2400 Jerseys on This Beautiful California Dairy Farm!

so we're here in california with another farm tour and brent is going to tell us a little bit about his dairy operation here how's it going welcome to hillmark california um this farm is called wicks from jersey farms started in 1973 by my grandfather dwayne we milked 2400 head on this dairy on a 60 stall rotary we also have two other farms one with two 72 salt rotaries milking 5600 and another one with a 36 dollar parallel we milk 1200 there we farm about 2 500 acres between the three operations um to supply wheat and corn silage our cows well those are some pretty impressive numbers yeah we're not currently milking we can kind of walk around and look at the free stalls in other facilities and hopefully get back by the time the night shift shows up to start milking awesome [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is one of our uh milk strings each pin holds about 330 calories across the dairy try to keep mature cow separated from first and second lactation sometimes as much as we can um everything has headlocks everything's fed two or three times a day depending on stage of lactation everything's milked three times a day except for fresh cows or four times a day like we explained flush comes through three times a day to clean the lanes we clean the feet out three times a week and push feet about every hour and a half in these strings the ones going to the milk barn so we have a 60 saw rotary that can do about 400 calories an hour so each pin takes about 45 50 minutes to melt all 330 cows we're actually a little crowded every every time i was like 350 right now so it takes a little longer but kind of what we shoot for 45 minutes out of the barn for milking awesome this is what we like to see right there taking over the u.s as i'm wearing a american hat perfect so how long is this free stall barn uh this one's about 800 feet because it has a couple of fresh pins at the top and they have 90 cows each for those are the ones that get about four times a day for about two to three weeks depending on how heavy we're calving well yeah most barns are about 650 feet long so we call this the special needs or maternity barn the freestyle site is all dry cows and far-off springers and then when they're about 260 days uh carried cap they moved to the bended pack sites we have all the mature cows and then all the springers on this side uh everything calves in there and then twice a day we use this flat barn to melt colostrum and process the fresh cows whatever they need uh before they get kicked out to the freshman on the main milking part of the dairy then we house newborn calves overnight uh cows get shipped out every morning about half the herd is bred to beef sires and the other half spread of sex female semen to make up our replacements so they get housed here and shipped out daily and then we have all our classroom processing in here pasteurizer and thought out so you can see our classroom bags that rita just finished pasteurizing and bagged and those are gonna get frozen and used as calves are being born every day this is their collagen pasteurizer so twice a day after all the whatever fresh cows have cabbed in the last 12 hours getting melt the whole batch gets mixed and pasteurized and then sampled for quality and igg levels before putting input in bags and frozen and the nice couch are born use a stall bath to heat up the drinking temperature and thaw out evenly as caps are born we used to just use the hot water here then you burn the outside of the colostrum bag so this is a lot i think it's at 720 degrees so it's just at the right temperature for the calves that are born so every barn is flushed every lane's flushed three times a day with recycled manure water we'll walk by the processing pit so everything everything drains there gets mixed and pumped out of there for flush then once it gets to a certain level it gets pumped over the screen separators and takes the solids out and then all the milk bar and fresh water kind of thins that out throughout the day so it's not just getting diluted down with manure solids and how many times a day would this alley be flushed every ollie's three times a day so we try to do it every all the cows are milk 3x we try to do it you know within an hour before they go to the barn every milking as close as we can so yeah you can see that liquid flowing through and that's going to go to the end of the barn and that's what cleans the alleys out [Music] [Music] these shouldn't be running this time here but our soakers are going because we're a little too warm in california right now but these are all on timers and temperature control so the hotter it gets the more often they run usually on for about 30 seconds at a time and then they pair with our freestyle fans to get the evaporative cooling we want on the cows throughout the summertime awesome see i can see right behind the feed rail there yeah of spray in water yeah you wanted to drench right around their bellies get them nice and soaked then shut off and let them flow through with the fans after that yeah so this is right at the back of the dairy you can see the processing pit uh where i'm saying where all the separate all the flush manure ends up and gets pumped back out so you can see the lanes behind us where the flush goes down to the end of the barn and then comes an underground pipeline back to the processing pit where it gets blended with agitators and either pumped over the separating screens or from the pump back out to the next flush lane to clean the next pin and that cycle just repeats three times a day and keeps getting more water added to it to keep it thin awesome and that would be water that was used for the wash cycle in the parlor yep yes we recycle all the water from the parlor and all the soaker lines all drained to this area and it all ends up either back on the flush lanes or into our holding pits behind us and that gets used for crop irrigation for nutrient management and all that throughout the year awesome so you're constantly recycling every bit of water that you use and at the end of that entire process you guys are building we're in the process right now of building a digester correct yeah we're hopefully this summer installing a methane digester um and all that will be pumped about 20 miles north and used to burn ethanol to go back into the power grid so i've always heard the stat every gallon of water on dairy gets used seven times i'm not sure how to prove that on a dairy but you can see the water just keeps going in circles and either ends up as fertilizer or back being in the bars that clean the cows so yeah pretty exciting we can just keep that water in a cycle and keep reusing it as much as we can [Music] cool to see another project we have going right now this whole field is going to be a solar array hopefully this april or may will be installed and it'll be tied directly into our milk barn and our separation system in the back to offset all that power usage so a lot of renewable energy and stuff going on in california i guess electric mixers and methane digesters and solar panels bunch of hipsters man exactly you grow my hair out so this is our commodity area we make all our own premixes on farm except for our milk cow mineral so you can see the several pre-mixed bays and all the ingredients in between from cotton seed rolled corn ground corn almond holes which are pretty prevalent here in california mostly all agriculture by byproducts you know the outside of the almond nut that you're used to eating to the cotton seed pit after they pull the cotton off for clothing bakery waste soybean meal all that all that kind of stuff goes into our premixes nutritionist formulates our rations and we make about five premixes a day store those all in these open bays and use those to feed the cows every day we also mix in uh water and molasses in the mixing area when the wagon's in there and we're also in the pro process of putting in two electric stationaries to cut our diesel usage in the next uh hopefully six months have that installed and just be a little bit more efficient with all the regulations we're dealing with in california so you say you have a pit is that what's right there yeah it's just our wagon so tall we drive the tractor in there so the loader kind of easier time reaching it instead of being jacked up as high as it can all day long so this is where you park it and fill the wagon actually yeah yep that's cool and then it's got all the water and molasses hookups right over the wagon so doesn't have to move after he loads the dry ingredients in he opens the valve and puts all the wet ingredients in right on top of it while it's finishing its mix that's cool you can also see around it we keep trying to keep our silences as close as we can to be efficient with the loading process we got our corn silage right here and just on the backside of the commodity bond we have our wheat silage pile um and then on the far end the the next corn tyler's pile will go too uh later this summer wow yeah it's just a high energy source for the cows so if you pick a cotton ball off the plant it'll just be the center of that it's the pit right in the middle of it yeah this is one thing we notice everyone's pretty proud about feeding the byproducts that would otherwise go to waste out here yeah cause there's so many different crops grown out here in this valley and stuff like this can be fed to cows to make milk yeah a lot of dairies farther south in here they're closer to the citrus producers they feed just cold citrus that didn't quite make grade to be sold to the consumers they'll feed just a pile of oranges their cows or that's the other dairies feed candy waste so snickers bars in a pile and cows really like those products but we don't get those in our area that's interesting so this is the the whole almond product so the part you're used to eating is the nut which is inside the shell so the shell is kind of the hard interior coating of the nut there's no nut in this one so that'd be the shell and we use this by product for betting the cows and our compost barns embedded packs and then on the outside of that is what's called the hole and this is a high protein feed that we feed the cows it's more soft and you can actually chew it it's almost like beef jerky consistency so all three parts of the almond get used either for humans cows or bedding so this is our been practicing with some triple cropping here in california this is our crop this year sorghum silage um taken immaturely to feed the milk cows to stretch our corn silage inventories we also do uh our wheat silage in the springtime we take a good portion of that in the boot stage to be more digestible for milk cows as well so kind of sorghum in the fall and winter uh boot weed in the spring and summer along with our corn silage or the milking strings what would you compare sorghum silage to like i've never seen this stuff before is it kind of like barley or alfalfa or no it's more similar to like a wheat it almost looks like wheat in the field yeah it's just a different variety it grows better in the late fall right on [Music] so [Music] this is our first stream in the barn for the afternoon milking we milk two shifts uh 4 am and 4 pm they start everything's milk 3x we just do it with two sets of employees usually three guys on one guy prepping and attaching and one guy on the back side roaming or getting the next string of cows in uh we have pre and post-it sprayer robots on this rotary so it kind of eliminated that guy having to be there at the back side of the rotary all day when he's in the barn he's kind of helping make sure machines stay on otherwise he's out pulling cows in or helping these guys out when they get behind [Music] this farm was built in 2009 yeah it's about 13 years old now yeah it's a 60 stall um it was an upgrade it's called a magnum to get these automatic takeoffs to pull the machines down to go through the bridge on the back side we figured it'd be helpful for the milkers instead of having to pick claws up every cow these machines kind of raise the claw to the milker you can see and it also sets where the milk is allowed to put the machine on if we don't want to putting it on too soon so it waits till we can set the stall once it gets there the machine will come up to the melter once it starts spinning you'll see right here it'll bring that machine up to the milker to attach so [Music] those strings we run at about seven eight seconds of stall this one's a little slower just because of fresh caliber first lactation still kind of training them on the rotary give a little more time you can see t1 we put in about about six months ago iodine pre and post dip that seems to be a pretty popular option on rotary parlors yeah yeah especially recently with california overtime laws kicking in down eight hours so before that we had another employee right here we also have the rfid and milk meters in this barn so you can see the cow ids on every stall as they come through the entrance do you feed the cow's grain on the rotary then or no no feed in the parlor anymore yeah we haven't had that for about 20 years i think kind of when the tmr came out in the late 80s started mixing our feed tmr and the big wagons and delivering out to the main growls okay well that always surprises me to see the cows that really want to get onto that rotary even though there's no feet on there i guess they enjoy the ride yeah they love getting on this thing when we built it it took about four or five days of just fighting cows pushing them on and then after that you can see these are fresh shells are not quite as eager but the older cows they almost fight to get on this thing they'll be butting heads push each other into the rotary yeah pretty cool to see yeah we can go down in the middle and you'll see cows by the time they get onto the milk you know they're chewing their cud and hanging out enjoying the ride awesome you can see we actually have to put a big fire hose on to get the cows get off the barn otherwise they'll just keep going in circles it's probably like getting a little wet too when it's just here so you can see the cows get in here and when we're on the outside the machines go on about here and you can see it down in the milk meters all the milk comes down go through the milk beers and they fill up that's how they calculate the milk and from there they all go to these uh receiving tanks where the milk pumps are and that gets pumped through all this stainless pipe over the top into the milk room through the plate cooler into the storage tanks so everything kind of goes to the center of the barn all the air comes from there all the vacuum the vacuum actually comes from through the alleyway here everything else comes from the top yeah it's always mind-boggling to think about how all that is going through this little center of the rotary to get to the to the tanks at the end of the day [Music] this is where all the milk comes from overhead into the receiving tank through the filtered plate cooler and then into one of the two 7 500 gallon storage tanks and we ship about three of these tanks a day on average so we need a little more space but as long as the trucks show up we stay ahead of the game so yeah like i said earlier the dairy is called wickstrom jersey farms we my grandpa built this dairy in 1973 uh he started in 1969 on his own on a rental place down the road and then bought this and built his own facility so now it's my dad and my uncle and me also on the farm running the day-to-day stuff um between the three we kind of all split our shares up and take care of everything needs to be done so it's been rewarding working with family all these years and coming i came back from college in 2013 and kind of started taking over all the day-to-day stuff and managing the employees and all the stuff that goes on so starting to send the old guys on vacation a little bit more these days when they want to leave yeah been here a while and always been jerseys too right on and uh you said you guys have a facebook page yeah we do uh it's just wix from jersey farms on facebook awesome kind of use that to advertise some more genomic stuff and farm history and stuff like that trying to help the industry out as much as we can so check it out if you want to yep that'll be linked at the bottom of this video so uh i guess that's gonna be it for this video and thank you guys for watching and i hope to see you guys in the next one [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: SaskDutch Kid

Views: 1,495,645

Keywords: dairy farming, dairy cattle, farming in canada, canadian dairy farm, dairy, farm, farming, farm vlog, farm vlog channel, farming selfie, holstein, holstein cow, holstein farm, cow farm, farming milk cows, tractor, seeder, combine, crop farmer, land farmer

Id: agDzjMnkPIM

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2022