The UW-Extension Green County in cooperation with the Green County Milk Quality Council and support from Union Bank and Trust and the Bank of Brodhead will be sponsoring Dairy Facility Farm Tours on Thursday, August 20, 2015. The tours will include seven dairy farms located in the Green County area that have all made modernization improvements to their dairy facilities to increase productivity and animal comfort as well as reduce labor.
The Dairy Modernization Tours are held every two years and attract dairy producers and Ag professionals from over 13 counties and three states. The tours are popular with dairy farmers as they feature an open house format in which dairy producers can visit any number of the seven farms they wish between 10:30 am and 3 pm. There will not be a central meeting place or any formal presentation. Farmers can simply select which farms they would like to visit on their own time schedule between 10:30 am – 3 pm on August 20th. A farm representative will be on hand at each farm to answer questions for the tour participants.
The tours will feature various sizes of dairy farms with herds ranging from 65-400 cows. For producers interested in upgrading their milking facilities, the tours will include a free flow robotic milking system, a Swing 10 Parabone parlor built into an existing stall barn, a double 8 Parabone parlor built onto and existing stall barn, a new double 8 Parallel parlor inside in new building, and two Herringbone parlors.
Several cattle housing configurations will be featured on the tours including: three, four and six row freestall barns with natural ventilation. Two farms will feature 8 row freestall barns with cross ventilation systems. Bedding systems in the barns will include sand, bedded pack and recycled manure solids.
The tours will include several young stock housing facilities including a building designed for baby calves with an automatic feeding system and positive pressure ventilation system. Examples of well-designed bedding pack housing for calves from weaning to 4 months with inside feeding and from five months to breeding age with outside feeding will also be included on the tours.
Several manure handling systems with be included on the tours. Several farms will include daily scraping systems with mini manure pits for storage. Two farms feature long term manure storage. One with lagoons and another with a manure pit under the freestall barn that also features a screw press system used to separate manure solids to be reused for bedding.
These tours are designed to help generate ideas for dairy producers who are considering future improvements and modernization in their own dairy facilities. Host farmers will be on hand to share their experiences in the building process and to explain what they like about their facility and what they might change if they were to do it again. Tour participants will be required to wear plastic boots that are being supplied at the host farms by Union Bank and Trust Company and the Bank of Brodhead.