Exploring Farm Life: Guided Tour of Our Dairy Farm!

hey everyone welcome back to another video my name is Jan killstra and I'm a Dairy Farmer from Saskatchewan Canada today we're going to be doing an updated farm tour the last farm tour I did was about three years ago so I figured we could do an updated farm tour quick overview of our farm we milk about 340 cows right now and we've farmed 2500 acres of land the total land cropping versus feed for the cows this year I believe we combined about four quarters of land so 640 acres the rest went to feeding cows in the form of alfalfa rye and barley silage so a lot of that does get allocated to feeding the dairy and that's just because it has been so dry out here this year and uh the last couple years unfortunately but starting out with the tour right at the front driveway here first thing we got a well there with a water reservoir our chem Handler that's where we fill up the sprayer and uh it's quick to get to the road this building right here that's the oldest building on the entire Farm it was here when my parents bought the dairy farm in late 1996 and it's since been a little bit refurbished but just this small section here uh was here when they bought the farm they were milking 42 cows when they bought the farm the next building here is a calf barn and that's where all the individual calf pens are there's four rooms each room has 24 calf pens for a total of 96 individual pens for calves that's where all the newborns go once they're graduated is what we call it old enough about three months old they go into what we call a Renault Barn we call it a Rental Barn because we renovated it it used to be our old freestyle Barn I believe this was the second building my parents built on the farm they added it to the existing building which majority of that is now gone it's where we put the new calf Barn this is our parlor and pack Barn so uh the parlors in the front there's a holding area in there obviously for the Parlor and then in the back is the pack Barn it's a 400 foot long barn by 85 feet wide so it goes back a ways people always say the front looks really nice we just told our contractor make it look nice maybe some wood in the front a bit of concrete and uh they did this so this looks good mom's always got the flowerpox there in the summertime which always looks awesome and uh you can see right into the Parlor we'll head in there in just a second the final kind of barn here that's tied to the rest is the main freestyle Barn This Barn is 105 feet wide by 330 feet long that's where we house the majority of the milk house there's 312 cows in that Barn two groups younger group older group talk a little bit more about that when we go in there for now we'll head into the Parlor making a farm store video so this is our Double 12 Day level Champion milk and parlor it's a parallel it's got the automatic zipping and flushing melt claws automatic takeoffs of course there's milk meters in the basement it's rapid exit so all the shoulder pads go up at once and all 12 cows can step off at the same time [Music] thank you [Music] that's the holding area it holds a total of 125 cows so with the 24 in The Parlor it's about 150 cows [Music] beside the holding area we've got a double wide return alley so instead of a three foot return alley beside the holding area it's six foot wide and that just allows for cows to easily flow back to their groups when they're done being milked so we never have cows hang up there it's another thing the contractor said was a good idea to do there's uh ID readers in The Parlor here and they're right beside the cow's heads they read the IDS of the ear tags and that allows us to see which cow is standing in each position down in the Parlor it also allows us to record how much milk each cow produces [Music] so that's the milk and parlor we've milked twice a day I'm starting at four in the morning and four in the afternoon so 12 hour splits and our production I believe is it's not great right now around 33 34 liters per cow per day so we do have the basement underneath the Parlor [Music] that's the basement houses all of the milk and equipment the milk line right here goes through a milk meter and then it goes into the main milk line [Music] around the corner to the receiver jar milk bomb filter plate cooler all that stuff is down here [Music] up top we have also the control box for the ADF no claws this is the pulsator and the control valve to open and close the vacuum to the milk wall [Music] in the back of our basement here we have a second receiver jar and pump and that's for milk for the pasteurizer for the calves so we've got the two receiver jars and pumps this one goes straight to the calf kitchen [Music] something we saw at another dairy farm here in Saskatchewan when we Farm we're like yeah we got to get that pretty handy [Music] so just over here we have the milk tank it's 30 000 liters [Music] [Music] beside the Parlor and the holding area we've got some utility rooms that's our vacuum pump air compressors the wash vat for all the chemicals back of the milk tank and we also recently got industrial washers and dryers here that's for the milk towels next room is water and electrical there's also uh the floor heat equipment in here as well a couple of water boilers water reservoirs water filtration system we have a lot of iron in our water out here it's good quality water there's just a lot of iron in it so you got to take it out electrical panels Breakers all the rooms in The Parlor floor has all floor heat in it so it stays nice and warm the winter supposed to anyway we've had the Parlor freeze up in the winter in the past but it's probably our fault more than anything next room here is our vet room so this is where we house all of our breeding stuff medicine for cows antibiotics if we need it there's also a herd management computer in the vet room we have two of those one in the main office and then one here in the bedroom we open this door it takes us to the tie-in between the barn and The Parlor Barn dad's putting bedding in over there we got a sword gate right there foreign over to the freestyle Barn so this is our freestyle Barn we house a total of 312 000 here 's two groups younger group mostly just heifers and then the older milking cows are over there we have a laylie Juno pushes up the feet in this Barn the bedding we have in the freestyle Barn is just sand thank you cows do pretty well in that stuff it's a four-row barn so there's two rows of beds in this group and two rows in that group our summer ventilation in this Barn is tunnel vent so you can see all the way back to the bar in there there's a bunch of big fans and they pull air from the openings in the front there's a bunch of poly card panels that drop down in the spring that pulls air all the way to the back of the barn and keeps it nice and cool in here during the summer and then winter ventilation is pretty different we got the power chimneys that suck air up through the roof and we got the inlets that let air in and we're able to regulate the temperature in here pretty good in the winter the only heat Source in the winter in the barn [Music] there is two brushes per group in the barn here the ladies are able to use those to brush themselves off we have 28 inch spacing head Lockers in here they're a little bit wider than the normal 24. it's a little bit of x of extra comfort and it also makes a little bit of extra room between the cows they're able to stay a little bit cooler there in the hot summer months so at the back of the freestyle Barn we have the menorah slots and that's where nolene is scraping right now she's scraping all of the manure into this slot the slot is tied right into the back of our pack Barn as well which is right beside here those alleys are scraped into the same slot that all flows towards the pit at the end here so this pump has two lines to the Lagoon outside just in case one plugs we always have a backup and they also alternate each time they bump so in the morning if it bumps it'll pump with that one in the evening for example it'll pump with that one and uh just back and forth back and forth they're not on a schedule or anything just every time it turns on it needs to pump to the Lagoon it picks a different pipe so the other third pipe here is for recirculation on a manure slot so we always got to turn that on when we're pushing manure in otherwise it won't flow it doesn't have a steep enough angle but it does flow really good when it is recirculating pit room here is right off of the sand room we'll fill this sucker right full in the fall we only have to fill it up a little bit in the summer that's all the bedding we use all year round time viewer of the channel you know we get our own sand for free of a hole about 400 yards that way haha this is our Menorah Lagoon yes it's getting full again gonna have to get into here pretty soon but it's 175 by 175 by 10 foot deep and all the liquid manure from those two barns is pumped into that pit so that's the freestyle Barn we just came out of we'll step into the pack bar now he expanded for that pack bar and we built a big curb or skirt apron whatever you want to call it the concrete back here so when we turn with the feed wagon we could stay on the concrete the entire time dad's putting bedding in the pack Barn right now thank you so this side of the pack Barn is a milking pack fresh cows fresh heifers and special needs cows here maternity packs [Music] so we have three maternity packs every week we bring close-up cows Monday morning and we put them in the back and then we shuffle them all down on Monday we're back at the holding area [Music] the vet rooms in the wall over there you can see the window this is our sword gate we also have a foot bath there short pen shoot to treat sick cows or do some Hoof Trimming if we need and we also have a palpation rail so we could sort up to seven cows line them all up here if we have to do a little bit of work on them [Music] better clean our boots here [Music] so right off our pack Barn is the cap kitchen [Music] spots in this room so that second receiver jar in the basement underneath the Parlor I showed you guys comes up right here goes into either this one I believe in the afternoon this one's for the morning you can see this one's getting washed right now and then this is a third pasteurizer for colostrum we pasteurized colostrum freeze it and then we'll thaw it out when a calf calves and uh we could just feed him some fresh pasteurized colostrum you know the get stuff we do feed powdered colostrum if it's late at night though we come check the cows maybe 10 o'clock at night if there's a cap there we'll just get some powdered colostrum because it is easier I guess we have a good chance to check out the offices and lunchroom here [Music] so washers and dryers in here for clothes Locker Room Shower washrooms are here lunchroom [Applause] you can tell we like the Tim Hortons coffee watch Formula One races on the TV there pretty sweet and then the main office dad's office right around the corner there [Music] [Music] so just off the pack Barn we go right to the calf Barn this is the Renault Barn so there's two groups here I guess there's three actually each group has 24 calves these are way younger so they need less space but these calves are typically two and a half to three months old all the way up to around five months old and then they go to the corels just your basic straw pack nothing too fancy in this Barn like I said it was our old freestyle Barn so we used to have free stalls all along that back wall thoughts we have since then renovated it I believe it was renovated in 2019 so this is the individual calf pen Barn this is where all the newborns go you could call it the nursery and I believe my mom's feeding calves right now so bugger with the camera you so there's a row of 12 fence on each side super easy to clean out open the door click take all the panels out let the skid steer clean it out you want to be in the tour video what you want to be able to tour video this is uh Taxi pasteurized milk from one of those pasteurizers is pumped in here and then it's got some I guess electric motors in there so you can drive it around pretty easily carry 240 liters of milk I believe so pretty good kind of see ya so these cabs are still really young still getting it with the bottle cool so I guess we were just in room number three this is room number two these calves are a little bit bigger a little bit older our dairy farm we do raise the steers right to finish doesn't matter if they're whole stain red tags or steers yeah these little buggers are hungry it's almost dinner time off boat through here and check out the corels [Music] so this is the oldest calf Barn here the first building my parents added on to the farm and nolene's goats are in there right now so this is our feed lot there's a total of nine corels out here and I believe 450 to 500 animals these are the youngest heifers Corel one and corel's nine and eight we have dry cows so these laters are all on vacation also if we have a cold cow we'll throw her in here Corel 2 is breeding H heifers that's why we got the self Lockers in here we can lock them up breed them curls seven and six are bread heifers it's also our cleanup pen so we usually have a bowl in there that's uh making sure all these ladies are pregnant but the guy's out of commission right now so he's just chilling on the end there by himself sure he's kind of lonely but is what it is this is Corel three so these are between breeding age and uh the Young Too Young yet so probably 9 to 12 months old and then at the back here we have our finishing curls so these are all the Holstein steers the younger ones the older ones nothing too complicated sort them based on size once they get big enough we'll sort through them toss a bunch over in the finishing curl to get the same ration just really heavy on barley and we fatten them up make some nice juicy steaks foreign so at the back of our Corrals we have the Chute handling system as well as a couple of sort pens see that's our new breeding Bowl we had a sore foot so we just put them separate can hang out here make sure it gets back up to work in order this is our shoot handling system we have a hydraulic Chute oof trim shoots and a ramp to load steers call cow cows heifers whatever we're selling into whatever trailer comes on the yard we have a third driveway back here and that's where the semis will come in they have enough room to turn around here we'll clear all the snow in the winter time behind the shoots and ramps here is a reverse tub and that's how we convince all the animals to go up the alley it's pretty interesting to come in through here you close the gate behind them and then you push them up the alley here and into the chute so we're going to cut now and we're going to go back to the front of the Parlor barn and then we'll go see the shop the feed mill the shed the scale the bins those sorts of things so we're once again at the front of the Parlor Barn and this kind of there's a line here that side of the farm is all cows and manure basically and then on this side of the farm is All Grain and Equipment this is our old Feed Mill it's completely out of commission we shut her down last fall this building right here is our shop it was built in three different sections the first Bay here where we now store the feed wagon and the New Holland wheel loader was the original building and then they added a lean to to the side there which at first was just a roof and then they built walls around it insulated it and then they built the third Bay on the back there so we're very lucky to be able to park our equipment inside during the winter it's pretty much a must-have out here and this is the main equipment shop we call it Brent shop so we got a mezzanine up top there for parts and other stuff just for storage that's uh the second driveway we got some 7 500 bushel hopper bottom bins over there a couple of smaller bins these are 1800 to 2000 bushel bins I believe we typically use these ones for seed so we've got some rye seed that's been cleaned recently we've got some barley seed that's been cleaned if we needed wheat this is our equipment shed this is well over 10 years old now I believe try to fill this thing up in the winter and we like to keep equipment parked inside even during the summer time just keeps the sun off the paint and the tires can be quite destructive and of course we've got some more storage in here could probably tidy that up actually those are ten thousand bushel hopper bottom bins then we got two fertilizer bins on the end there right beside the equipment shed we got our new Feed Mill it's basically just four storage bins for whole grains a drag underneath that takes it to a hammer Mill download trucks into those bins we got a television it's kind of the cheaper version of having a pit in the ground with a conveyor underneath there's two green legs a 60 foot and an 80 foot Canadian flag up top she's been uh wearing down that flag the wind's been pretty hard on that thing so we got to climb up there pretty soon I think we have the feed wagon just drives through here we gotta wait permeate tank underneath there buy product from the Cheese plant trucks comes every four days to fill that thing up mineral bins and these are Hammer milled grains that came out of those four bins over there this building here is the new Hammer Mill shed it's also just a storage room for now in there is the hammer Mill the reason we had to build kind of a box around it was just for insurance purposes you can't have something that's emitting dust in the same room as a bunch of electrical a heater lights and that sort of thing so yeah we store various things in this room as well uh one thing we might do in the future if we wanted to buy a bigger feed wagon because our feed wagon is pretty much maxed out right now we would extend this building we thought of that after we built it but they won't be able to park that feed Wagon in this room instead of in the other shop because that bay in the other shop is just too small for a bigger feed wagon and uh for three or five loads that we feed every day that feed wagon is borderline big enough some leftover tires from covering plastic this summer pretty unfortunate wish we could have used all those tires just would have meant we had more silage this building here is our small square Bell shed so we got small squares of hay then we've got small squares of straw we also got some bales of sawdust that's what we use to bed the individual calf pen Barn and we also have our Bale picker right there this is the feed yard where all our silage pits are we have three concrete bunks concrete extends out the frontier quite a bit we did that just so that we could feed on concrete if it got muddy back in 2010 11 12 13. here in Saskatchewan it's super wet so that encouraged Dad to build these and it's been pretty much dry ever since so that's a eight meter wide pile by 65 meters long the walls are eight foot tall this is 10 meters wide 65 foot long that one's 20 meters wide 65 meters long you mix up Imperial and metric system quite a bit but that's what Canada is it's a hybrid system we take the Best of Both Worlds and combine them then we have some more silage Pits on the ground here beside it and then Behind These piles there's more as well we just Place Bales kind of all around the back of the yard hopefully we'll get well over 2 000 this year try and separate them that way if one group of Bales if you know 500 Bales catch on fire hopefully the other Bunch don't you can always hope we'll walk over to our scale here so the yard's kind of set up where trucks will come onto the scale they'll turn around and go to the televator and unload so we can weigh trucks that are selling us feed right away but this is the scale it's 100 foot long I believe 12 foot wide maybe only 10 I should lay down if it's two of me it's 12 foot so full B train could pull up on here uh with room to spare this is the scale room so the printers in there stays dry we'll heat that in the winter with a little heater a little space heater let's keep the ink for freezing I guess the zinc even freeze I don't know I guess our main grain storage bins the 10 000 bushel bins here and the 75s over there all have aeration in them and the last thing I'll show you guys on this tour coming back around to the freestyle Barn is our generator shed so all of the electrical three-phase comes into this building right here we want it to keep it separate from the barn it's a bit of a risky uh building to have if it's just in your barn you know if anything catches on fire in here at least your old barn isn't burning down and then this is our generator it'll automatically fire up if the power is out for 10 seconds there's some automatic opening louvers in the front there and uh just to supply it with some fresh air when it is running the exhaust runs through the wall to the outside and that room stays incredibly warm in the winter that's exhaust mom's Garden is over there too and then we're back at the barns I hope you guys enjoyed today's video I hope I did a good job walking you guys along without cutting too much and then you guys could have a really good idea of how the farm is actually laid out I'm actually kind of tuckered up that was a lot of walking anyway guys thank you so much for watching today's video if you guys have any future video ideas of things you want to see about the farm let me know and I hope to see you guys in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: SaskDutch Kid

Views: 273,928

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: VihCT2CPBHM

Length: 35min 47sec (2147 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023