Moving Heifers (63)
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- čas přidán 29. 11. 2022
- Moving Heifers - In this week's video, we are moving heifers up to their next pens in our heifer barn. If you have any questions about this week's video, leave them in the comments, and I will post a Q&A video on Sunday if needed. As always, thanks for watching!
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My name is Piet van Bedaf, together with my wife and my parents, we own and operate a family dairy farm in North Dakota. We are originally from the Netherlands, and immigrated to Canada first and then the United States in 2008. Subscribe and follow along to see the ins and outs of a modern day dairy farm!
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Thank You for sharing your videos with us
Thanks for the video .some milking videos would be good take care
I enjoy watching your videos. Would like to see more of your daily milking routine and process.
Excellent farm
Video idea! Put a camera on a cow and show her daily routine from her perspective.
That would be interesting to see, I will try to make this happen!
Great video 👍👍👍👍👍
as always, I look forward to seeing your new vids come out. thank you much.
video idea....from start to finish...picking bulls for first calf heifers verses cows, the process to breeding to dry cows close up pens calving to first milking...
Thank you for your suggestions!
Your sheds are amazing Piet. Could you do a cows feed rations
Yes, I will keep that in mind. Thank you!
A farm tour would be nice.
Just love the attitude of those beautiful lady's ❤️❤️
could you please make a video about - milking robots - feeding robots - feed pushup robots - calf feeding robots with calf's in groups instead of labor-intensive hutches
- more importantly why you guys are not on that path - seems to be the future especially with manpower getting sparse/expensive and especially since it seems production
go up and cows last longer/getting older while still producing optimal on all 4 quarters - plus many more positive tracking of each cow/quarter etc
This would be a good topic for a video! There are several reasons why we haven't started to transition into robots in areas of our farm. We will likely have to start that transition at some point, but more automation doesn't necessarily mean better cow care. Better cow care comes from better management by farmers. That could mean management of people or management of robotic equipment. It still comes down to the farmers' ability to manage key aspects of the farm. Robots can be a good improvement for some farms but not all. I do want to transition away from hutches in the near future and move to group housing for labor reasons, but I'm not strongly considering calf feeding robots at this time.
Your doing a great job Piet, just keep those vids coming, love to see how you do things, being from Wales 🏴 Great Britain I find your way of doing thing especially coping with that severe weather very interesting.
Thank you!
I appreciate that the heifers lying in lot’s of straw
Hooftrimming is interesting
Maybe you can show something about the treatment at the sick pen
I mean in the positive way
There will be a video on hoof trimming soon. I can talk about how we take care of sick cows as well.
Goed bezig Piet.
Just do what you do enjoying just seeing what the farm does on day to day activities. I know some think it is boring but seeing all the work you and your staff do to make the farm run with few issues that say’s the most it’s not fun to many but I have worked on dairy farm and still work in the ag industry
Thank you!
Beautiful farm.
Thank you!
If the calves get more milk, they milk more. Interesting... Thought it was to gain weight faster to be breeding in about 15 months
I think it will be difficult to measure, but I'm told from university studies that there is a potential gain of 1000lbs of milk per lactation from increasing milk fed to calves up to 4 liters 2x per day.
Awesome video Piet, keep them coming as I watch everyone. One idea for a video is if you could show us where your milk ends up Fargo, ND I think right? And what do they all do with it?
I will see if I can make that happen! Our milk goes to fargo to be bottled into fluid milk mainly.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 Be interesting how they process you milk and bottle it. Just a thought.
Tell your guys not to be camera shy as they are as important as you are thats feeding the world ! There is no higher accolade we can give all of you guys looking after those animals . Please ask then to reconsider !
Love your videos. How do you handle hoof trimming? Could you show that process? Thanks for sharing.
Yes, I will have a video on hoof trimming soon! We do a maintenance trim on all cows 2x per lactation.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 I'm happy about that and looking forward to seeing it. Thanks.
I want to see all the babies 👶
Our calves have been in videos in the past and will definitely be in more videos in the future!
I saw your earlier videos explaining how your family ended up in the United States, through Canada from Holland. Would you please explain to an American that's completely unfamiliar with the world wide dairy industry, the history of why it appears that people with Dutch ancestry dominate the industry? I joke that there must be a "Dutch Milk Mafia" with all of the dairies with Dutch names!
That's a good question! I'm not sure I have the complete answer but in the Netherlands and wester Europe in general there has been a push to be more efficient in every aspect of agricultural for a long time because of scarce resources and strong competition for available land. With more competition, farmers have to become more efficient and effective in how they manage their farms. Those same reasons are why many dutch dairy farmers have moved to other parts of the world looking for more available resources and land to be able to continue dairy farming. Or maybe I'm overthinking it, and dutch people just really love to milk cows!
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 "and dutch people just really love to milk cows!" LOL! Well that solves the mystery!
Do all these heifers eventually enter the dairy herd? ,is there as large a percentage of older cows that leave the herd to maintain the same number of milk cows then Piet?
Most of them will, we are raising as many heifers as we need to maintain our herd size. Not all of them will become milking cows for reasons like health issues, fertility issues, or we may sell some if we feel we have too many. We do have cows leaving the herd for beef that leave the herd for issues like milk quality, fertility issues, low milk production, and lower genetics compared to the next generation of heifers.
So, you are constantly adding calves to the herd via pregnant heifers. How many years do you milk a given cow? Are you increasing the size of the herd or just maintaining head count? Seems like you have lots of calves, lots of heifers, lots of pregnant cows, and the milkers in the system. Love your videos and discussions.
We are currently raising the number of heifer calves that we need to maintain our herd size. Our cows are in the milking herd on average just under 3 years, that ranges from 0 to 10 years. There are several reasons a milking cow will be sold for beef. The cow could have milk quality issues, fertility issues, recurring health issues, or be less productive compared to higher genetic heifers coming into the herd.
Awesome stuff! We have been talking about your farm and how interesting it all is. One question that we were wondering is why you pasteurize the milk too feed to the calves?
We pasteurize the milk fed to the calves for similar reasons that milk is pasteurized for human consumption. There is a small chance that there is harmful bacteria in the milk, but we want to make sure the milk to our calves is the best quality. This is especially important for the first 2 weeks of their life when they have a limited immune system.
Where do you get the grates from? Thanks for the videos!
They are from the company that builds our sand/ manure separation equipment. Mclanahan corporation.
Thanks for the videos. I noticed the visual ear tags (some one tag, some two). I imagine you also have digital ID tags & an automated scanning system (eg for milking, etc). Was wondering what
you routinely measure / record? Plus I'm curious about the technology used, level of automation & record keeping.
They should have 2 tags, but there has been some issues with tag manufacturing. The second tag will have the heifers birth date, sire name, mother's number and her ID on it. They receive a third tag that is an activity monitor before they will have their first calf. I can talk about some of the technology used on our farm.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 Thanks for the reply. Yes that would be great to learn more about the technologies available & how you use them on your farm.
I noticed an advert on electronic ear tag sensors (with wireless ID tracking) claiming to measure temperatures, activity, rumination and eating behaviour. Therefore it gives health indicators, whether a cow is coming in heat etc. The technology has come a long way from the days of just ID tracking.
P.s, I'm from Australia, where most dairy farming is pasture based all year round, being blessed with mild winters. So I'm very impressed with how you overcome such extremes in weather.
As a retired dairyman from a smaller herd situation (120 milking cows) how do you select what bulls to use in your A.I. program. Do you choose milk production or milk fat and protein content and do you ever use sexed semen. Thank you for all the great content.
We work with select sires, and they are pairing bulls with the appropriate heifers and cows on our farm. We are looking for moderately framed holstein cows and focus on longevity and milk components. Select sires has an index like net merit that takes into account health traits that they use to pick the right bulls for our herd.
Thank. You Piet. We also have used Select Sires in our herd for over 40 years and when I was trying to get established I worked as a breeding technician in the late 70s to earn some extra cash .
Does anyone use barcoded ear tags? Then you could scan their numbers rather than writing them down. Upload to the computer, etc.
That is a technology that is available, but we have not considered that on our farm at this point.
@@pietvanbedaf-nddairyfarmer9047 THANKS for your prompt and complete replies. I really appreciate it. Best Wishes
Why not move the entire group up on the small groups since they look the same size?
The groups are different sizes. I like to be able to leave smaller heifers in a group back to give them less competition with similar sized heifers.