Despite the harsh agricultural circumstances in Alberta’s prairie state, dairy cows like the dry and chilly temperature.
In Canada, there are around 1.4 million dairy cows and 9,700 herds. The majority are situated in eastern Canada, with just a few dairy producers in the prairie provinces. There are around 500 dairy producers in Alberta, the final plains province before the huge Rocky Mountains. The average size of a herd in Canada is just approximately 100 cows. However, there are herds of 400 dairy cows in Alberta.
The dairy cows seem to flourish in Alberta’s dry and frigid environment, where summer lasts just four months and the temperature difference between summer and winter ranges from 35°C to -40°C. The province’s dairy herds produce between 10,000 and 12,000 kg of milk per cow per year on average.
Holstein cows grazing in a flat grassland
We went to one of these milk producers, which had 410 Holstein cows. The property is located approximately an hour north of Calgary on the relatively flat prairie. The farm is operated by Arie and Anita Van den Broek, who are in their 60s, and their five children, Meike, Lieke, Gijs, Teun, and Geertje.
The family immigrated from the Netherlands in 2000 and purchased the property in Olds. It was formerly a cow farm where beef cattle were bred and plants were grown. Arie and his family converted the enterprise to organic milk production a few years after the acquisition, and they acquired a certificate for this in 2009. They began with a herd of 50 cows and have now expanded to 410 cows.
“The reason we left the Netherlands was the increasingly restrictive conditions for running milk production – far too many restrictive retail rules from the EU made running a farm in the Netherlands more and more difficult.” That is why, like many other Dutch milk producers, we decided to try our luck in Canada. And we haven’t looked back since coming here,” Arie explains.
The farm comprises an additional 1,000-hectare plot of land where spring barley, peas, maize, ryegrass, and lucerne for silage are farmed in a three-year crop cycle. On the farm, all plant products are utilized to feed the cow herd. A third of the feed must be organically cultivated, according to the standards.
Son Teun van den Broek tells about the dairy farm in Canada in the cow barn. Son Teun van den Broek tells about the dairy farm in Canada in the cow barn.
Cattle bedding
The straw from the barley is utilized for bedding in the stable buildings, and the cow beds in the resting barn are covered with gravel. This implies that it is usually always dry here. Fertiliser is driven out from the farm just outside the stables twice a year, and the fertiliser demand in the fields is assessed using a computer twice a year.
“We use precision agriculture on the farm in the form of digital technologies to collect and analyze data about field conditions.” This offers us an idea of how much fertilizer the crops need, allowing us to optimize fertiliser distribution in the field, which benefits both us and the environment,” adds Teun.
He goes on to say that fertilizer, seed, and plant protection are all rated. “We use the data from the previous year’s treatments and the yield maps to determine whether we distributed our fertilizer and plant protection correctly.” We must follow specific standards as an organic farm since we have a license. “We are a member of Alberta Milk, which advises us and sets the rules for our production,” Teun explains.
Milking takes done three times a day on the farm. Milking takes done in the farm’s milking carousel, which can accommodate 28 cows at a time, and it takes 4 hours to milk all of the cows. Last year, the herd produced slightly over 4.7 million litres of milk, equal to an average of just under 11,000 kg milk per cow per year.
Payment is made per litre of milk.
“At the moment, we get approximately 1 Canadian dollar (US$0.74) per litre of milk from the dairy, and when it comes to organic milk, the price is approximately 20 cents higher per litre/kg milk,” Teun says, adding that cows are typically weaned after 6-8 calvings, with the highest yielding cows able to be weaned later.
Weaner cows are sold to a local butcher for about €1,020,00 each slaughter cow. Mastitis is uncommon in the herd because to the cold winter temperature and generally dry barns. The daily cell count is roughly 170,000, with a high of 400,000. In terms of breeding, the farm works with researchers at Olds Technical University, which is just around 20 kilometers away.
In addition to the roughly 1,200 hectares dedicated to plant breeding, the farm contains around 450 hectares of pasture on which all cows and calves over the age of 8 months graze during the summer. Milking robots are used by 16% of Canada’s milk producers, while the remainder utilize milking carousels. 45% of the milk produced is consumed by humans, while the remainder is processed into over 500 different products.
Approximately 30% of dairies in the milk business are cooperatives. The dairy industry aims to have zero CO2 emissions by 2050. Teun is in charge of field management, while Geertje is in charge of milking. In addition, there are 20 personnel, 8 of them are full-time, to oversee the field and herd. Mexico accounts for half of the workforce. “The employees from Mexico are a good and stable workforce who are knowledgeable about agriculture, which is why we hired them,” Arie explains.
Farm for visitors
“We like discussing our production. People outside of agriculture, in our view, know much too little about agriculture. That’s why we formed the East Olds Dairy Farmers organization, which is made up of numerous dairy farmers,” Arie explains.
“The goal was to invite people from the local community to come to our farms and have breakfast while we talked about where the milk comes from, how we care for our animals, and how we look after our neighbors,” he continues. Our philosophy is to open the farm gate and welcome visitors. The Southern Alberta Holstein Club and Alberta Milk helped us hold the inaugural breakfast in 2013, and 348 individuals attended. Since then, we’ve refined the idea, and each year, over 1,000 people visit the six farms engaged in the initiative for breakfast.”
