The Moos Room™

Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room. Brad, again on a wonderful, actually sunny day in Minnesota. But it's getting cold. Temperatures today. We're about 30°F, zero degrees Celsius. So it's getting cold. Maybe a few flakes flying here in Minnesota. Some places in southern Minnesota got some snow. So winter is coming. Hopefully, hopefully it's a little ways away. But it's supposed to warm up again this week.

00;00;43;01 - 00;01;10;20
Brad
So we're kind of in that period between winter and summer. Well we'll manage. We'll manage the cows here. We've brought everybody off pasture. So, trying to get everything closer into confinement for the winter on TMR and here we have maybe 40 or 50 cows left to care for our fall season through the end of November. So we're almost done.

00;01;10;20 - 00;01;33;15
Brad
We're beginning breeding again soon, probably working on more pull genetics, trying to increase pull genetics in our herd. But I wanted to give you a travel vlog. You know, I went to Europe for a couple of weeks and learned lots of interesting things, saw lots of interesting farms, and went to a farm show and learned actually a lot.

00;01;33;18 - 00;01;57;23
Brad
Learned about a lot that's happening in the dairy industry in the Netherlands and Germany. And what what's actually happening on those farms. And, you know, what they feed and just kind of an all around view of the dairy industry. And I thought I might give a few tidbits about some of the things that I saw and, and the few interesting facts that are a little bit different than what we might, think about.

00;01;57;23 - 00;02;25;20
Brad
And some of the interesting things that farmers were doing in the Netherlands and, and into Germany was interesting. I flew into, Amsterdam, actually went there to speak at a conference, put on by Hybrid Genetics in, in Germany and Bremen and to talk about some of our crossbreeding work here. And there was a conference that had lots of different speakers, from milking equipment to nutrition to calf feeding and some breeding stuff.

00;02;25;20 - 00;02;49;17
Brad
So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But, they picked me up actually in, in Amsterdam. So I flew into Amsterdam, on, on a Tuesday and then decided that we should go to farms right away and see some of the farms in the Netherlands and into Germany, albeit I was tired actually getting from jetlag. But one of the first farms that we went to was quite interesting.

00;02;49;20 - 00;03;16;25
Brad
Maurice van der fleet in, Germany, just along the German and Dutch border, a farm of about 100 cows or a little bit less. And a lot of these farms that I visited obviously had crossbred cows and Holstein cows. So we were there to see some of the crossbred cows. This farm obviously had a couple robots. That was one of the things that I thought was quite interesting in these farms for most of them.

00;03;17;02 - 00;03;39;03
Brad
All of them that we went to had robotics and lots of different technology to make life a lot easier, which I think that's something to learn about for us here in the US, is that we can do a lot of things with technology to make our lives much easier. Anyway, so I, I saw the farm. It's an interesting farm, kind of a newer barn and then an older barn.

00;03;39;03 - 00;03;56;29
Brad
You know, some of these, barns in Europe are a couple hundred years old. So trying to manage cows in a new barn in an old barn is interesting. But one of the things that I thought was interesting about this farm, as well as they also had a lot of chickens. So lots of big, what we would call here in the US, a chicken tractor.

00;03;56;29 - 00;04;19;25
Brad
So they were selling a lot of eggs on farm and had some beef as well, also selling milk off of their farm in a little farm shop at the end of their driveway. So it was kind of interesting to learn about some of those aspects and some of the things that we're trying to do here in the US as far as diversify our livestock operations.

00;04;19;27 - 00;04;48;02
Brad
Well, the next day we went to, another farm, in, in Germany along the Dutch border, Andre fencing and had pro cross cows. So cross breeds of Holstein won't be the yard and Viking red. Interesting thing about this farm. So it was father and a son and had robots as well. We saw lots of good cows. We saw a cow at least I remember.

00;04;48;06 - 00;05;09;16
Brad
Fifth lactation cross-bred cow still milking about 85 pounds a day. You know, they're getting lots of milk out of these cows. You know, grass silage. We think about corn silage here in the US, and we feed a lot of corn silage, but they're in at least the parts of where I was Germany, the Netherlands, feeding lots of grass silage.

00;05;09;16 - 00;05;45;29
Brad
So rye silage, to these, to these cows. This farm was doing something interesting with their dry cows. So dry cows only got straw. Nothing else, nothing else in the ration. So for 60 days, only straw and the farmer told me the reason that they do that is that they don't have any metabolic issues in their cows. Once they have, they calve right away, start milking, do really well, no health problems, no health issues by just feeding straw, nothing else.

00;05;45;29 - 00;06;09;08
Brad
Fascinating to learn that, you know, I never thought about that, that you can just feed straw, you know, chop straw to these dry cows. They were in really good condition. No issue. The cows looked good, but only got straw. A lot of these farms have digesters, you know, small scale digesters to. One was using it to separate solids, for cows.

00;06;09;10 - 00;06;34;28
Brad
For selling it, and, what wasn't bedding with it, but using it for fertilizer. That's one of the things that I think is very different about those countries compared to the US, is that they have small scale digesters on their farms, you know, farms with 200 cows or less have digesters to capture the manure, capture all of the the methane gas and ammonia.

00;06;35;02 - 00;06;52;14
Brad
And we really don't have that here in the US. So that's an interesting fact. I think it's coming here in the US. I'm trying to figure that out here at our research center. You know, I saw it a lot of these things in our research center. And it's like, man, maybe we could go into small scale digestion here.

00;06;52;14 - 00;07;16;24
Brad
I know we've done it on a large scale in places in the US, but can we move it in more of a smaller scale area? And maybe we'll be thinking about that in some of our ideas as we move along in, in our dairy facility here. And then after that, I actually met with, a breeding company company that sells different semen.

00;07;16;24 - 00;07;47;25
Brad
Jersey. Holstein might be the yard Viking Red, in the Netherlands called Cornell. It's cool. And Lybrand, it's a breeding company and I think is Heino. The Netherlands and I went and talked there with the owner, Walter Lybrand, and we really talked about the Dutch dairy industry and was actually quite fascinated about what's happening in the Netherlands right now with the Dutch dairy farms.

00;07;47;28 - 00;08;22;10
Brad
Obviously there's a large nitrogen crisis or a supposed nitrogen crisis. And in the Dutch dairy industry, where the Dutch government has really thought about reducing the size of livestock operations by at least one third to reduce nitrogen pollution, ammonia gas, you name it. So they're actually coming in and buying up farms. Some of these farms will never be able to have livestock on their land again after they've signed some agreements with the Dutch government, which is, quite interesting.

00;08;22;10 - 00;08;44;23
Brad
It's kind of sad that you'll never be able to have livestock on on that land again, but we really learned about it. And some of these farms, you know, the they don't have enough acreage to spread manure, everything for their livestock land. Right now in the Netherlands, 50,000 plus an acre. It's really expensive. I mean, you know, nobody would be able to afford that.

00;08;44;25 - 00;09;07;27
Brad
Here in the US. We certainly wouldn't be able to afford that. In any other country as well. This other breeding company also had a, a different one. They have an embryo program called Gene hotel, where they sell lots of embryos and lots of different genetics, hosting genetics, black and white genetics, read and write genetics in the Netherlands and to Germany.

00;09;08;00 - 00;09;27;04
Brad
An interesting fact is that the Dutch dairy farmers really love their red Holsteins, really love their red Holsteins. I saw a lot of red Holsteins. On Dutch dairy farms. It's quite interesting. We tend not to see as many here in the US, but I thought that was quite interesting as well, that, we saw lots of, red Holsteins.

00;09;27;07 - 00;09;55;11
Brad
Interesting is there's about 12,000 roughly dairy farms in the Netherlands. Most of them are a little bit larger, maybe about a thousand or so with 50 cows or less. So that's sort of where we stand in the dairy industry in the Netherlands. So if you think about it from, a US perspective, maybe about 24,000 dairy farms in the US across the whole U.S. and, you know, the Netherlands is a very small country.

00;09;55;14 - 00;10;15;16
Brad
Livestock is concentrated very heavily. They've got some big cities there. So imagine half of the many dairy farms is what we have in the US. In this small country, there's just livestock everywhere. And it's really interesting. I like to see it a lot. I like to see all the live livestock as we drive, around in the Netherlands.

00;10;15;22 - 00;10;39;11
Brad
So after we visited the breeding company, I had the chance to actually go to another farm, very close to, the breeding company had about 200 cows, actually four robots. And they had just put in a new, lily robot system and got about 3 to 4 more pounds of milk from those cows. So by putting in more robots, they were able to get more milk out of these cows.

00;10;39;14 - 00;11;07;22
Brad
They were about 13,000kg of milk per year. So little over 26,000 pounds of milk on all crossbred of of Holstein must be the yard and Viking red. And their goal was to hit 15,000kg per cow per year. Well, what is that? That's about 33,000 pounds of milk. That is high production on these cows, and I think they'll do it.

00;11;07;22 - 00;11;31;16
Brad
I talked to this Dutch dairy farmer, and he was really adamant that he wanted to get that much milk, and he knew he could get that much milk out of those cows. These cows also grazed. They were out on pasture. They had access to go outside. Obviously, most of them spent time in the barn, but as those cows got toward the end of lactation, they may be spent a little more time on pasture in the nice green grass.

00;11;31;18 - 00;11;54;28
Brad
So it was interesting to learn about the philosophy on trying to get high milk production. And we can see we can get high milk production out of these cows and out of crossbred cows. And then after that, I had a chance to go to a farm show in Hardin Berg in the Netherlands, a Dutch farm show, showcasing a lot of technology, only for dairy only for dairy.

00;11;55;00 - 00;12;19;10
Brad
And one of the things that we see there are live animal displays. We tend not to see that there's much here in the US. We don't really see it as much anymore. So live animal displays quite fascinating. I saw, you know, crossbred cows from Korea now that that had some they're showcasing some of their cows that were producing 27, 28,000 pounds of milk.

00;12;19;10 - 00;12;42;07
Brad
They had four cows there. Some might be the yard crosses, some Viking red crosses as well. I also went to the worldwide sires booth. You know, I worked at Worldwide Sires many years ago and actually was able to visit with some of the people there at Worldwide Sires in the Netherlands, and they had a display, I think seven cows, all perfect daughters.

00;12;42;07 - 00;13;06;22
Brad
So Holstein bull from select sires called perfect. Really good. Wonderful type, good production. They had seven daughters there. It was nice to see some of those perfect daughters in real life. I added up the perfect daughters that we have. We have a bunch on the ground. We have about 15 of them on the ground. They're all young, either calves or yearling heifers.

00;13;06;28 - 00;13;27;05
Brad
So I'm kind of excited to see that. I got to see those cows at that farm show. Had a big jersey display. So Viking jersey, Danish jersey, had a bunch of jerseys there. There were other cows, red and whites, lots of red and white cows on display. You know, showing off some of the top bulls. There was one bold cow potency red.

00;13;27;07 - 00;13;47;23
Brad
I remember, very good type cows. Excellent cows. It's just nice to see some of these cows and view them and see them in person. You know, I remember the days we used to do that at World Dairy Expo where Simex would have live cow displays, and you got to see some of those. I think it's always good to see the daughters of some of those bulls.

00;13;47;23 - 00;14;12;16
Brad
So, I appreciated seeing that in the atmosphere. There also some flexy calves there. So a lot of people like to show off, different breeds there as well. And after the Farm Show was a long day of, touring farms. So we decided that was enough for the day. Touring farms got to see the farm show, take a rest.

00;14;12;18 - 00;14;33;05
Brad
We'll be back on, dairy farms the next day. So that's what we did. Went back to more dairy farms in Germany. So now this time we're in Germany. So Germany has had a little less 45,000 or or more dairy farms in Germany. So a lot double the amount of of dairies that we see here in the US.

00;14;33;05 - 00;14;55;15
Brad
But lots of interesting. We started the morning up in, in kind of northern Jersey. We started up in northern Germany, kind of along the Dutch border, kind of near Oldenburg. We were on our way to Bremen, to view some of these farms. The first farm we went to was a farm. It's quite interesting, very interesting. What did I learn there?

00;14;55;15 - 00;15;26;15
Brad
Well, they had Holsteins, a cross-bred, probably about half and half. One fact that I learned and this is, is is kind of going around Germany now. I don't know what to think about it, but there is a person telling farmers that they should not clean their calf pens ever. And they raise their calves, never clean them because we would disrupt the bacteria, the microbiome, you name it, of those calves and create less healthy calves by cleaning our calf barn than what we would if we were to clean it all the time.

00;15;26;15 - 00;15;44;28
Brad
You know, that kind of goes against a lot of the mentality that we have. You know, we want to keep everything clean so we have healthy calves, but there was a person in Germany and I heard it even at the conference, don't clean your calf barns, raise your calves. You put new bedding in there. Obviously, but you should not clean it.

00;15;44;28 - 00;16;09;12
Brad
Don't don't do any of that because you're causing harm by cleaning to the natural environment of those calves. You know, whether that's true or not, I don't know. I know, one of the farms that we were on was was treating some calves for respiratory diseases, things like that. Maybe that was the the barn from 200 years ago that didn't really have any ventilation, but quite interesting.

00;16;09;12 - 00;16;30;22
Brad
And I don't know what to think about that. I really don't, maybe I should do a research study on that to see if, you know, if I don't clean things. But, man, I just. What? I have a disaster on my hands. I, I don't know, I don't know. That's one thing that has certainly perplexed me since, this whole trip to be able to see should we clean our calf pens or not.

00;16;30;28 - 00;16;56;16
Brad
So think about that once. Just think about that. And, it always be interesting to learn more people's thoughts about that. After that, we went to another farm, Riner Farms, near Nuremberg, Germany. 600 cows. So a little bit larger farm this time, probably about half Holstein, half crossbred, mostly Montpelier. The farmer told me at one time he had 600 cows.

00;16;56;18 - 00;17;20;16
Brad
400 of them were by the same bull. I think it was, I think it was. Or was it rapid? I can't remember the the bullet st bull. 400 of daughters in this 600 cow hurt and were from one bull. Just used it for two years straight. And I thought that was quite interesting, that that we saw, that you can do it and it can happen.

00;17;20;16 - 00;17;40;21
Brad
It was it was interesting. I think this farmer had switched to crossbreeding, because he was worried about a lot of the health problems in this herd and, to have a healthier herd. And that's why he really started crossbreeding. So you can do it in, in 600 cow herd, as well. And then we went to a grazing herd, herd of about 200 cows.

00;17;40;21 - 00;18;11;00
Brad
They milked on two different sites. Interesting fact there is they had robots at one time, and then they took them out, because they wasn't really working as well on pasture. But now as laborers getting difficult again, thinking about putting robots back in the barn and trying to manage grazing with the 200 cows on pasture, these cows were giving about 18,000 pounds of milk at about 4.5 fat, 4% protein.

00;18;11;00 - 00;18;34;15
Brad
So really high fat and protein on these cows. And I really got to see what it was like in a grazing environment. Quite the picturesque area, you know, green grass and cows looking good. And, you know, this was more of a lower input farm where they were interested in reducing the cost of dairy production in, in Europe.

00;18;34;15 - 00;19;13;05
Brad
So it can happen. There's lots of different ways that you can try. And I think I saw all of them, you know, grazing to high confinement and quite a lot of different views. But again, this was a crossbred farm. Must be the yard Holstein, you know, and that's what I did research on for a long time. So it's always nice to see some of these farms that actually are doing some of the things that I've researched for the last 20 years, and I kind of had a break over that went down to see a friend who, lives in southern Germany, and he has a dairy farm there, of about 400 cows.

00;19;13;05 - 00;19;36;04
Brad
So we got to spend some time together there. We toured er for the German city there. We went to Bamberg, which was another German city, so I got to spend some time. I also got to see his farm, which has a G, a robot, G, a robot rotary, was number one in the world. And, he's let's just say I think it's going to come out very soon.

00;19;36;06 - 00;20;00;20
Brad
Of the 40 stalls, I think ten of them don't work. And they're attaching all of the union units manually right now. It's just wore out and and really hasn't served the purpose for their 400 cows. So I think they're going to go to some other robotic systems as well. All Holstein dairy, some red Holsteins, a few brown Swiss in the mix, but mostly Holstein, cows, lots of land.

00;20;00;20 - 00;20;22;23
Brad
Kind of an old model collective farm from East Germany. And then we went to the conference, was able to speak at the conference in Germany. We also went back to one of the farms that we had visited, the grazing farm, where I got to meet a lot more of the the German farmers. There were also a Belgian farmers there, so some from Belgium, a couple from the Netherlands.

00;20;22;29 - 00;20;50;28
Brad
So we got to see a wide range of farmers that were interested in learning lots of different things, learning either things about, research on crossbreeding or, or some of the other things. One of the speakers, was from Top Pigs Norseman, which is Swine Breeding Company and really talked about what we can learn from the swine industry as far as breeding in the dairy industry and that there's lots of different traits.

00;20;50;28 - 00;21;14;19
Brad
I think that we can look at from efficiency, you know, feed efficiency, methane emissions. There's lots of resilient traits that are coming in the future. You know, body temperature, heart rate, temperament, heat tolerance. Obviously we think about production, but there's also a lot of other things, you know, casein and lactose and a lot of mid-infrared spectroscopy traits, fatty acids.

00;21;14;19 - 00;21;42;23
Brad
We've talked about that here before. Milk coagulation, mineral composition, biomarkers in milk obviously new health and disease traits, claw disorders. A lot of the health things that we're we're thinking about fertility welfare, you know, thinking about accelerometers and precision technology and how all that goes along. So it was really interesting to learn about what you could learn from the swine breeding industry in the dairy industry.

00;21;42;23 - 00;22;09;13
Brad
And we learned about some of the other farmers, that we're talking about, some of their farms that we went to, you know, we learned about under Zinke and some of his, crossbreeding. We learned about the Dutch dairy farmer who was trying to get to 30,000 pounds of milk or 15,000 kilos, and how he does that, you know, and a lot of these farmers were really proud of their cows that milked over 100,000 kilos.

00;22;09;15 - 00;22;36;21
Brad
I think that's impressive as well. They have lots of longevity in their cows. They're very proud of their cows, very proud of the cows that have a long, long life and are good, productive cows without any health issues. And then I spoke a little bit about my crossbreeding research about some of the new things that we've done with feed efficiency, feed intake, methane emissions, and kind of where we're going in the future with either fatty acid profiles.

00;22;36;26 - 00;23;01;07
Brad
Of course, I reviewed some of the production standpoints that we have, but maybe I'll save that for another day to talk about crossbreeding in some of our stuff. So I really learned a lot there, learned a lot from those farmers what they're interested in. Some of them, you know, we're thinking about crossbreeding because of labor issues. You know, thinking about how do I reduce labor on farm, how do I reduce health problems in farm?

00;23;01;10 - 00;23;37;19
Brad
A lot of these firms were concerned about inbreeding. Inbreeding was probably one of the main topics that we were talking about as well. So farms that were concerned about inbreeding, trying to go to crossbreeding to solve some of their issues. So overall, I had a wonderful time learning about the Dutch and the German dairy industry, meeting with farmers there, talking with them about research, learning about some of their things that they do on their farms, actually learning about a lot of technology that I sort of have in my mind, and trying to figure out how can we do this here in the US to make our dairies more profitable, more efficient as well?

00;23;37;19 - 00;24;11;25
Brad
So with that, I hope you, learned a little bit about some of the the interesting things happening on these dairy farms and in Europe, just by a little travel vlog, if you really don't know what's going on in the dairy industry in other parts of the country. And with that, if you have any comments, questions, or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the Moose Room Model S r o M at UMD Edu, or find us on the web at University of Minnesota Rock dairy or University of Minnesota Livestock Extension.

00;24;11;25 - 00;24;17;03
Brad
And with that, I hope you have a good week.