Today was a treat. I visited the place where Holsteins
originated. How neat is that? Seriously, my family and friends have been
playing around with Holsteins our entire life and now I get to see where they
originated? I was a happy camper!
An employee of CRV toured me around to three Dutch dairy
farms and the Sexing Technologies lab associated with CRV. Niek, my CRV tour
guide was a lot of fun and took me to some of the best herds in just a 20-mile
radius. In case you didn’t know, the Netherlands is less than the size of
Vermont and New Hampshire combined. And, it has roughly 20,000 dairy farms.
Thus, great farms are pretty close to each other!
Our first stop was the lab where they process sexed semen.
Neat stuff. Honestly, a lot of the technology was tough for Niek and I to
understand and therefore we had fun observing the liquid nitrogen and the
computer screens. Just kidding, the process isn’t too complicated; I just liked
the feel that I was in a haunted house with all the liquid nitrogen smoke.
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| CRV coffee/tea cups. I wanted to steal these! |
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| Sexed semen machine. |
Moving along, we stopped at a farm that has been very
successful for breeding bulls that go into AI for CRV and other studs. His
philosophy is to never sell embryos or offspring of his cows, but only sell the
bulls in order to avoid diluting his genetics/product.
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| With the first farmer and his bull mother cow. |
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| Youngstock and milk cows are mainly kept on slated floors. This is changing with time as more contemporary barns are built. |
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| The farmer's wife that is an artist had the ingenious idea to make road signs with her work on it. Every sign known to the dutch road system has a corresponding cow painting that somewhat resembles it. |
After touring the farm, we had a typical Dutch lunch outside. It consisted of wheat bread, cheese, butter, salmon spread, coffee, and chocolate. As off color as that sounds, I was quite satisfied! Even cooler was the art gallery that this farmer’s wife had inside their house. I loved her very clever work! She also loved that Bonnie Mohr was a family friend of mine
J
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| Where we had lunch and Niek tying his fancy dutchie shoes. |
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| The train system and public transportation is so extensive, passenger trains drive right by dairy pastures. |
Next farm was a 150 cow herd with a 24 cow inverted rotary
parlor. This farmer was so bashful considering the 25,000 lb RHA and
outstanding management statistics. One thing that I found to be a huge take
home point was the success and benefits of an inverted parlor. She said that viewing
all cows and having less area for labor to walk was crucial. Most notable for
this herd was that at one time they had eight generations on the herd, at one
time, with the matriarch producing well over 250,000 pounds of milk lifetime.
What a cool accomplishment.
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| Eight generations alive at one time on one farm! |
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| This cow almost made the selection committee to go to the national show, but didn't quite cut it. Nothing at the national show can go unless it is qualified. |
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| Outside of the rotary parlor allowing tons of natural light. |
The last farmer was a hoot. He walked out of the house to
greet us with his size 13 wooden clogs! Not to mention he was a burly guy with
the deepest Dutch voice in his 50s. I enjoyed ever word he said! This farmer
knew his stuff. He has judged quite a bit worldwide and has bred the number one
producing herd in the Netherlands. Walking through the pasture was a pure joy
for me because I saw his passion for dairy spewing from his words. His best producer
has produced 155,000 kgs. of milk lifetime, totaling roughly 340,000 lbs. of
milk lifetime. Also outstanding, this farmer holds the record for having 48
cows with his prefix to have produced over 100,000 kgs. of milk lifetime. Blown
away.
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| A true Friesian Holstein with horns that this family acquired from a neighbor selling out. |
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| A cow that qualified to go to the national show. |
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| Same cow going to the show. |
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| The 155,000 kg lifetime cow. |
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| An attempt to take a picture with the 155,000 kg cow and the farmer with his wooden clogs. |
One huge difference from here and from the states was that
they look at mainly lifetime production to judge the production level of a cow,
while in the states the best lactation is most important. Just a different way
of doing things
J
Right after returning home, dinner was being made and I was
able to pitch in and make the salad. I made homemade croutons for the salad
with tomatoes, parmesan cheese, and balsamic dressing. Yum! For the main course
was a pasta dish with tomatoes, olives, ginger, garlic, and olive oil. Oh boy,
hold on to your taste buds! The flavor of both dishes blew my socks off and I
did not mind one bit. It was delightful!
After dinner, Bobbi, Niek, and I had a few beers outside until we were interrupted by a curious group of five piglets. They had escaped from the pen and dug up parts of the lawn. We didn’t stop them. They were too cute.
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| Notice the piglets in the back? |
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| Mischievous little fellas! |
Today, I learned that different is good. A different lunch,
a different way of dairy farming, and a different way of spending an evening is
much appreciated I can only hope my future family loves to mix things up and do
things a tad differently some day; I know my family now-a-days does! Speaking
of family, a shot out to my parents for their 30th Anniversary. Dad,
thanks for finding mom and pulling out all the stops to convince her to marry
you. Mom, thanks for thinking dad was cool (at the time) and raising our family
on a funny farm. Love you both and thank you for giving me a great family to
call home J
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