At Nieuwenhof farm, the attention is on the details.
This is particularly the case for dry cows which are housed in small groups at the farm at Sainte-Agnès-de-Dundee, QC.
And it pays off. The farm recently produced two kilograms of fat per cow per day for four consecutive months.
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How many groups of cows do you have in your barn?
Cows in lactation, dry cows and a calving group? Maybe you have two groups of lactating cows? Not at Ferme Nieuwenhof, owned by Benjamin and Justin Nieuwenhof. There are fresh cows, high producers, adult cows, first-calf heifers and heifers in three groups, all this in addition to seven pens of dry cows in preparation for calving and two calving pens. This is a rare model in Canada.
Benjamin Nieuwenhof placed the dry cows in several small groups during an expansion of the barn in 2018. The idea comes from the recommendations of a group of researchers from the University of Wisconsin, the Dairyland Initiative. The advantage is the stability of the group of dry cows throughout the dry period. Cows in the same group will even calve together. The idea immediately appealed to a local veterinarian, Jodi Wallace, who is also a dairy farmer with her husband, Mark Anderson. So much so that the dry cows at Anderson Farm are now housed using the same concept.
“In the United States, they call it the all-in/all-out system. In the same group, there are four cows that are dried off at the same time and whose calving date is within 10 days,” explains Benjamin Nieuwenhof. During the 60 days of the dry period, the same four cows are kept in the same stable group.
This results in reduced stress for the cows in a critical period of their production. The big difference between Canada and the United States is the size of the herd.
“The bigger the herd, the easier it is,” he says. The number of cows in dry cow groups is calculated based on the number of calvings per year in the herd. At Ferme Nieuwenhof & partners, there are 150 calvings per year.
Benjamin Nieuwenhof saw this concept for housing dry cows in an American magazine, when he was planning an expansion of their barn built in 2011. He then read the “Housing for cows in transition” page of the Dairyland Initiative which explains how to calculate the number of cows per group of dry cows.
It recommended groups of 50, 100 and even 200 dry cows, he says, which shows the difference in size of American dairy herds.
In the barn, a section is dedicated to dry cows and cows in transition and instead of having a large group, there are several small pens: two groups of heifers in preparation for calving, 45 days before calving in stalls with sand; three groups of dry cows with sand stalls and two groups of cows being prepared for calving on a straw pack. They are four cows or heifers per group. When ready to calve, the cows are transferred to one of two calving pens.
The small details
After three years with this system, Benjamin Nieuwenhof can’t say if the productivity gains are specifically linked to the groups of dry cows since the diet of the dry cows has also been modified. Dry cows are fed corn silage. Cows that have consumed silage throughout their lactation continue to eat a fermented ration, which provides stability in the rumen. The other reason for this choice is that the farm does not have a low potassium field for hay. Corn silage contains little potassium. There is, however, a major difference: the variety of the corn hybrid. Until 2020, the corn planted for dry cows was too high a heat unit for the region, 3300 instead of the 3100 recommended for the grain to reach maturity. After a killing frost, the corn was harvested as silage.
The ration then contained nine to 10 kg of corn silage and eight to 10 kg of straw to prevent the cows from getting fat. In 2021, they replaced the high-corn hybrid with a low-grain corn hybrid. They still add straw, but less, or four kg per cow per day. The dry period is 60 days.
In three years, the dairy herd has increased its production by more than 2,000 kg of milk per year, going from 13,700 kg to 16,000 kg of milk per cow per year. Last spring, the amount of fat produced per cow per day reached two kg for four consecutive months, which is exceptional.
What is the secret of success?
“The comfort of the cows, the digestible feed and good genetics. This is the base. We have access to the same technologies as everyone else. We have access to the same genetics. Some have specific goals. All we want is to do better than the year before, ” says Nieuwenhof. And that is exactly what they manage to do.
Among the elements that allow the farm to be efficient, the Nieuwenhofs, father and son, chose to build the new barn in 2011 in the center of the land they cultivate, approximately 400 ha. This way the manure pit is in the center of the land. They spread the manure by irrigation with 2.4 km long hoses. The silage is stored in bags. Nothing is overlooked at Ferme Nieuwenhof and partners.
The farm details:
Farm Nieuwenhof & partner
Location: Sainte-Agnès-de-Dundee, Montérégie, Québec
Owners: Justin and Benjamin Nieuwenhof, father and son.
Herd: 110 milking cows, 220 kg quota
Land: 405 ha (1,000 acres) cultivated including 344 ha owned.
Crops: corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa.
Advantage: the farm is very efficient from all points of view. The goal of the owners is to improve every year. They produced 2 kg of fat per cow for four consecutive months in 2021.
This first appeared in Le Bulletin des agriculteurs.
