But they did something else too. The Brysons developed a decision-making model that keeps them on target, despite the growing financial and management pressures of farming in Canada in the 2020s.

They admit that not every step has been perfect or worked out right. It’s been quite a journey, after all.

In 2010, the Brysons bought a farm. And not just any farm, but a dairy farm, which means that in addition to land, buildings and machinery they had the almost prohibitive hurdle of buying quota.

Now, after 14 years of steady work while raising three kids, they’ve grown Bryt Farms from 49 kilos of quota to 112 kilos and from 100 acres to 400 acres, owned and rented.

“It felt very bare bones to start… ,” Jennifer begins, and Dave adds with a laugh, “Because it was. But from there, we’ve just been focused on trying to grow and create a farm that will be viable should another generation want to take over.”

Dave comes from a dairy farm, but he and his wife Jennifer decided to strike out on their own. “We bought an established dairy farm from a farmer who was ready to retire even though, having grown up in the industry,” Dave says, “you know how hard it is to get into dairy.” So, there’s a good reason why Dave’s X (formerly Twitter) profile says, “Moving forward one step at a time.”

It’s the framework around which every business decision is built. “At the beginning, there were many times I said, ‘Oh boy, this isn’t my farm, the farm I grew up with. I have no idea how to run this’ and so we needed to get our bearings,” says Dave.

“This was the period where we started to form our business philosophy beyond, ‘Okay, we’re farming. Now what?’”

They found a way, though, to make each move level them up for the next decision and, ultimately, for the next stage of growth.

At its heart, it’s teamwork. “Even though it might seem a little simplistic, that’s just it: we like to keep it simple when we’re making a final decision,” Dave says. “I come up with idea after idea and Jen is very good at making me go back to the drawing board each time. Not that she’s saying it’s not going to work, but she’s just really good at making me consider other options.”

Jennifer says that typically by the time Dave convinces her, it’s very easy to talk to their banker because they’ve thoroughly analyzed the decision.

That includes planning too. “We pre-plan every year for what we’d like to do next year,” says Jennifer. “We look around at what’s going on with other farms, if what they’re doing might work for us. Then we look at the industry and try to read the signs so we can look for ideas, strategies or opportunities.”

The Brysons also look for advice from other farmers. Dave believes that they’re the best resource for knowledge and experience, and the Brysons often turn to their select network for suggestions when they’re weighing a decision.

“We really value their opinion,” he says. “When we’re vetting ideas, after we assess them ourselves, we like to talk to other farmers because we’re not the first ones that have ever come up against these situations and decisions.”

The Brysons call these relationships “important and pivotal,” helping them enact a farm philosophy that emphasizes keeping on plan and being as consistent as possible.

Cautiously progressive

The couple say they don’t implement new “fads” quickly. “For example, I’d love to do strip tilling and it’s not really a matter of if we’ll do it, but when,” says Dave. “It doesn’t have to be today just because everyone else is doing it. The time needs to be right; it needs to fit; it needs to be realistic.”

Jennifer adds, though, “We’re cautiously progressive. It has to make financial sense. We figure out the things that work and what’s necessary.”

It’s true in the barn and in the field, and in their business management. “For example, we spray fungicide on the corn so that we’re not using buffers and binders in our feed and that keeps our feed costs down.”

“It was the same when we were making initial purchases during startup,” Dave agrees. “We always asked, ‘Is this going to work for us?’ Just because on paper it pencils out doesn’t mean you can just go and pay for it or cash-flow it every time or you’ll go broke.”

Early on, Jennifer and Dave had looked for ways to grow faster, and they decided to focus on making more milk by pushing the cows a little more. But the more they pushed, the more it seemed they were going backwards. There was a bad year where they lost several cows and production fell. They blamed it on the summer heat and the old barn. “It wears on your nerves — which is tough when you’re just starting to build a business,” Dave says.

They felt like they were losing ground.

Focus lost, focus found

Jennifer and Dave felt like they had reviewed all their processes and options, but finally got to a point where they realized that something wasn’t working and they needed a fresh set of eyes.

“We asked our feed salesperson for advice, and he said, ‘Listen, I’m gong to be honest. I can sell you all the feed, but that’s not going to fix your problem. The solution is to buy more cows. Unfortunately, you’ve had a bad year, lost some cows, production is down. I would buy 10 cows and get making milk. Forget about trying to make so much per cow. Just get back to basics and things will start to roll.’”

Dave says it was a gut punch, but it was also the right answer. They made an arrangement with the bank to buy not 10 but 20 cows. “We had accepted that something wasn’t working right, so it was clear that this was the next step. We showed our banker that our 20-cow solution meant that with our under-quota credit and the fact that once we got to X point in production, we’d be able to start buying quota. We got to the production level we needed within two months.”

They both said it felt like they had lost their focus and just needed someone to “smack them upside the head” and get back to their core business values of simplicity, consistency and one step at a time. “Simple. I can’t stress that enough,” says Dave. “We don’t get overwhelmed and lose focus on where we’re trying to go, what we’re trying to do. I don’t want to be stressed out because I forgot a detail. And this is what has helped us level out and get focused over the last five years.”

“Our farm has truly been a step-by-step process,” Jennifer says. “Every year we’ve undertaken a project, some small, some bigger, but that’s how we’ve been able to grow.”

For example, in 2010, when they were just starting out, they didn’t know if they’d be able to fill their quota with the facility they bought. “We didn’t know if it would ever happen and then it actually turned out to happen pretty quickly,” Dave says. Then someone in his network forced him to look at where they were and to question where they wanted to go. “They said, ‘You have a limited facility. How are you going to grow?’”

How are you going to grow?

The Brysons built an addition for a bigger milk tank, tried to ramp up the herd’s production and moved some calves to outdoor hutches so they could reconfigure the calving pen as more space for fresh cows. “We were trying to figure out what we could do… we really couldn’t borrow money since we had just bought the farm,” Dave says. “We asked ourselves, what step can we take to start buying and filling more quota with the cows we have? That was really what started our focus on growth.”

In 2016, they built the first addition on the barn and added another in 2021 to address issues they were having with dry cows.

And two years ago, they switched from a milking parlour to two milking robots for their 70 head, significantly reducing the workload. “We were at a point where Dave and I and one of the kids were always at the barn and it was so tough for anything else to happen in our lives,” says Jennifer. “And now, as the kids are going off to college, we don’t have their help as much, so robots mean we’re able to be more flexible.”

Both remain optimistic about dairy’s future in Canada. “My whole life I’ve been hearing all the negatives and there were times when I was really concerned for our industry,” says Dave. “But Jennifer and I were told we’d never get to this point and here we are.”

As Dave points out, farming can be a slow reward. So, what motivates them to take their next steps? He says it’s making decisions with future generations in mind. “Our three kids have been a huge part of us getting to where we are today. But we’ve always made it very clear that we’ll never guilt them into farming.”

“My family is known for being stubborn,” Dave says with a grin. “It can be a good and bad trait, but it’s helped me find my way through all this and figure out how to make it all happen. So, we always say, ‘Okay, we’ve done that step; what’s the next one?’ For our family, for our farm, it’s just about what do we believe is the right next thing for us. It’s a different way of setting goals.”

The post Bryt Farms positions itself for growth in dairy industry appeared first on Country Guide.

But even within the world’s agriculture, it’s probable that no sector has been a target more often, or more stridently, than its dairy farms.

In Britain, a group called Animal Rebellion has been pouring milk onto the floors of supermarkets — as well as other unlawful acts — in publicized protests, with the stated aim of completely disrupting that country’s dairy supply.

Among that group’s demands are government support for a movement completely away from animal farming and commercial fishing to a totally plant-based system. (That said, there is some flexibility in their demands. One supporter told a local newspaper report he’d also allow a complete return to “wild nature.” )

How converting all existing pasture and forage lands to intensive cropping to allow for a completely plant-based diet would suddenly make agriculture more “natural” is testament to the absurdity of the movement. Nevertheless, the dairy sector has been identified as one of the biggest GHG (greenhouse gas) emitters in agriculture, and that has still other activist groups riled up and targeting farms and value chain businesses as well.

Here in Canada, the Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) has launched a public relations campaign in an apparent effort to avoid the kind of problems U.K. farmers and dairy processors are coping with. According to a study completed for the DFC, Canadian dairy operations contribute only half of the global average GHGs emitted by dairy farms around the world, and the group has committed to reaching net-zero emissions by the year 2050. 

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirms this low GHG emissions ranking and estimates the average carbon footprint for a litre of milk produced in Canada ranges from 0.93 kilogram of CO2 equivalents in the west to 1.12 kilograms in the east. Differing climates and the use of irrigation in some regions is the cause for the difference.

Just how significant is that one kilogram of CO2 equivalents? For reference, it’s roughly the equivalent carbon footprint of a two-minute hot shower.

Ag machinery brands have been keenly aware of how farming is perceived by the public, and many of them have been working to help train farmers in “sustainable” production methods. Hopefully, they can help stem the tide of activism against the industry. As brands push precision ag technology to western producers as an aid in that effort, AGCO has also had a relatively impressive record in providing small-holding farmers in developing nations with the skills to not only reduce their impact on the environment, but also to improve their standard of living at the same time.

According to the FAO, among those global regions with the highest carbon footprint in dairy production are Africa and Asia. GHG emissions in some of those regions can hit seven kilograms per litre. In October, AGCO’s Agriculture Foundation (AAF) made a $250,000 donation to Heifer Netherlands (a Dutch non-profit organization) “to improve the sustainability, productivity and resilience of smallholder dairy farming families through the development of a climate-smart and productive dairy model in Nepal.”

The AAF’s stated goal is to “fight hunger and promote sustainable climate solutions for farmers through sustainable, impact-driven agriculture projects.” Heifer Netherland’s grant application was chosen from hundreds of others, according to AGCO. As a result, the two have entered a two-year partnership to help Nepalese dairy producers improve their operations.

“Funded by the AAF, this project will help minimize existing GHG emissions from Nepalese smallholder dairy farming practices while improving productivity,” reads AGCO’s statement. “It will also help smallholder dairy producers, particularly women, focus on climate-smart solutions. The project approach will combine several sustainable farming methods. Producers will learn to develop climate-smart feed management and animal husbandry systems that reduce enteric fermentation, improve the productivity of animals and sequester carbon emissions through fodder trees and proper manure management with clean energy production using biogas and organic fertilizer.”

Roger Batkin, board chair at the AGCO Agriculture Foundation, added to that, saying, “Nepal remains one of the world’s least-developed nations. The majority of people live in rural areas. We want to prioritize actions for the direct benefit of these farmers’ livelihoods while supporting sustainable agricultural practices that maintain soil fertility, raise healthy livestock and improve the environment. Across food chains, from livestock to crop production, climate change continues to have a significant impact on food security and livelihoods of farmers and their communities.”

“This project will also contribute to the work of a large long-term program called ‘Milky Way Nepal’ that aims to transform the smallholder dairy sector into a fair, profitable and climate-smart value chain by 2030,” said Goossen Hoenders, executive director of Stichting Heifer Nederland. “The granted award is one of the first steps into realizing this ambitious program.”

Over the 24 months of the program, the effort is expected to have an impact on about 100 small dairy operations, affecting the lives of about 500 people in total. It is also expected to engage with a number of those in the dairy value chain, Nepalese academics and non-governmental organizations to drive sustainable development initiatives from the producer level right through to the final consumer.

Of course climate change-related production processes aren’t the only aspect of animal husbandry that fringe protest groups have targeted. Animal welfare activists, such as PETA, have taken action against beef and dairy operations in the past. And AGCO’s AAF has pushed for improvements in animal welfare, too.

Back in January of 2019, then AGCO CEO Martin Richenhagen spoke at the “Feeding the World — The Future of Protein” summit in Berlin, which his firm had organized.

“Whilst discussing protein production, a special emphasis should be placed on the future of the animal welfare. Meat and poultry producers, especially in emerging markets with a growing middle class, are in need of comprehensive solutions to improve agricultural supply chains,” Richenhagen told the audience back then. “Today, we have brought together industry specialists, politicians, scientists and animal welfare experts to discuss a number of pressing matters, including challenges to feed a rapidly growing world population, as well as solutions that not only boost overall performance and productivity of farms, but also offer innovative and sustainable ways to improve animal handling and the fair treatment of animals in our agricultural supply chains.”

As part of the ongoing efforts of that initiative, in 2020 the AAF launched an event in Zambia to teach small poultry growers better, more sustainable production methods.

“Our agricultural training facility will play a key role to facilitate knowledge and skills transfer for farmers on best livestock management practices required to boost productivity and income. We will work with our grain and protein business unit to support selected farmers on improved animal welfare and livestock management operations,” said Kalongo Chitengi, senior manager at the AGCO Future Farm.

That Future Farm in Zambia was another AGCO initiative created even earlier, in 2015. It was a pet project of Richenhagen and was created to help train African farmers in modern production methods and to give them access to farm equipment. And unlike previous efforts to introduce modern farming on the continent, including a well-known effort by the Canadian International Development Agency back a few decades ago, this one has been working well.

The success of that demonstration farm and other initiatives to improve the lives of farmers around the world could eventually benefit the brand in giving it an early start in future machinery markets where currently none exists. But right now, those efforts are truly providing a worthy humanitarian service. 

The world could use a lot more of such corporate responsibility. It’s an effort that will require every stakeholder in agriculture to pitch in, including the machinery sector.

As Charlie McConalogue, Irish minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in Donegal, Ireland is reported to have told a rural youth organization during a speech, “We can’t just say we’re sustainable.” The agriculture sector will eventually have to prove it.

The post The right side appeared first on Country Guide.

That’s the point at which John Schenkels of Schenkels Farms Inc. in Miramichi, N.B., had found himself. Since taking over his father’s farm straight out of college in 1993, Schenkels had grown the dairy farm from 60 to 200 milking head while optimizing his land, labour and facilities along the way.

“At those points in a business you can stagnate a bit and don’t necessarily make the steps to get ahead,” says Schenkels, adding he didn’t want to be in that position.

“Intrinsically, you want to keep investing and growing,” he says, “but when there’s no clear successor, it’s daunting to invest in something that may end up pieced out and at lower value.”

In these moments, Schenkels believes it’s time for outside-the-box thinking.

About 15 years ago, and with a young family, Schenkels considered growing his dairy farm through a joint venture to merge and make a bigger dairy farm.

“It didn’t work,” he says. “Maybe it was the timing, maybe not the right people, maybe not the right plan.”

Instead, he looked outside dairy and diversified into wild, lowbush blueberries in 2006 — a great fit for his land and regional marketing opportunities in the Maritimes.

Fast-forwarding through another decade of farming and evolution, Schenkels now had two clear business entities established and was evaluating his next major move. He wanted to keep growing, yet had already optimized much of his land and resources building the dairy and blueberries to a size that could be attractive and attainable for successors.

Next, Schenkels wanted to invest more into dairy and was ready to make room for bringing family and/or non-family successors into the business.

The joint venture concept

As he approaches age 50 with four kids (aged 28, 19, 17 and 15) and three grandkids, Schenkels wants to keep the door open for family succession. “If they want it, it’s there,” he says, “but if not, no hard feelings.” In either case, his goal is that both the business and the family must continue.

The joint venture concept still niggled at Schenkels. Over the years he had continued to test the waters. “Lots of people had been approached, and lots didn’t work out,” he says, “you learn as you go, and keep putting the idea out there until something sticks.”

Finally, the fit came in the shape of four partners: two brothers, Jim and Ron Beckwith, around the same age as Schenkels, and Ron’s son, Lindon, and nephew, Kyle, both in their 20s. All relatives in the Beckwith family — yet, none related to Schenkels.

Schenkels and the two brothers each had dairy farms they hoped to see transition to the next generation, but individually they were limited with what they could achieve. Together, though, they could pool assets towards a common goal. That goal became a new company, Beckelm Farms (2018) Ltd. with 300 milking cows in a barn supported by a land base of 600 acres — and the opportunity to transition to younger successors.

“I give them a lot of credit for understanding what we were trying to do, where we needed to go, and seeing how they can get involved,” says Schenkels of his four partners. “Everyone could see the end goal and say it’s a better place than where we are now so we can buy into it.”

To help, the group involved family business continuity planner Len Davies of Davies Legacy Planning Group Inc. He guided everyone onto the same page from a neutral position, says Schenkels. “It’s important to have that neutrality to present a picture that’s authentic and not clouded in bias.”

Davies says the project “involved getting three dairy farmers together to create a new company where all three would contribute assets to get the new dairy enterprise under way.” There were three dairy farms at the outset, and there continue to be three dairy farms after the new agreement — though the milk quota and business ownership structure of one farm has changed considerably.

A different way to operate

In less than two years from the start of negotiations and planning, the group collectively established a new six-robot facility for 300 milking cows with the supporting land base in Salisbury, N.B. The first cows moved into the new barn in spring 2019.

Schenkels says the arrangement plays to everyone’s strengths, whether that’s as cow men or navigating accounting and legal, for example. There was give and take throughout the negotiations to make it work. Not every idea was viable, but the group tried to marry all things together to get the best outcome for everyone. And ultimately the plan was pulled together with accountants and lawyers to make a shareholders agreement.

Schenkels says considerable time was spent in discussions to draw up the shareholders agreement. “We had to cover all the ‘what if’ scenarios,” he says. What if there is death, divorce or disability; what if partners want to transition out, or new partners want to transition in. “We tried to anticipate every possible scenario and then clearly detailed what would happen in our agreement,” he says.

“A lot of credit goes to all parties for understanding their role and expectations,” says Schenkels. “It’s not perfect, but everything is rolling along smoothly at this point in time.”

Schenkels leads the business part and, despite the three-hour round-trip drive, tries to get to the new facility at least one day per week. His partners are the boots on the ground. The older generation brothers are mentoring the son and nephew. “The intention,” says Schenkels, “is to give them (the younger generation) the framework to understand how the right decisions get made, and then give the successors the freedom to make decisions.”

Big-picture goals and planning decisions are made by the company directors, collaboratively. Day-to-day decisions are made by the younger generation as the boots on the ground. The group tries to meet weekly to review farm performance and next steps.

Ultimately, the new enterprise will experience a full farm transition. As the younger generation builds equity, they can participate in a share buyback as spelled out in their shareholders agreement.

Why does it work?

Davies says the key to this arrangement is that all the stakeholders are compatible. “They are different personalities that bring different aspects to the table,” says Davies. “Too many people want people like themselves, and that results in clashes down the road.”

He feels this type of collaboration might be “the leading edge of something that we may see a lot more of in the future.”

“It’s not for everybody,” says Schenkels, noting that for many people it’s not easy to give up something; and sometimes you have good people and no opportunity, or vice versa. “We’re not less susceptible to failure and this approach is not less stressful, but the viability of this collaborative business structure should be better than a regular business venture.”

Ultimately, Schenkels is closer to his goal of having most of his assets covered by some sort of succession plan, building enough continuity and redundancy in that business so it can thrive for many years to come.

His business entities may not be as liquid as the day before this latest venture, but Schenkels is confident investing money to build the business, pointing out the alternative is to sell everything and get taxed. “If you’re working with good people,” Schenkels says, “you’re going to create wealth.”

The post Pooling resources appeared first on Country Guide.

There are already several prototype field robots at work on farms, but it is really the dairy sector that first started seeing the commercial application of robots in ag, putting them to work in barns, which is one of the most practical places for automation. The barn is, after all, a very similar environment to industrial manufacturing and assembly plants where automation has long-since taken over many production tasks.

This spring DeLaval, a prominent name in dairy barn equipment, announced the introduction of a new robotic product: the OptiDuo Robotic Feed Refresher.

The press release announcing the OptiDuo says it “pushes and remixes feed, making rations more appealing — helping increase consumption and improve milk production.” That sets it apart from regular “feed bunk pushers” that just move feed back toward the bunks and within reach of the animals.

Anyone who has ever managed cattle knows every herd operates on the basis of seniority. The senior cows demand first access to feed while the junior cows and heifers patiently wait their turn for access. But the senior cows will select the best, most palatable feed and leave the less nutritious content for the junior cows, who come later. That can negatively affect the growth, fertility and milk production of those junior individuals. DeLaval claims the OptiDuo can help prevent that.

“Not only does it push feed back to the feed bunk, but it remixes it, making it more appealing to cows by avoiding compression and helping to reduce waste,” reads the press release. “More visits to the feedbunk may also mean better cow traffic and less competition and stress while eating. With OptiDuo, cows can consume more, resulting in higher milk yields of up to two kilograms per day. OptiDuo is the only feed pusher on the market with an optional concentrate dispenser, further enticing cows to eat more.”

The OptiDuo’s safety systems allow it to operate continuously without supervision due to what the company calls its smart navigation system. That helps ensure it always operates within the defined area it is supposed to be. Safety bumpers on all sides of the machine will automatically stop the unit if it senses a person, object or animal.

DeLaval’s OptiDuo will work in all types of barns, according to the company, and it is compatible with both conventional and robotic milking systems.

“It’s a great addition to DeLaval VMS operation,” said Muhieddine Labban, robotics solution manager. “It complements the dairy producer’s feeding strategy between the milking robot and the feed bunk.”

The post DeLaval rolls out new barn robot to help with feed rations appeared first on Country Guide.

He’d kept his eyes open, too, and was alert to the challenges in both sectors. In fact, with wildly fluctuating grain and beef prices, “challenges” can be an understatement, and Owen, just in his mid-teens, began to think about potential ways to add another income source to grain farming.

That’s when he decided to look in a direction that would provide him some security and certainty, and it’s why he took an unconventional next step.

Owen began to investigate the supply-managed dairy industry.

It meant a huge departure from the norm for both Owen and his parents. None of them had any experience in dairy. But then, the Fijalas are an enterprising family; Owen’s dad, Mark, started a sideline grain trucking business years ago, and his mother, Alison, has long juggled the farm books and administration with a full-time, off-farm job as resident care co-ordinator of a local personal care home.

In other words, the idea that their son might want to diversify into a dairy business didn’t really phase them; they were only too keen to roll up their sleeves and help him get there.

But there’s another wrinkle in the story.

Owen was only 16 when he set dairy farming as his goal, despite that being an age when many teenagers haven’t a clue about where they are going with their lives.

Over the next three years, while still in high school, Owen spent weekends and summer holidays working for a local dairy producer, Readore Farms, owned and operated by Rheal and Diane Simon with their sons, Mitch and Mark, learning the ropes and getting more hooked as he went.

“I literally didn’t know a thing about dairy,” says Owen, who graduated in 2018 and turned 19 in March of this year. “The first year, I was just trying to do the job right, but by the second year, I was taking more of an interest. I liked it and once I figured out how to do everything, then I started to learn about things like different sicknesses or what could cause cows not to milk as much.”

Getting into dairy

Learning about how to operate a dairy barn day-to-day was one thing; getting into the dairy industry was quite another.

That’s where the Dairy Farmers of Manitoba New Entrant Program came in. Other provinces have versions of the program, but in this case it is designed to assist Manitobans to get into the dairy industry, and each year it awards a certain amount of unsaleable, daily butterfat quota at no cost to the successful applicant, who must also purchase a matching amount of quota. Once licensed and registered as a dairy farmer, the new entrant can produce and ship raw milk, retaining the free quota as long as he or she continues to be a registered milk producer with a minimum 51 per cent ownership in their dairy.

Owen applied and was one of three successful new entrants for 2018, and admits that he probably would have had to put his plans on hold if he’d not been successful. “If I didn’t get the new entry, I was going to go to the University of Manitoba to take an agriculture diploma and would have re-applied for the New Entrant program the following year,” says Owen. “At the time, though, I wanted to farm, I didn’t really want to go to university, so with Mom and Dad’s help we really pushed hard to try and get the new entrant award.”

Owen says Alison and Mark’s help was invaluable to him in applying for the program. The application was significant; he needed a two-year, detailed business plan including balance sheets and cash-flow statements, none of which he’d yet learned to do. He also needed to draw up design plans and cost estimates for a new barn, because part of the criteria is that the new entrant must be new to the industry, not an existing dairy. Then there was financing to consider.

It was a lot to contend with, and the family brought in dairy industry consultant, Roger Mills, to help them.

Another issue was Owen’s age. Applicants had to be 18 years old, and at the time he was applying, Owen was only 17. So he applied together with his parents as a family, knowing that a decision would be made in December before his March birthday.

The upshot is, Owen received a free annual quota of 30 kgs of butterfat through the New Entrant program, and purchased an additional 30 kgs, which allows him to produce and ship 60 kgs of butterfat (approximately 1,575 litres of milk) a day. Getting half his quota for free has been a huge shot in the arm for Owen’s business.

“Quota is about the biggest expense in dairy farming,” he says. “To win half of my quota is pretty big and it means I could spend a little more on better cows or add something to the barn. It would have been too much to finance it all.”

The clock starts ticking

Once Owen was awarded the quota by Dairy Farmers of Manitoba in December 2017, the time clock was ticking. The program requires that the new entrant begin production within the year of being selected.

Construction on the new 22,500-square-foot barn began last April, but there were a few setbacks; like the walls blowing down in a strong windstorm before Owen graduated in June.

Owen had the luxury of being able to design the dairy facility to his own specifications, taking the best elements of many different ones he and his parents visited over the fall of 2018 from Ontario to Manitoba. In the end, it was a dairy barn at a Hutterite Colony closer to home that inspired the design, which is free-stall, where cows can move back and forth freely between their stalls and the robotic milking machine that came from Europe. His fully automated barn is very different from the tie-stall barn where he learned the business, although he still says that’s the best way to learn.

“If you want to learn about dairy, you have to learn in a tie-stall barn because you have to pretty much do everything manually: feeding, milking, moving cows and so on,” he says.

The cows are fed via conveyors leading from the stationary feed mixer in an adjacent room, which eliminates the need to bring feed to the barn with a tractor. “It keeps the barn a lot cleaner, and it’s a lot more efficient” says Owen. “Instead of starting up a tractor at 10 at night, you just click a few buttons on the mixer and the feed will start flowing.”

The barn has individual stalls where each cow can lay down between milkings, as well as bull pen, calving pen and separate stalls to wean calves away from the main barn. The dry cows have their own area to enjoy their “honeymoon” from milking. “The cows get dried up 45 to 60 days before calving, when they get a break from milking so they can get back in perfect shape for calving,” says Owen, who adds that calving is the most stressful time for the cows. “They have a lot of milk 100 days after calving so just think of how much milk they have right when they calve.

“That’s probably where you see the most headaches if you don’t properly feed them or give them enough of a break.”

The cows are milked an average of three times a day, and each wears a collar that allows the robotic milker to identify them and only lets them in to be milked at appropriate intervals. The whole milking process is completely automatic.

To attract the cows to the milker, they are provided with feed pellets, but if a cow that has already been milked less than five hours before tries to enter the machine, it won’t dispense any pellets and lets the cow out. Over time, the cows learn the routine.

The milker also sanitizes and washes the teats before and after the cow is milked to prevent disease or cracked teats.

An automated manure scraper slowly makes its way up and down the barn to remove manure and pump it to the storage tank outside. The whole operation is extremely clean and sanitary which is important for cow health and milk quality, says Owen.

Every time a cow visits the robot it feeds the information back to a computer system where Owen can see how many times each cow has milked and the volume produced, which allows him to detect any issues or problems with an individual cow or equipment. “I’ll receive an alarm on my phone if a cow goes down in milk, like she’s milking 45 litres and the next day she’s down to 20 litres,” says Owen. “Same thing, if, in the middle of the night, there’s something wrong with the robot, it’ll alarm my phone and tell me to check the robot.”

Currently, Owen has 48 milk cows and the capacity to milk around 60 to 70 each day, but he has the potential to double that number by adding another milking robot.

What do you know, kid?

The barn is a large investment and again, Owen probably wouldn’t have been able to finance it without help from his parents, who introduced him to their contact at Farm Credit Canada, and helped provide some valuable leverage against their own farm property, because once again, Owen’s age inevitably led to the assumption that he might be too inexperienced to take on such a large responsibility by himself.

“The first thing they told me is that maybe I need someone to work here that’s like an ex-dairy farmer because they were worried that I didn’t know what to do, but I said just trust me, I know this stuff, and sure enough I’m doing well,” says Owen. “If I had been 25 and in the workforce for a long time it would have been easier, but I would have had to wait a lot longer to get into the industry I think if I hadn’t had my parents behind me.”

Owen learned early on the importance of assembling a good team of mentors and industry experts and leveraging their advice and guidance. “You need to trust people to help you out,” he says. “When we bought our cows, we knew and respected the guys we bought them from quite well, and when the veterinarian tells you to do something, you need to take their advice because the feed representative and veterinarian pretty much work for you. If I have problems and can’t figure it out on my own, I can always phone them and they are always there to help.”

Owen admits that, like everything, running a dairy business is a bit of trial and error where he learns from every mistake he makes or new issue that arises. “I can’t just expect someone else to always be here or to be available by phone, so if I have a problem, I have to try and figure it out myself first,” says Owen. “As an example, one time I could see that one of the quarters on the robot was only milking at 75 per cent on every single cow,” he says. “I figured there must be something wrong with the robot and sure enough there was a little slice in the hose, so it was sucking air and not sucking all the milk out. I learned that’s something I need to check every single day.”

A 24/7 business

The dairy industry offers predictability that many other agricultural commodity sectors might envy, and it’s exactly the reason that Owen decided on it because he can plan and grow with a degree of certainty about his income and expenses.

“I know basically how much I am getting paid every month, and it can fluctuate a little; prices might go down five cents a litre or something, but it’s not like beef where prices go down and jump up,” says Owen. “If I want to buy more cows, I know exactly how much milk I need them to produce to pay for themselves. Bills for feed, the veterinarian, hydro, semen and so on are close to the same amount every month, so it’s easy to cash-flow in and out; this is how much can go for the loan for the barn, this much to next month’s feed and so on.”

It may sound like a dream business scenario — predictable income and relatively stable expenses — but that doesn’t mean the dairy industry is a cakewalk. It has risks and uncertainty just like any other business and it’s a lot of hard work and a 24/7 commitment, says Owen, which people need to understand before they come on board.

“Anyone wanting to come into the dairy industry should understand how much work it actually is before they get into it,” he says. “I suggest working on a dairy farm for at least three years to get the experience and understanding that it’s an every-day job, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, everyday, there’s no days off.”

For new entrants who took his path and are building a barn from scratch, the important thing is to research and design the barn the way that works best for them. “Take your time and make sure you pick what you want because you’re going to have to spend pretty much the rest of your life in there, so even if you have to spend that little bit of extra money to make it the way you want, it’s definitely worth it because you’re going to pay for it in the long run if you don’t,” he says.

Still lots to learn

Like other dairy farmers, he has some concerns about trade deals like the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that has given the U.S. access to around 3.6 per cent of Canada’s dairy industry, a move that the Dairy Farmers of Canada has said could jeopardize Canadian dairy farmers, but he’s confident that it’s a good industry to be in and strong enough to weather any challenges on the trade front.

“When you think about it, if you’re a grain farmer, one year you might get $10 for your canola and the next year you get $14,” says Owen. “It is what it is and I think the uncertainty out there over trade deals is bringing everyone a little bit closer together in terms of what we can do to help each other out because it seems like all dairy farmers are willing to help each other. There’s lots of support to see each other succeed.”

Owen knows he still has a lot to learn, especially about the administrative and financial side of the business, which his mom, who has always done the accounting for the farm and trucking business, is currently helping him with. But he’s got plenty of time to learn and knows he will take all of it on eventually.

“I will learn more and more about that side of the business,” says Owen. “I already know more than I did when we first started. It’s just like anything, it takes time.”

Owen’s business smarts are growing fast and he knows the key to success is making the most of the resources he has. “The plan is to eventually put in another robot to milk at least 100 cows and get the most milk out of every single cow,” he says. But he also has his eye on costs. “I want to have minimal cows as possible and fill as much quota as I can. The less cows you have, the less cost you have. It all comes down to management. If you put the work into it, you can get the production out of every animal.”

He began with good stock and plans to concentrate on the genetics of his herd to make sure he has a breeding program that will result in the most productive cows he can get.

“I plan to do all the cows via artificial insemination and am doing a lot of research and learning about what bulls to use, and which cows need help with what traits,” he says. “When you find a bull, you see the traits he has and what he has that’s better than other bulls and then you can look at his sire, his mother, his grandmother and great-grandmother and see what traits they had… It all comes back to getting the most milk out of every cow that you can.”

Obviously, Owen isn’t put off by a challenge, and as he rolls with his own operation, it’s the challenges that he’s enjoying the most. “Every day it seems like I learned something new there, but they always said, you’re going to learn the most when it’s your own because then you make the decisions yourself,” says Owen. “It’s not just, ‘Oh there’s a problem, phone up the boss, what should we do?’ It’s actually fun, it’s like now I can do what I want, I’m going to figure out what to do.”

The post Early days appeared first on Country Guide.

“The result is that all producers are lost in a open and volatile market,” says Katrine Lecornu, a French dairy producer and president of the European Dairy Farmers (EDF).

Dairy here is big business. France is home to the world’s largest dairy processors, including Lactalis, Danone and Sodiaal. As well, four out of 10 litres of milk produced in the country are exported.

The producer price of milk remains the biggest challenge. Producers who ship for value-added niche products such as organic milk or specialty cheeses, and producers who are tied in with local markets can get better returns, but they represent less than 10 per cent of French production.

French President Emmanuel Macron says he is on the side of farmers and he is looking for a new social contract based on animal welfare and a non-GMO feed and grazing system. But he has yet to find a formula to set a “fair price.” Nor has he been able to get the country’s four leading supermarket chains to stop driving down the price of dairy products to attract consumers.

Read the three stories in our Country Guide series below:

• The most hated farm in France
• Organic milk: 1,000 farms for one cow
• Setting their own quota

The post After milk quotas appeared first on Country Guide.

With his herd of 160 milking cows of the Montbéliarde breed, the 58 year old is among the 2,300 farmers who produce the champagne of French cheeses, Comté, whose production from raw milk dates back almost 1,000 years.

When Brussels dumped the European quota system in 2015, many farmers from the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark boosted their production to win cheese export markets with other products. But the Comté producers kept a cool head. “We set a quota per farmer and per hectare,” says the president of La fruitière de Flangebouche where Jean-Marie Guinchard is a member. (La fruitière is the name given to a co-operative and means “fruit of labour.”)

The Comté sector is France’s most important protected designation of origin (AOP). It counts 146 processors, among which 122 fruitières and 12 cheese refiners are key to the process.

Flangebouche president Olivier Vivot extracts some numbers from his computer to explain the Comté popularity. From 1999 to 2015, the production increased by 20,000 tonnes to reach 67,000 tonnes, although in 2016, bad weather cut it to 62,000 tonnes.

For the moment, less than 10 per cent of the famous cheese is exported, but the Americans and the English are quickly developing a taste for it.

“We have difficulty to follow up on our markets and we struggle to supply the demand,” says Vivot. One can bet that, under the Canada-EU free trade agreement (CETA), Comté will compete with Canadian artisan cheese makers, especially from Quebec which counts 30 of them.

Canadian dairy farmers complain that CETA, which allows importing 16,000 tonnes of European specialty cheese is unfair competition.

Although Brussels has dropped the EU quota system, it has not abandonned its Common Agriculture Policy subsidies. Jean-Marie Guinchard and his associate receive 50,000 euros (C$75,000) annually to maintain their business in this postal card environment. Even if they get 520 euros (C$780)/1,000 litres, compared with 320 euros (C$480) for conventional milk, “without the European subsidies we could not maintain our farm. It is a choice of society,” says Guinchard.

Two factors, however, limit the production of the French cheese flagship. The first is weather. The second is a series of very strict regulations. Comté can only be produced by two breeds of cows, the Montbéliarde or the French Simmental. The cows must be grazing seven to nine months per year and must be fed with locally produced forages.

Silage and GMO plants are banned. But some regulations are the source of high tension among farmers themselves.

“Should we limit the size of the farm to 150 milking cows? Should we ban the use of robots at the farm when we use robots in the maturity chambers of our co-ops to turn the 40-kg wheels of Comté?” asks Jean-Marie Guinchard.

The producer also worries about the consumer reaction to the use of glyphosate by some farmers to help ripen the cereals in the field.

Still, in one way at least, it looks like these cheese producers are on to a good thing.

Some 130 Comté farms are being taken over by young farmers each year and there is a lineup, according to Olivier Vivot. Among them is the son of Jean-Marie Guinchard, Baptiste, who intends to take over the family farm within the next five years, securing one of the French’s oldest traditions.

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To outsiders, it can seem like so many more chances for family to get in the way, and so many chances for old rivalries to flare up.

On the inside, though, it means so many more chances for some really amazing success stories.

For our March 27, 2018 issue of Country Guide, we talked to brothers and sisters in two such farming operations, and in both cases we found they’ve learned as they’ve grown. Today they say that farming as brother and sister is just something they do. But can it ever really be that simple?

At 9 a.m. most days Mary Ann Doré and Graham Johnston can be found much as when they were when growing up as brother and sister — having breakfast together.

The location is no longer their parents’ kitchen, though, but the modern office and kitchen at the front of their dairy barn near New Dundee, Ont.

There they are joined by Mary Ann’s husband Joe Doré and her father James. The morning breakfast, after milking, is a chance for the family at Heritage Hill Farms to get together to decide on priorities for the day and to make decisions, aided by the busy white board that lists what’s happening on the farm.

The family’s journey to its present farm involves seizing opportunity, but also making conscious decisions that have allowed Graham and Mary Ann to farm together.

The successful family partnership, which also involves Graham and Mary Ann’s parents James and Frances Johnston and their sister Claire, who works off-farm, runs smoothly. Previous generations set precedents for successful business succession, which this generation has followed.

“Our family has long gotten along,” says Mary Ann. “There’s been peaceful transition through the generations.”

The family is celebrating 175 years farming in Canada. Johnstons moved to Toronto Gore Township, now known as the City of Brampton, in 1842, 25 years before Canada was formed.

The encroaching city and a desire to grow resulted in a move to near New Dundee, Ont., in 2011.

There are now numerous cows under different prefixes in the herd — a throwback to the family’s focus on quality cows. Graham uses the Gore Lane prefix, Mary Ann and Joe took over her grandfather’s Gore Cottage prefix and Claire has her cows under Outline Holsteins prefix. Their parents continue to use Jameston Holsteins.

However, once the family was building at its new location it became obvious they needed one business name, with the result being Heritage Hill Farms. The farm is a partnership with numerous family members including both parents, Mary Ann and Joe, and Claire. Graham is a partner, but his wife Amanda, who works in nearby Kitchener, is not. Communication with all stakeholders is important, including Amanda, says Mary Ann, even if she’s not technically a partner.

Both Graham and Mary Ann attended the University of Guelph, Graham in the two-year diploma program and Mary Ann in the four-year degree program.

Graham, the eldest, came home first to farm.

“I never thought there was a place for me, being second born,” says Mary Ann. “It wasn’t a gender thing, there just wasn’t much to do. It was not enough for three full-time people.”

At the time the farm milked between 45 and 50 cows in a tie-stall barn that had been renovated in the 1990s.

“I always thought I’d be a researcher or something,” says Mary Ann. “I realized at school I would be terrible at sales and I missed working with the cows when I was gone. Four years away from them made me want to be back.”

By the time Mary Ann finished university, the city had continued to move out towards the farm, which was then surrounded by an industrial park. It was becoming challenging to find dairy farm suppliers nearby. The time had come to move.

They looked around southern Ontario for a new site and settled on one near New Dundee. The new barn was built and the cows were moved.

“Once the cows were gone from Brampton, Dad was ready to get out of Dodge,” says Graham.

The family now lives in the area around the farm with Mary Ann and Joe living on the property with the barn. The new farm, a modern freestall, has the capacity to house about 100 cows, although they aren’t at that number yet.

The sorting out of roles on the farm fell to each person’s strengths. The family members pitch in when needed to get the milking and other chores done, and they employ a student for the summer months.

There are also standard operating procedures so jobs can be shared.

The family worked with dairy consultant Tom Armstrong when planning the new operation.

He surveyed the six partners and found that they had quite similar views, which he said was rare.

It’s not that they can’t identify some differences.

Mary Ann uses the story of twin cows. One is a great milk producer, the other classified Excellent. “If someone says ‘go get the good one,’ who do you get?” she asks.

She and Joe would prefer the top milk producer, while “Graham and Dad like pedigreed cows.”

“Knowing people’s personalities is almost more important than how skills blend,” she says.

Graham is in the Gay Lea Young Leaders program and that has given him some insight into personalities of family members. He’s more thoughtful and takes longer to make decisions. Mary Ann and Joe are more driver types.

The family has different interests too. Graham’s a curler.

“If we were both passionate about curling and wanted to go to a bonspiel in London, it would be a conflict,” says Mary Ann. “Someone has to stay back and milk cows.

“There is not a lot of overlapping conflict when it comes to personal passions, but our work passions overlap so closely that it works really well in the barn.”

The fact that Graham and Mary Ann are brother and sister means less than the fact that they get along.

There is a frankness to their conversations that helps get things done, which might not be possible if they were both male or both female.

Joe, an only child, says he found that dynamic interesting. “I could say something to Graham that Joe could never say to Graham,” says Mary Ann. That’s why if Joe is texting Graham a message from Mary Ann then he makes sure Graham knows it’s coming from her and not him.

“That was strange for the first year,” says Joe. “You guys would bicker about something and 30 seconds later you’d be laughing.”

There’s a inherent motivation to get along in the business structure. All the partners are equal and they can’t fire each other, so they have to find solutions.

That means working together on projects like a new covered area for their calf hutches, but also to decide to take out a bedding composter that had resulted in serious wintertime mastitis issues, including a serious bout of klebsiella mastitis that resulted in the death of some cows. It was a tough time for the family, but the composter is now gone and the cows are healthy again.

“Working relationships can sometimes take work, but everything runs better when everyone is in a good mood,” says Mary Ann. “It’s worth it to be surrounded by family.”

The post The ‘insight’ bonus appeared first on Country Guide.

Calves can decide when they want milk from a machine that identifies them and gives them their allotted daily feeding over several times per day.

New Galma is one of the most automated dairy farms in the country, and for Nicolaas Zeldenrijk, it feels like each decision has led to the next as the family learns to manage not just by expert cattle stockmanship, but by data.

For example, when the family automated both its milking and its feeding systems, it found there were never any times when all the cattle were up out of their stalls simultaneously, which would have been their best chance to bed them, so they added a new automated bedding system from Denmark that runs above the stalls on a rail, dumping whatever bedding is used and separating manure solids.

All the technology has paid off in labour savings, as Nicolaas and Wilma Zeldenrijk and their children run the farm where about 200 cows are milked.

The Zeldenrijks’ dairy farm is an example of the type of labour-saving technology being adopted across the agriculture sector in Canada.

The productivity of Canada’s on-farm labour has spiked in the past eight years, especially compared to the previous 50 years. In fact, our agriculture labour productivity growth is going up at a faster rate than that of the total Canadian business sector.

Canadian agriculture labour productivity has increased by 50 points between 2007 and 2015 from a base of 100, a more than six per cent annual growth rate, according to Statistics Canada.

By comparison the total business sector has only increased by 4.4 points since 2007.

The Statistics Canada category includes forestry and logging, but a close look shows crop farmers have done the most to increase their labour productivity, up 51 points in 2013 over the 2007 base of 100. Livestock farmers are at 21 points over 2007. (Forestry and logging performed reasonably well too, up 26 points over 2007.)

Unlike farmers, efficiency in the agriculture support sector achieved just a seven-point increase by 2015. That’s a bit under one per cent per year.

This trend is not new. Statistics Canada’s numbers back to 1961 show that between that year and 2007, agriculture labour productivity outpaced that of the total business sector. That means a 3.7 per cent per year increase in agricultural labour productivity from 1961 to 2015, says Matthew MacDonald, assistant director of the national economic accounts division at Statistics Canada.

There are several factors that go into measuring labour productivity, says MacDonald. “To understand the factors behind this growth, the multifactor productivity program (MFP) divides this growth in labour productivity into its key determinants: capital intensity (changes in capital per hour worked), investment in human capital, and MFP, which includes technological change, organizational innovation and economies of scale.”

At New Galma dairy, the Zeldenrijks were like many farmers who adopted robotic milking, but they were the second in the country with a robotic feeding system, using a robot that moves around the barn autonomously feeding the cows. They were approached by Lely to trial the system and they agreed.

“In the beginning there were some issues, but there have been a lot of fun things too. We’ve had so many visitors,” he says during an open house day for Lely where dairy farmers roamed the New Galma barn and others in the area, learning from each other.

The driving of productivity and the adoption of new technology from farmer interaction isn’t a surprise to Eric Micheels, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

Micheels and fellow researcher James Nolan published a paper in 2016 in the academic journal Agricultural Systems that looked at how farmers adopt technology, focusing on how they access their networks of sources and peers. They also looked at the capacity of the farmer and farm to implement the technology.

Productivity increases and technology “go hand in hand,” Micheels says.

“Productivity from a sector level is all fed by individual farm-level decisions on being more efficient. If the goal of Canadian agriculture is to increase productivity, one way to do that is to help farmers in that adoption process.”

The technology has to be available, but adoption comes down to the willingness to embrace change, skill level, and the availability of peer groups of farmers.

“I looked at concepts of social capital and absorptive capacity, how connected that producer is to their broader network,” says Micheels. That includes connections to other farmers, extension specialists, researchers, input suppliers and people who have knowledge of how technology has functioned on other farms.

The research identified several factors that influence technology adoption. One is farm size, as most readers might expect, but it’s actually farm size based on employees, not acres. Again, it is the access to more diverse ideas that matters.

“It’s the employees as a source of ideas. Maybe they’ve worked on other farms, maybe in another industry,” says Micheels.

Other factors include the presence of successors, and tied to that is the stage of life of the business. Farms closer to being wound down or sold will have fewer reasons to adopt technology.

Even though farmers continue to age, however, the rate of labour productivity isn’t declining, according to Statistics Canada figures.

“They might be 57 and they might say they’re going to farm until they’re 77,” says Micheels. “There’s no defined retirement date.”

That’s why stage of life of the business is more important than the age of the operator in judging technology adoption.

For instance, Bryan Cook’s son Jeff was finishing secondary school and wanted to farm, so it was time for the Cooks to reinvest in the long-running family dairy operation. Their farm was located in Caledon, on the edge of the rapidly growing municipality near Toronto.

They sold that farm and bought an empty farm an hour north near Stayner, Ont., building a dairy barn with extensive technology, including automated milking, feeding, bedding and automated monitoring of milk for a cow’s heat, pregnancy, ketosis and mastitis detection. They also milk close to 200 cows with four DeLaval milking robots.

For Cook it wasn’t just about making work easier for him, it was also about providing the best environment for cows to be productive too — another productivity outcome.

“The cows go about their day without interruption,” he says. “I let them be the boss pretty much of where they want to go.”

The lack of human intervention means less labour for the humans involved in the operation.

Cook’s barn was also part of an open house that drew dairy farmers from across the province.

Micheels found too that the income of the farm wasn’t as much a factor in technology adoption as the desire of the farm to grow to another level.

If a farm has $1 million in gross sales and wants to get to $1.2 million, that would drive innovation, says Micheels. But the desire of a farm with $500,000 in gross sales to get to $600,000 would also drive similar innovation.

Micheels also found that managerial experience was more an indicator of technology adoption than education level.

“It’s more important to maintain that (education) flow,” he says. “What is your investment year by year into learning about changes in the industry?”

The post Deciding about technology appeared first on Country Guide.

The partnership, including CanWest DHI, Valacta and the Canadian Dairy Network (CDN), still has to be approved by farmer-members of the organizations.

CanWest DHI provides on-farm testing services for individual dairy cow production and health in Ontario and Western Canada. Valacta provides the same services in Quebec and the Maritimes and the Canadian Dairy Network (CDN) provides genetic evaluation services for the sector.

“We have worked closely with our partners at CanWest DHI and the Canadian Dairy Network for more than two decades and this is a natural extension of our historic working relationship,” said Valacta chair Pierre Lampron.

When the partnership takes effect in October, 2018, it will look to farmers like they are being served by one, merged company, but the reason it is being called a partnership is that the three organizations are bringing different levels of capital and resources, CDN general manager Brian Van Doormaal said.

The organizations have commitments and receiving funding from local governments and organizations will be maintained. A merger would create a new legal entity, which the organizations wanted to avoid.

There will be one management team and one new board of directors made up of licensed dairy farmers to oversee the partnership.

“We are demonstrating that not only can we work together across the country, we can also work together across different areas of our industry,” CDN chair Norm McNaughton said.

All of the organizations are challenged with the rapid spread of technologies that are changing demand for their services, creating significant challenges, but also opportunities.

“We really are in an industry where there are a lot of things changing,” Van Doormaal said, including dairy farms growing larger but decreasing in number, at the same time as profit margins are being squeezed with lower-priced milk.

“The bottom line is that dairy farmers are saying we need to find efficiencies in our industry. We don’t want to find them in a reactionary way, to have to react to a crisis,” he said. “It’s always better to be proactive.”

All of the organizations are healthy, he said, and that’s a good time to reorganize.

CanWest DHI and Valacta have been traditionally known as dairy herd improvement organizations, with technicians visiting farms regularly, depending on service levels, to take individual cow milk production totals and milk samples, determining fat and protein levels in the milk. They have evolved to provide other testing of milk, including for somatic cell count, pregnancy, mastitis, Johne’s disease and signs of ketosis.

Herd management data has provided farmers with the ability to compare cows and evaluate management decisions.

CDN is the data repository for Canadian dairy genetic information, with software and processes that have made the Canadian genetic evaluation system the envy of the world.

Genomic testing of heifers, cows and bulls means that the complex data system of real world evaluation of cow and bull performance that has worked well for generations isn’t as needed. That system remains important for proving genomic tests and providing higher levels of data reliability than genomic testing can give. As more dairy animals are genomic-tested, that also means more opportunities to mine the data for advantages for dairy farmers.

Advanced and instantaneous ability of milking equipment to measure many of the parameters historically collected in person is causing pressure on the services provided by CanWest DHI and Valacta.

Tie-stall, parlour and robotic milking systems can all give daily milk weights and measure conductivity of the milk to screen for mastitis. Some systems can also measure somatic cell count, ketosis precursors and measure progesterone to show which cows are in heat or pregnant.

All of that data can be aggregated for herd level and industry level benchmarking and analysis by the dairy herd improvement groups, but they will have to change to make that happen.

Driving together the genomic data and automated on-farm data to make one seamless resource for farmers means that the “DHI sector and the genetic evaluation side need each other more and more now than we needed each other in past,” Van Doormaal said.

CanWest DHI and Valacta are leading providers of laboratory testing for sectors of the dairy industry. For example, they are responsible for the analysis of raw milk payment and milk quality services for Dairy Farmers of Quebec, SaskMilk, Alberta Milk and the BC Milk Marketing Board as well as specialized milk analysis services. Together the partners collect and test six million individual cow samples each year.

The organizations will maintain existing offices in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que. and Guelph, Ont. CanWest DHI and CDN are already located in the same Guelph office building. The partnership will continue to manage four labs across the country.

The combined organization will have about 500 employees serving 11,000 dairy farms across Canada. All three are farmer-led organizations.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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