Russian dairy farms are undergoing huge development

Belgorod is a region which is about 600km or two hours south of Moscow, almost on the Ukrainian border. Accompanied by Enterprise Ireland representatives, I visited a Russian grain and milk company called Greendale. Greendale Milking Company operates 11 dairy farms, with 7,500 milking cows farming almost 12,000ha. It has 1,500 employees with a turnover of 1.8 billion rubles (RUB), or €36m.

Greendale is owned 70:30 by the state and private interests, respectively. Milk is supplied to Parmalat (Lactalis), Danone (Unimilk), Hochland Ruisland and other smaller local Russian plants. The farms are located in the Belgorod region of Russia and the company plans to build two more dairy farms this year. Typically, when building a dairy farm, Greendale uses an Italian company to put up the sheds and then deals with a milking machine company, such as De Laval or Westfalia, for the milking equipment. So far, it has no Dairymaster plants installed but a representative has recently been in contact with Greendale. When I was in Russia, they were trying to do a deal with Crowley Engineering, Co Cork, for feed bins and grain driers.

Land is not owned by the company; instead, it is on a 49-year rent from the state. The rental price is 1,500RUB/ha (€30/ha). The chief executive of Greendale explains: “We cannot buy land in this region but we can rent it on a long-term lease, so we have continuity for the future. It takes about 1.5 cows/hectare to carry a milking cow in our system. Our agricultural industry is only 20 years old and the ability to have property and the proper understanding by owners is not well developed yet in Russia.”

Land is good quality, with maize silage yields upwards of 30t/ha and grain yields over 8t/ha. Yields are comparable to Ireland, despite the extremely long and cold winters. Soil fertility is good but rainfall in this region is much lower, on average, compared with Ireland at 560mm (22in).

The average wage cost to the company for workers is approximately €500/month with income tax at 13%. In terms of the cost of living, some items are much cheaper such as electricity, public travel and communications but clothes and food are as expensive because both are mainly imported.

To give an idea how dairy farming has struggled to prosper in Russia, I asked one of the Greendale employees to describe the transition over the last 10 years. He said: “In my village 10 years ago, I would have been surrounded by over 500 cows, mostly small land owners each milking five to 10 cows each. This would have been typical of many Russian villages. By 2007, so many of the young people had moved to Moscow that the number of milking cows was down to 200. Today, there are around 20 milking cows in my village. In general, farms have been left idle and household plots now grow wild.”

From wheat to milk

Constantin Zhuralevev, manager of animal husbandary for Greendale, took me to three of the Russian farms the company owns. The first farm was built to milk 1,200 cows. New sheds and a parlour were constructed in the middle of a wheat field. Land all around the facility is used for growing feed – maize silage, lucerne, rapeseed and soya.

Milking started in January 2012 and there are 70 people working on the farm. The farmyard was still under development, with new roads going down, but all the cows and sheds were in place and the farm was producing about 23,000 litres of milk per day (23 litres per cow for 1,000 cows).

The cows stay in all year round and are fed a diet of maize silage, hay from lucerne, straw from lucerne, smashed maize grains, rapeseed, soya and mineral premixes, as required. They are housed in large sheds that have cubicles and scrapers with large, central feeding passages. The cows move from shed to shed depending on the stage of lactation. For example, shed five holds milking cows, shed four is the calving shed, shed three holds the cows recently inseminated, shed two holds pregnant cows, etc. Young stock are also kept on the farm with replacements starting out in hutches and moving to loose sheds and then into cubicles as they grow.

The milking parlour is a 24-unit DeLaval herringbone with swingover arms and a rapid exit. On this farm, milking takes up to six hours with three operators in the pit and automatic cluster removers.

Constantin showed us the milk receipts. Milk yield was 23 litres at 3.6% fat and 3.23% protein at 120 SCC (somatic cell count) and 50 TBC (total bacteria count). When I visited, milk price was 18.5RUB/litre (40c/litre), which Constantin described as very good relative to some years.

The cows are all Holstein Friesians imported from Canada and the US, with 100% artificial insemination using all American AI sires. Each day, local staff come in and feed, clean, milk and look after the stock.

Constantin is in charge of animal health and he said some of the biggest challenges were laminitis, Mortellaro, mastitis and that they were vaccinating for BVD and salmonella. They were testing for TB twice a year and didn’t have brucellosis or bluetongue.

Calves are reared in hutches outdoors adjacent to the cow sheds. They spend up to two months in hutches before moving inside into large straw-bedded sheds. When I called, they were on five litres of milk per day and had access to calf creep at €1,000/t with hay and water in each hutch.

Slurry was stored in large, plastic-lined tanks. From there, it was pumped to a drier where it was heated using energy from the slurry to dry out the slurry and kill the bacteria. The dried material was used as bedding on the cubicles.

State grant aid

State help comes in different formats in Russia for new dairy farms. There is grant aid for new roads, electricity and to fund interest rates on loans. There are also subsidies on the purchase of cows and incentives for the use AI and producing good milk quality.

Tie-up barns

The second farm I visited had 800 cows in four sheds, with 200 cows in each. This was a long-established farm and the cows were held in traditional tie-up stalls.

Constantin said: “The production on this farm is better because there are 490 mature cows milking, mostly Dutch-bred cows, and the farm is more established and is milking three times per day. There are 36 workers on this farm and the production is 24 litres per day at 4% fat and 3.3% protein.”

US-style timber barns

The third farm we visited was another large-scale relatively new dairy unit, with 1,200 milking cows.

The plan is to increase to 1,800 milking cows within a few months. Set up in 2006, this farm had a Westfalia 24-unit, double-up parlour with three operators and another worker moving cows in and out. wMilk yield on this farm was 20 litres at 3.5% fat and 3.2% protein.

A batch of 300 in-calf heifers had just arrived from the US. They are purchased there for $3,200 per head. To travel to Russia, they must have a three-week quarantine period in the US, followed by three to four weeks on a boat to Russia followed by five weeks of quarantine on a Russian farm. On the Russian farm, they must be housed separately to other stock.

Part of the Greendale machinery fleet was also present on this third farm. The silage harvesters, muck spreaders, fertilizer spinners and tedders are large to cover the area farmed between all the different farms.