Dairy-farm Case Study

• A case study of a newly constructed dairy farm

General Farm Details

• 850 milking cows.
• Two 4-row freestall barns with 352 stalls, one special needs freestall barn with 160 stalls and hospital/treatment area, feed center, manure storage and office buildings.
• Town of Homer, Cortland County, State of New York, USA. Climate is cool and temperate with average temperature of 12.8ºC, significant winter and snow cover and 1000mm of precipitation per year.

Production Data

• Milk Averages
• 33.6 kg (74 lbs.) / day /cow (at an average 143 days in milk)
• ~70 % of lactating cows is 1st lactators
• 3.64% fat, 2.9% protein
• 100,000 – 115,000 SCC
• 2000-3000 Bacteria count
• 70-80 cows/worker

Farm Structure

• Dairy Development International, DDI, is a newly constructed 800-cow dairy farm in Homer, New York State, USA.
•  Ground was broken for the facility in February 2001 and the first cows were milked in the parlor on August 7, 2001.
• DDI serve as a training and research facility for FARME Institute, but main income is from milk production.

Land for Feed Production

DDI has access to about 570 ha (1400 acres) for feed production. DDI manage the rising and harvesting of forage fed but hire independent contractors to do all the fieldwork.

Layout of housing and facilities

• DDI is built on a site about 12 ha big, se figure 1. The site is bordered in three directions by a highways, railroad and roads. The primary soil of the site is glaciated gravel.
• Close to the site there are several residential houses.
• The office building (1) was built in April 2000. All other buildings were built during a period between February and August 2001.

The buildings are:

• 30 m between buildings (freestall barns)
• Freestalls are connected to milk center with two-way enclosed alleys.

Figure 2. External view off freestall barns.

Figure3. Two way enclodes walk alleys between freestalls and milk center.

Freestall Barns

• 12% overcrowding in freestall barns: 88 stalls, 101 headlocks and 100 cows per group.
• Mattresses stuffed with “flash pads” (extruded by-product of auto parts manufacturing). Shavings are used for bedding.
• All walk areas are grooved after pouring to prevent slippage.

Figure 4: Intertor off freestall barn.

Figure 5. Grooved conctrete floor, gutter, scraper and corner wheel.

figure 6. Freestalls with hoops, mattrasses and bedding

Management and labor

• 15 full time equivalents in total (70-80 cows/man).
• Management consists of Larry Jones, General Farm Manager.
• 5 Hispanic (workers with Latin American origin) milkers milk 80% of the cows, 12 hours shift, 4 days on 1 day off. Labor cost for milkers is $12/hr (includes everything, also housing). 4 work on any given day, 5th covers days off
• 1 Herd Manager and 2 assistants manage the herd, 12 hours shift.
• 1 person for feeding (6-7 hours/day), also part time mechanic. Feeding is done 2 times per day.
• 2 milkers and 1 herd person during night.

Milking Practices and the Parlor

• 3x milking, use bST
• Double-20 Blue Diamond EnDurance Parallel Parlor, Alpro.
• Blue Diamond Herdsman HRS (CrowdGate).

Work routine:

• 3 cleanings / day
• Parlor deck is manually scraped, gathering area is flushed with recycled grey water.
• 2x 30 m³ (8000 gal.) milk tanks: milk truck can come any time in a 24 hour period without disturbing milking
• Sort-gates used for moving cows.
• Heat pipes in all parlor- and holding area floors
• Herd management milk in special needs parlor, milk goes to manure system (some colostrum saved for calves)
• DDI goal is that <3% of cows (including fresh cows) should be milked in special needs parlor. Current is ~2,5%.

Mastitis Management and Milk Quality

• A proper work routine performed by the milkers is the most important way to keep the mastitis level low and milk quality high.
• Cows udders are flamed with a low heat gas flame to reduce long hairs at udder.
• Cow’s tails are cut to prevent contamination of udder with manure.

Figure 7.2*20 Blue Diamond EnDurance parallel Parlor

Feeding Managment

• TRM of haylage, corn silage, dry hay and grain.
• Feeding twice per day
• Three pushups per day
• Ceramic tiles on feed table to improve hygiene
• DDI goal: 50% of dry matter intake should be forage
• Three turnover type water troughs / 100 cow group, water temp. 16-17ºC when entering trough.

Figure 8. Feed Center

Figure 9. Water troughs in cross alley accesstble from walk alleys.

Grouping Strategy

•  100 cow groups

Reproductive Parameters

• Most of heat detection is done at night
• Activity meters also used
• ~50 days voluntary wait period (60 days U.S. average)

Calving, Calf Management and Heifer Rearing

• All rearing of calves and heifers are made off site by contractors.
• Calves and cows are separated twice a day (normally after 1-2 hours).
• All calves are force feed with colostrum (stored in freezed condition).
• Calves are weaned at 45 days.
• Heifer age at first calving goal is 21-22 months
• Present rearing cost for heifers are $1800

Figure 10. Calving pen

Vaccinations & Treatments

• Insemination, vaccination, pregnancy check, bST treatment etc, is done in headlocks at feed table.
• Vet. check every 2:nd Friday, vaccination every Monday.

Figure 11. Headlocks

 Manure Handling

• Due to environmental and odor-regulating concerns, the manure handling system is designed to use an anaerobic digester to process the manure.
• From the flow gutter the liquid manure is pumped to the digester. The manure flows trough the plug flow type digester with a 21 day retention at ~38ºC (100ºF) and volatile solids are converted to biogas. To get a proper function of the digeste the manure has to consist of maximum 12% solids and be free of sand. The digester is followed by a separator from whitch a solid part and a liquid part are obtained.
• The liquid manure is stored in an 11000 m3 (391600 ft3) Slurry Store® structure.
• The biogas produced in the digester is currently burned in boilers that produce hot water, in the future Microturbines (biogas driven electricity producing turbines) will produce electricity exceeding the on farm need.
• Feed- and stall alleys are scraped with Houle-scrapers. Scrapers run automatically 24 hours a day (45 minutes interval).
• Extra space is added on gables to locate scraper equipment indoors.
• Heat pipes in scraper alley floors
• No lengthwise slope in scraper alleys
• Manure system is designed with gravity flow without pumps, water is added at one place only.
• Due to the high water table on the site, the manure storage is placed above ground.
• There are four monitoring wells on the site to monitor nitrogen content in the groundwater.

Figure 12. Tiltable water trough and extra building lenght to house drive unit for alley scraper 

Ventilation

• 4,2 m side walls (14’) with split curtains.
• 1,5 m (5’) bottom curtain manually regulated, top curtain on hygrostat and temperature automatic control.
• 0,15 m (6’’) open eave
• Open ridge (fixed)
• Fans and sprinklers over feed alleys for cooling in summertime

Figure 14. Fan over feed alley  Figure 15. Outside view of ventiation curtains

Discussion

• Labor is a big issue. Finding high quality labor is hard. Recent switch from domestic labor to Hispanic milkers has improved the situation and the quality of work. SCC has been reduced after switch to Hispanic milkers.
• One of the biggest building mistakes is that the Crowd Gate doesn’t end close enough to the parlor. Milkers have to collect last cows in holding area manually.
• All DDI activity, manure handling in special, are influenced by the nearby residents. Big efforts are being made to keep neighbors comfortable and uncomplaining though they live close to an 800 cow dairy farm. More time was spent designing the manure handling system at DDI than on cow flow.
• The manure handling system seems reliable due to minimized number of pumps and weather protected drive units for alley scrapers. Also, the odor reducing function (less odor since bad smelling volatile solids are converted into biogas) of the digester seems to work fine, during a one-week observation bad odor from the manure on the site newer occurred.
• Heated floors (feed-, walk- and scraper alleys, parlor area) is an interesting feature. A total of 12 miles of heat water pipes is moulded into the floors. This is made possible by the biogas production from the digester that is used to heat water in boilers. The heated floors provide a faster dry up of the floors and ensure proper function of manure scrapers in freezing winter.
• Two-way walk alleys between freestalls and milk center provide cow traffic in two directions.