw, soy-canola mix and corn silage. The cows are fed once a day and the feed is pushed up six to eight times a day. The forage dry matter is tested monthly.
Cows three weeks to close up are fed four pounds grain mix that's added to the TMR ration. The ration contains anionic salts. Heavier, older cows get calcium.
The move from their homeland provided opportunities, they said. Moving from Canada to the Pipestone area wasn't difficult.
Planning has already started for next year's summer bus tour, said MMPA executive director Bob Lefebvre. MMPA and the events and education committee will use participant evaluations to plan the event.
Several members of MMPA's board of directors plus members of Extension, dairy profitability teams and the dairy industry served on the committee. |
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