I am currently on holiday in Saskatoon, Canada, visiting my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. The weather is lovely here at around 25°C. The average dairy farm size over here is 300-400 cows.

We visited a 600-cow dairy farm here, they are calving all year round and fully indoors. This is a unique farm as they have a milling business running alongside the dairy.

It is a family business with three brothers running it. They are farming 6,000ac, with 2,000ac each of maize, barley and alfalfa in three blocks. The cows are all Holstein and are milked three times per day, at 4am, 12pm and 8pm, in a 12 unit double up, rapid exit parlour.

Each milking shift takes approximately seven hours, so the machine is running nearly 24 hours per day. They had 220 cows eight years ago, and invested heavily in a state-of-the-art cubicle shed five years ago and increased to 600 cows. They are planning to build a 72-bail rotary next year to cut milking times in half.

The cubicle shed has big fans along the side and on the roof for cooling during the summer and are fully insulated for the winter.

The cubicle beds are filled with sand and the passageways are cleaned by a flood wash system, which I wouldn’t be a fan of in a cubicle shed.

The older sheds have track scrapers, the same as in Ireland. They have a slurry separator in the big shed to re-use the liquid from the flood wash and the solids are spread on the 2,000ac around the dairy.

There is also a lagoon with slurry which is spread with an umbilical system. The sand is also separated out and is left to dry outside and re-used again in the beds.

The cows’ diet is made up of maize silage, alfalfa silage, wholecrop barley silage, barley grain and minerals. The cows were in fantastic condition and welfare standards looked to be excellent.

Sexed semen is used on all cows and when they have enough cows AI’d for their replacements they switch to sexed male Angus bulls.

Prices

They told me they get €100 for Friesian bull calves and €400 for the Angus bulls at a few weeks old.

Calves are kept in individual pens for approximately one week and then moved into group pens. They have access to water and meal and three litres of milk replacer twice daily.

Calf sheds are also insulated and have a ventilation system in place to keep fresh air coming in. I was told their milk price is the equivalent of approximately 40c/l at home, but I haven’t got a price on the cost of production yet.

But with the system they have here, I think their cost of production has to be high, and close to 40c/l. They have a massive electricity usage and seven staff working each day.

Grain

We also called in to see a combine harvesting wheat and had a chat with that farmer. He said the price of grain is nearly half of what it was last year, back to the equivalent of €167/t and canola, which is the cash crop here, is back to €324/t equivalent. Yields would be from approximately 1t to 2t/ac.

Back at home, Dad has been busy getting the malting barley cut the last week. Our grass cover is well behind where it should be at 638kg DM/ha on our last measure.

We have been going in with three or four bales per day for the last two weeks to try and slow the cows down and build cover. We also went back up to 4kg of nuts in the parlour.

Growth has only been just above 50kg DM/ha for the last few weeks. Our demand is now back at 33kg DM/ha. So this should allow us to build cover quickly. Yield is holding around 21-22 litres, butterfat is around 4.50-4.60% and protein is at 3.90-4.05%. Somatic cell count is still under 100,000 which I am delighted with.